In his painting, sculptures, drawings, films, and most memorably, his silkscreens, Andy Warhol documented the products and by-products of 1960’s America, especially its movie stars, commercial packaging, and the subjects of the new mass media.  Although Warhol himself might have teasingly suggested that he was an uncritical receptacle of the images and signs of contemporary mass culture, his work hovers ambiguously between a celebration and a critique of American values.

Warhol’s photo-silkscreen prints can be divided into thematic groups, including the packaging images (Campbell’s soup and the Brillo boxes); film and media stars; and the “disaster series,” which documents particularly American forms of death such as car crashes and the electric chair.  The silkscreening process provided a technique of mass production that appealed to Warhol because of its ability to undermine the uniqueness and originality of the artwork, but nevertheless produced slightly varied prints.  Photo-silkscreen printing allowed for the least involvement of the artist after the initial image had been devised and, accordingly, in 1963, Warhol infamously stated, “I think that somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me.”  Although he delegated some of the printing to studio assistants in the “Factory” (his New York studio), and despite his spectacular comments to the media, he largely retained control over most if not all of his artistic production.

Warhol’s silkscreens typically contain repeated serial images on one or abutting canvases.  In reference to this use of film-reel-like repetition, Warhol stated, “the more you look at the exact same thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel.”  As with all Warhol’s statements, however, the opposite is also true.  The overreproduction alerts the viewer to the original source of this visual overkill—namely, the mass media—and its corruption of tragedy for the sake of sensation.

Like the “disaster series,” Warhol’s images of movie stars fall into the long tradition of the “vanitas” theme (in which the viewer is reminded of his or her own mortality).  Warhol produced numerous versions of his prints of both Jackie Onassis (in her various roles as widow, mother, First Lady, and socialite) and Elizabeth Taylor (a brutal record of her turbulent career and physical decline).  In fact, the stars chosen by Warhol were generally dead, either literally, at the box office, or, as in the case of Troy Donahue, B-movie actors, who hadn’t achieved (yet) lasting fame.  In Troy Diptych (1962), Warhol repeated the same saccharine image over two abutting screens, one in filmic color and the other in newspaper print black and white.  Presumably the oval-shaped photograph that is signed in the corner was taken from a fan-club handout.  Through repetition, Warhol revealed Donahue’s slick smile and perfect helmet of blonde hair to be the vacant, simultaneously tragic and laughable product of a fickle Hollywood culture.

Details are surprisingly revealing in Warhol’s work.  The images in Troy Diptych are not identically reproduced:  some are “carelessly” overinked to the point of obliterating Donahue’s face; there is an uncomfortable blank area at the bottom of the canvas; and an inexplicable omission of three images disrupts the seamlessness of the mechanistic reproduction and directs the viewer to a more somber and unsettling reading of the painting.

JM