Andy Warhol Response
What struck me most about the film we watched in class was seeing some of Warhol’s ‘darker’ works for the first time. His “Death and Disaster� series really impressed me, along with the skull series and electric chair series. Since his more accessible celebrity prints (like “Pink Marilyn�) where what I was expecting, I was very surprised by the deep meaning and dark subject matter present in his lesser known work. In particular, I admired the way he repeated images over and over again such as in “Orange Disaster #5�, in which no two images are exactly the same and suggest movement, change and the passage of time. In this way his paintings almost became films or moving pictures, which was fascinating.
I also really admired the way he incorporated optimism and transcendentalism into his works about death. In particular, his two-toned painting of an electric chair really impacted me. I really liked that he dared to compare the electric chair to the cross by using light and color to imply that the chair was transcendental object (as the cross is now interpreted). Since the original function of the cross was as an instrument of torture and death just like the electric chair, this comparison seemed very effective and especially thought provoking to me.
The series of paintings Warhol did about the last supper toward the end of his life were also very thought provoking. In particular, I liked the painting in which he placed corporate logos over the scene, implying that religion has been cheapened, mass produced or turned into a commodity in the modern age. When the video pointed out parallels between the ‘Dove’ soap logo, religious imagery and ‘cleanliness and godliness’, I began to appreciate how symbolic and meaningful Warhol’s paintings really are.