It’s the last few weeks of the Andy Warhol: Pop, Power and Politics exhibition – so don’t miss out on your chance to see this unique exhibition. Whilst we’re recommending you book if you want to guarantee your time-slot, there may be some walk-ins available on the day. Just ask at the Visitor Service desk in the main hall at the Scottish Parliament.
Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London 2013.
The exhibition features more than 40 works of art, exploring themes of power, politics and philanthropy. The works have been carefully selected for display and the majority are being shown in Scotland for the first time.
In the last of our highlights from the Andy Warhol exhibition, we’re focusing on Flash-November 22.
Flash-November 22, 1963, 1968
Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc., New York
screen prints on paper
screen print on buckram board (Portfolio Cover)
John F. Kennedy (1917-63, President of the United States of America 1961-3)
Warhol made his first portraits of the President’s wife, Jackie Kennedy, the year of her husband’s assassination; thereafter, the Kennedy family were lifelong subjects for Warhol.
This portfolio references the mass-media coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was produced five years after the event, and after the artist himself suffered an assassination attempt. On 3 June 1968, Warhol was critically wounded when Valerie Solanas, founder and sole member of S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men), entered his studio and shot both him and curator Mario Amaya. The attack had a profound influence on the artist, whose work was already concerned with the pervasiveness of death and its violent portrayal in the media, including newspaper images of car crashes and electric chairs. While recovering in hospital, Warhol heard about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, who had been shot on 5 June.
Warhol included in the portfolio poetic interpretations of the teleprinter texts that had documented the day’s events as they unfolded. His highly abstract treatment of the photographs of the Kennedy campaign and assassination highlight that this is an artistic response to the media’s sensationalist coverage of the Kennedys’ lives. This is particularly evident in the images depicting Lee Harvey Oswald, arrested for the assassination, and Jack Ruby who shot Oswald on 24 November. Their faces are barely visible due to the saturated colour, unlike the documentary news images that emblazoned their faces onto the nation’s consciousness.
John F. Kennedy was fatally wounded in the shooting that took place just after noon on 22 November 1963, while campaigning in Dallas, Texas. He was declared dead shortly afterwards at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Warhol said his main interest was in the media’s portrayal of the event, and that he was not personally affected, but his close friend John Giorno later described how the artist had ‘wept big, fat tears’ upon first hearing the news.
Highlights of the exhibition include:
- 'Flash - November 22, 1963' screen-prints about the assassination of John F. Kennedy
- Portraits of Vladimir Lenin and Jimmy Carter
- Hammer and Sickle paintings
- A graphite portrait of Mao Tse-tung
- A devilish Richard Nixon on the Vote McGovern campaign poster
- Queen Elizabeth II from the Reigning Queens series