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拍品專文
"When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it really doesn't have any effect." (A. Warhol, quoted in Gene Swenson, "Interview," Artnews, November 1963).
In 1963, Sing Sing State Penitentiary performed the last two executions in the state of New York – Frederick Charles Wood on March 21st and Eddie Lee Mays on August 15th. Warhol’s predilection for death, as well as the media’s increased focus on the death penalty following these executions, led the artist to create his first Electric Chair paintings in 1963. Warhol later returned to the subject several times throughout his career and ultimately made a series of ten screen-prints titled Electric Chairs in 1971.
Warhol created ten color variations of the Electric Chair, each executed over a differently colored ground. It has been noted that Warhol used bright Day-Glo colors in the Electric Chair series, from green to blue and even pink. In discussing the early exhibitions of the subject, Gerard Malanga, who worked closely with Warhol during this era, recalls: "Imagine, the premiere of Andy's Electric Chair paintings in Toronto! Each painting seemed identical yet no two were really alike. Every color imaginable....Andy remarked how adding pretty colors to a picture as gruesome as this would change people's perceptions of acceptance," (G. Malanga, 'Electric Chairs on Display in Toronto for First Time!', Andy Warhol: Little Electric Chair Paintings, New York, 2001, p. 8).
The Electric Chair is the only work in the Death and Disaster series that shows no scene of violence. Since Warhol presents a single, isolated electric chair in an empty execution chamber, the viewer is instead left to extrapolate the action of the scene. In essence, Warhol creates a kind of mise-en-scéne that recalls the work of Alfred Hitchcock or film noir, in which the real terror of the scene is left un-filmed. The mind of the viewer instead re-enacts the gruesome electrocution of the victim, which is undoubtedly more terrifying a spectacle because it is created in the mind's eye. As Heiner Bastian explains, “In the pictures showing the electric chair in the execution room, Warhol again operates solely with the tension of allusion, with those connotations that refer to something unspoken, and which, like a magnetic pull, point to the event that is hidden from sight and only ever implied” (Heiner Bastian, "Rituals of Unfulfillable Individuality-The Whereabouts of Emotions," Andy Warhol Retrospective, exh. cat., Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin and Tate Modern, London, 2002, p. 30).
In 1963, Sing Sing State Penitentiary performed the last two executions in the state of New York – Frederick Charles Wood on March 21st and Eddie Lee Mays on August 15th. Warhol’s predilection for death, as well as the media’s increased focus on the death penalty following these executions, led the artist to create his first Electric Chair paintings in 1963. Warhol later returned to the subject several times throughout his career and ultimately made a series of ten screen-prints titled Electric Chairs in 1971.
Warhol created ten color variations of the Electric Chair, each executed over a differently colored ground. It has been noted that Warhol used bright Day-Glo colors in the Electric Chair series, from green to blue and even pink. In discussing the early exhibitions of the subject, Gerard Malanga, who worked closely with Warhol during this era, recalls: "Imagine, the premiere of Andy's Electric Chair paintings in Toronto! Each painting seemed identical yet no two were really alike. Every color imaginable....Andy remarked how adding pretty colors to a picture as gruesome as this would change people's perceptions of acceptance," (G. Malanga, 'Electric Chairs on Display in Toronto for First Time!', Andy Warhol: Little Electric Chair Paintings, New York, 2001, p. 8).
The Electric Chair is the only work in the Death and Disaster series that shows no scene of violence. Since Warhol presents a single, isolated electric chair in an empty execution chamber, the viewer is instead left to extrapolate the action of the scene. In essence, Warhol creates a kind of mise-en-scéne that recalls the work of Alfred Hitchcock or film noir, in which the real terror of the scene is left un-filmed. The mind of the viewer instead re-enacts the gruesome electrocution of the victim, which is undoubtedly more terrifying a spectacle because it is created in the mind's eye. As Heiner Bastian explains, “In the pictures showing the electric chair in the execution room, Warhol again operates solely with the tension of allusion, with those connotations that refer to something unspoken, and which, like a magnetic pull, point to the event that is hidden from sight and only ever implied” (Heiner Bastian, "Rituals of Unfulfillable Individuality-The Whereabouts of Emotions," Andy Warhol Retrospective, exh. cat., Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin and Tate Modern, London, 2002, p. 30).