Andy Warhol, Bruno Bischofberger, and others
Electric Chair
1970
Scroll
Physical Qualities
Color screenprint, Sheet: 902 × 1219 mm. (35 1/2 × 48 in.)
Credit Line
Sidney M. Friedberg Accessions Fund for Prints and Drawings
Object Number
1991.199.9
Transforming images of disaster—actual or implied—into candy-colored emblems of mass production is a quality Andy Warhol brings to his many paintings and screenprints. In this series on the electric chair, Warhol takes a single searing image and repeats it with relentless decorative flair, each time delivering the horrific content in a soft palette of pinks, blues and yellows. Often the impressions are hazy, suggesting a distant memory or nightmare that cannot be shaken. A master of manipulation who drew constantly from the media and popular press, Warhol treats the image of the electric chair as an emblem of death and commerce, provocatively combining the decorative and the profound in succinct visual terms.
Kristen Hileman, West Wing rotation, 3 May 2017 - 29 November 2017.
