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Andy Warhol paints Electric Chairs

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EARLY 1963: ANDY WARHOL DOES EARLY SERIAL DISASTERS INCLUDING ELECTRIC CHAIR PAINTINGS.

Andy Warhol Electric Chair

Andy Warhol painted his Electric Chair paintings from a photograph rather than from an actual chair. The source was a photo distributed by World Wide Photo, dated January 13, 1953, captioned "This is a view of the death chamber and electric chair in Sing Sing Prison at Ossining, NY, in which convicted atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are slated to be electrocuted." (RN311)

From the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné (Vol. 1):

"In an interview with Gene Swenson, Warhol associated the beginnings of his 'death' series with statistics he heard projecting holiday traffic fatalities in late 1962... Around Labour Day 1962, Warhol was probably still at work on the Marilyn paintings, a series also related in his mind to death. In mid-December, he was documented screening a Suicide painting... Thus it seems reasonable to propose that his first paintings based on car-crash subjects originated about this time. A loan receipt for an electric chair painting, Silver Disaster #6 (cat. no. 362), from the Guggenheim Museum, dated late February 1963 established the first terminus ad quem for a death-themed painting that year... Only six known works with the 'Disaster' in their titles are numbered: Green Disaster #2 (cat. no. 343); Black and White Disaster #4 (cat. no. 346); Orange Disaster #5 (cat. no. 356); Silver Disaster #6 (cat. no. 362); White Disaster #40 (cat. no. 346); and White Disaster #41 (cat. no. 427)... Disasters #2 and #4 are both serial car crashes... Disaster #5 and #6 are electric chair paintings, and Disasters #40and #41 are examples of the Burning Car Crash series (cat. nos. 425-28), made later in 1963. It is not likely that the numbers would have been assigned by Warhol in the studio; more likely, they were given by the Stable Gallery as works were consigned or loaned to exhibitions." (RN310)

The cat. rais. has attributed the earliest of the above numbered Disasters to January-February 1963.

[Note: There are problems regarding the authenticity of the oft-quoted Swenson interview. Warhol's responses to Swenson's questions often do not sound like Warhol, For instance, Swenson asks Warhol "Is Pop a bad name?" Warhol apparently responds, "The name sounds so awful. Dada must have something to do with Pop - its so funny the names are really synonyms. Does anyone know what they're supposed to mean or have to do with, those names? Johns and Rauschenberg - Neo-Dada for for all these years, and everyone calling them derivative and unable to transform the things they use - are now called progenitors of Pop. It's funny the way things change. I think John Cage has been very influential, and Merce Cunningham, too, maybe. Did you see that article in the Hudson Review? It was about Cage and that whole crowd, but with a lot of big words like radical empiricism and teleology." Warhol was not known to use terms like "derivative" and "progenitors of Pop," even when quoting others. According to Warhol biographer, David Bourdon, "This widely quoted interview is troublesome for art historians. Swenson and Warhol were good friends, but the artist was in one of his uncooperative moods, prompting the critic to conceal his tape recorder during the interview. Some of the more 'intellectual' sounding quotes attributed to Warhol may have been doctored by Swenson, particularly the remarks concerning the Hudson Review, a literary quarterly that Warhol was not known to read." gc.]

See also: Did Andy Warhol want to be a machine?

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