Jackie Series
Affected by the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of 1963, Warhol created a large series of portraits of his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. Based on images from newspapers and magazines, these portraits were shown individually or in groupings. Warhol's isolation and repetition of the image of Jackie suggest both the solitary and collective experience of widow and witnessing nation. Commentators have remarked that it was during this time that television became a unifying force, assuming a new role in defining national consciousness. Warhol's multiplied images offer the viewer an obsessive reenactment of this central event in U.S. History.
Point of View by Paula Kane, Department of Religious Studies,
University of Pittsburgh
"Her face is as familiar to me as that of my mother. As a small child I even associated Jacqueline Kennedy with Mom: poised and elegant, with the same thick dark hair, tailored suits, pillbox hats and white gloves. But here, Jackie seems less a maternal object than a religious icon. The thirty-two jewel-colored squares look like a wall of stained glass. Do the images reveal the gracious First Lady or the stunned widow? The photos seem to tell both stories. Do the multiple images enable us to empathize with Jackie, or do they destroy her uniqueness by making her a commodity? If she has become a brand-name product, like Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans and Marilyns, can we ever recover the 'real' Jackie? And what are we, as insatiable consumers of gossip about her and the Kennedy family?"
Point of View by Wayne Koestenbaum, writer
"Warhol rendered Jackie –celebrity/victim– in his standard grid, repeating images as if they were mug shots, frames of documentary film footage, or a fan’s clippings. Repetition implies mourning: the Dallas scene is a trauma, and mourning takes the form of recycling and recall, a process that unsettles chronology.... Repetition implies commodification: Jackie no longer has control over her own image.... Repetition implies obsession: the Jackie photos are cropped–narrowing the focus onto Jackie alone, myopically isolating her from context.... A narrative emerges, and it is not the story of Jackie’s life or the growth of Jackie’s soul–but the narrative of the image and of our relation to the image."
Point of View by Patricia Pugh Mitchell, Director Kuumba Trust
"I am immediately transported back to that dreadful day in Dallas when it all fell apart, and the curtains closed on the final act of Camelot. I was 10 years old when Jack Kennedy was assassinated. Those from my era may recollect the set of 77 collectable photo cards of the JFK family. My mother had meticulously saved anything and everything about Jack and Jackie, so I asked her to pull out the cards. She knew exactly where to go–the next day she placed the cards in my hand. My mom wore hats and cute suits just like Jackie–although she would never admit it. When I looked at my mother dressed for church–she was a mirror image of Jackie with a tan."
Andy Warhol, photo Greg Gorman, 1983
