Flex.boston.com jpeg
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Andy Warhol Red Car Crash (Death and Disaster Series 1963)

It is important to note that Andy Warhol’s Red Car Crash Piece was part of a series of car crash images produced in different colours and repeated and put in groups of the same image and colour. Warhol was a serial artist that used the same image again and again in different pieces and so the red car crash image can be taken to be self-contained but also as part of a bigger picture.

Warhol’s Pop Art style was clearly deadpan; it was often the endless repetition of mass media. He consistently, unlike the likes of Pollock (who ironically died in a car crash) used Commercial images in a commercial way. This somewhat removes him from his work emotionally. The Red Car Crash image is no exception and for me this is what makes it so violent and morbid. Warhol takes a violent subject matter and makes it look like a commercial image. The piece is conventional in form, however Warhol chooses a media image of a car crash; which is a violent subject matter in its own right and then paints over it, removes emotion and turns it into ‘the normal’ everyday image, which alone is violent and disturbed. The actual process of printing can also be seen to remove him from the process and in the same way take away any empathy from him towards the piece, which again is dark. Warhol makes the piece as a whole more powerful by being unconventional in taking himself away from the process. This is supported by him stating that the reason he is “painting in this way is that “ he wants to be like “a machine” thus removing emotion away from the piece. Warhol took the red car crash image and re printed it and put the same image together, again taking away himself and the viewer and making it more normal and less horrific. Looking at the image itself and up close you gain a different prospective.

Looking at the image up close, it clearly shows a harrowing and violent image of an up turned car with three victims stuck underneath the carnage. What draws immediate shock is the woman completely immersed under the car with her face starring out towards the viewer, as well as the other two victims trying to crawl out from the upturned car. Homing in on the image also brings us into the scene, however the violent aspect also repels us. It Makes us feel as if we are voyeurs, looking at something we shouldn’t, like drivers slowing down on the motorway to rubberneck at a car crash. From this it is evident that through Warhol’s production there is conflict between, whether the violence and darkness comes from the image itself and whether the image used to comment on the fact that society’s popular culture has become violently numb to debauched scenarios. The Red Car Crash image also creates other conflicts in the way it was produced.

Warhol’s choices in the way in which he produced the image seem to create a conversation between both representation and abstraction. It is interesting how at the time media images printed, were predominantly black and white. Warhol takes a black and white image and adds colour to it, which makes the piece some what abstract in its form, however more realistic in the sense of subject matter, (due to the significance of the chosen colours). The image in black and white should be more realistic however due to Warhol removing himself from the piece emotionally by printing it, it could be seen to be more realistic in subject matter in an abstract form. The use of colour is also dominant in meaning and in Warhol’s approach.

The choice of colour that Warhol overlaid onto the image both metaphorically and as part of the printing process can be seen to both enhance the image and disguise it. The colour choice of red and black has clear associations with violence and death. The Red signifies danger and blood and the black juxtaposes this with an eeriness of gloom and darkness. In opposition to this the colour also gives the image a disguise, it makes its viewer look through the colour as if the image is being hidden. In addition to the use of colour the content within the image such as the Car is prominent in giving power of the piece.

The upturned crashed car in the image is central to the piece. The ‘Car’ in the 1960s was an image of modernity, liberation, speed and even sexiness; Warhol subverts that and suggests it’s a killing machine. The car in the image feels overpowering. At first glance it also seems like it has been blown up in size slightly from the original image, which makes you notice it in the photo far sooner than the violent subject matter of the car squashing three people. This as well as the: process, colour and choice of using a piece of media, creates an argument that Warhol is homing in on how people in America in the 1960s were becoming numb to violence, through commercial and media culture. The use of a car crash pinpoints this. The car could also be seen as an image of the ultimate human life cycle: sex and death. Again this suggests Warhol’s piece to be full of conflicting ideals.

The piece as a whole opens up a range of paradox. There is the conflict between abstraction and representation, being intimate yet repelling and also disturbing yet numbing. The image clearly has a violent subject matter although the way in which Warhol produces the piece as if it were a commercial (the fact he prints and then reproduces the piece again and again) takes the violent aspect away, however the reasons for this may suggest that Warhol is highlighting the publics own violations, are we violent and dark?

BILBOLGRAPHY

TheArtStory.org/artist-warhol-andy.hm
Wikicollecting.org/popart
Fluxboston.com
Hugh Honour & John Fleming A World History Of Art 2009 seventh edition pp845-848