1947 White
News and death were both fascinating to Warhol. The artist created a series of paintings on the subject of "Death in America" based on photographs from news sources. The source for this painting was a photograph by Robert C. Wiles of a young model who jumped from the top of the Empire State Building, landing on an automobile. The Wiles photograph first appeared in Life, on April 12, 1947. Although difficult to discern, upon closer examination the image reveals a woman, clutching her pearls, her stockings about her feet, and her dead body cradled in the dent made by her fall. Warhol's use of repetition and the gruesome nature of the subject matter compel us to look more closely at our own response and lack of response to images of violence, all the while transforming us into voyeurs.
Point of View by Lawrence Alloway, art critic:
"He [Warhol] depends on the mass media to provide images of spectacular exits from the world, just as he did of its painful occupancy. Death, as Warhol depicts it in his selected photographs, is statistically average; the car crashes are those that any of us might be in. The goldfish bowl [i.e., the popular
culture and the mass media, which are “instantly” accessible] in which death and catastrophe occur includes us, the spectators."
Point of View by Richard Borden, Public Affairs Director, Marconi Networks
"Like a scary childhood image you can’t get out of your head, this is the most affecting work on display to me. Important to observe that the photo is not Warhol’s. The selection, manipulation and replication are. And this, in the same artistic period as the Campbell’s Soup cans. A sleeping beauty meets suicide from an Empire State Building fall. Striking. . .haunting. . .daring."
Point of View by Lonnie Graham, artist
"With the inception of the fixed photographic image, western industrialized culture perceived itself as the owner of the natural world and perpetuated its love affair with itself. ‘Wonders of nature’ were replaced with the ‘wonders of the modern world.’ Respect for the truly awesome turned into curious
fascination. Warhol’s genius exists in presenting to us. Attending the social escapade. He elevated our culture to Culture. He remains a painter in metaphor, as the automated mechanization of commercial production becomes the palette. The media is the medium, spread as a second coat across the broad canvas of our culture.
In his work we see, our own fascination with mass production and anything for sale; deification of popular cultural figures and in these images he interprets our own vicarious curiosity with the ultimate natural uncontrollable variable, death."
Andy Warhol, photo Greg Gorman, 1983
