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Race Riot. Pintura acrílica y serigráfica sobre cuatro paneles de lino. 1964.
La mayor parte de los temas explorados por Warhol tenían que ver con los
símbolos de la cultura pop, a los que reivindica como temas de representación.
Esta característica le hizo ganar fama de superficial, pero Warhol no era una
personalidad desentendida de lo que ocurría a su alrededor.
Tras los enfrentamientos raciales del año 1963, Warhol interviene una serie de
imágenes provocadoras donde denuncia la hipocresía de una nación que dice
defender la igualdad pero sigue dando signos de discriminación racial.
Para ello, Warhol reproduce una fotografía de los acontecimientos y la interviene
con los colores azul, rojo y blanco, propios de la bandera norteamericana. El
gesto sería frontal: si la cultura norteamericana está representada por la sopa y
por Marilyn, también la discriminación.
Para realizar esta obra, Warhol se apropió de una fotografía de Charles Moore
publicada en la revista Life, lo cual supuso una demanda por infracción de
derechos de autor.
Race Riot (Warhol)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Race Riot
Year 1964
Type acrylic and silkscreen
Contents
1Description
2Provenance
3Exhibition history
4Notes
5Citations
6Bibliography
7External links
Description[edit]
In 1963 Warhol began preparing for a large scale exhibition at the Sonnabend
Gallery in Paris. Anxious to avoid a charge of mass-consumerism at his first major
exhibition abroad, he chose a theme he initially called Death in America. These
paintings, of subjects such as car crashes, suicides, food poisoning, the electric
chair, gangster funerals, and the Atom Bomb, were to become known as the Death
and Disaster paintings. In an interview at the time, he explained what had made
him start:[3][4]
I guess it was the big plane crash picture, the front page of a newspaper: 129 DIE.
I was also painting the Marilyns. I realized that everything I was doing must have
been Death. It was Christmas or Labor Day—a holiday—and every time you turned
on the radio they said something like, "4 million are going to die." That started it.
But when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have
any effect.
— Andy Warhol, ARTnews 1963
Detail from top left panel showing heightened contrast and newsprint like quality.
1963 was also the year of the Birmingham campaign in the Civil Rights Movement.
Americans were shocked by a photo-essay published in Life magazine that
showed young black protesters being fire-hosed and set upon by police dogs.
[5]
These Life photographs were by Charles Moore, and the then president John F.
Kennedy was to say of them, and of similar images by civil rights photographers of
the time, that the events they depicted were "so much more eloquently reported by
the news camera than by any number of explanatory words". [6] Three of Moore's
photographs were of a dog attacking a black man and although the theme was not
strictly "Death", Warhol was sufficiently aware of their power to want to include
them in his exhibition, consistent with his aim of showing the dark underside of
the American Dream: "My show in Paris is going to be called 'Death in America.' I'll
show the electric-chair pictures and the dogs in Birmingham and car wrecks and
some suicide pictures." [1][3] In all Warhol made some ten silkscreen painting on the
theme. They became known as his Race Riot paintings (counterfactually, in reality
the images were of a peaceful march disrupted by police), and they represent
Warhol's only overtly political statement, although he himself insisted that Moore's
photographs had merely "caught his eye".[1]
The first four of these paintings (Pink Race Riot in the Museum Ludwig,
Cologne; Mustard Race Riot, in the Museum Brandhorst, Munich; and two other
examples whose whereabouts are currently unknown) were made in 1963 in direct
response to the Life magazine photo-essay and feature all three of Moore's attack
dogs photographs.[7] Pink Race Riot was the painting exhibited at the Sonnabend
Gallery in 1964.[8] The remaining six paintings in the series, which Warhol called his
"little Race Riots", date from 1964. Of these Race Riot, at nearly six feet square, is
the largest and the only multicoloured example. It consists of four panels each
depicting the same Charles Moore photograph of a black man fleeing a dog tearing
at his trousers, the middle of the three that appeared in Life magazine. The panels
are tinted in red, white and blue, possibly refracting the byline Life magazine gave
Moore's photographs, They Fight a Fire That Won't Go Out.[b] The panels are a
faithful representation of Moore's photograph, but with heightened contrast
expressing a newsprint quality. Warhol used Moore's photographs without his
permission, and Moore subsequently filed a lawsuit against him for copyright
infringement. The case was settled out of court.[10]
The painting was originally owned by Sam Wagstaff, who gave it to his
partner Robert Mapplethorpe. Wagstaff also commissioned a print from
Warhol, Birmingham Race Riot, as part of the series Ten Works by Ten
Painters published in an edition of 500 by Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford,
Connecticut.[11][12]
Provenance[edit]
Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Sam Wagstaff, New York
Robert Mapplethorpe, New York
The Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe, New York
Christie's, New York, 7 November 1989, lot 74
Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Stahel, Zurich
Christie's, New York, 18 November 1992, lot 48
Private collection, Monaco
Gagosian Gallery (Christie's, New York, 13 May 2014: $62,885,000) [1]
Exhibition history[edit]
Various including:
Notes[edit]
1. ^ Anne Wagner titles the work Little Race Riot and dates it 1963.[2]
2. ^ Brett Gorvy at Christie's remarks that it is almost as if the painting is burning from
underneath.[9]
Citations[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e "Race Riot:Sale 2847 Lot 23". Christie's. Archived from the original on 6
May 2014.
2. ^ Wagner 1996, plate 2.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b Swenson 1963.
4. ^ Temkin & Lehmann 2014, p. 44.
5. ^ Moore 1963.
6. ^ Fairclough 2001, To Redeem the Soul of America, p. 138, at Google Books.
7. ^ "Mustard Race Riot: Sale 1431 Lot 12". Christie's. Archived from the original on 9
May 2014.
8. ^ Bonami 2012.
9. ^ Gorvy 2014, 2:30.
10. ^ Gilbert, Laura. "No longer appropriate". The Art Newspaper. Archived from the
original on 11 May 2014.
11. ^ "Ten Works by Ten Painters". Wadsworth Atheneum.
12. ^ "Ten Works by Ten Painters". Tate Gallery.
Bibliography[edit]
Bonami, Francesco (2012). "How Warhol Did Not Murder Painting but
Masterminded the Killing of Content". Walker Art Center. Archived from the original on
10 May 2014.
Fairclough, Adam (2001) [1987]. To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern
Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. University of Georgia
Press. ISBN 0820323462.
Frei, George; Prints, Neil, eds. (2004). Warhol: Paintings and Sculpture 1964–
1969, Vol. 2 (2 Vol. Set): The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné. London: Phaidon
Press. pp. 355, 357 and 384, no. 1420. ISBN 0714840874.
Gorvy, Brett (2014). "Video: Andy Warhol's Race Riot, 1964". Christie's.
Moore, Charles (17 May 1963). "They Fight a Fire That Won't Go
Out". Life. 54 (20).
Swenson, Gene (November 1963). "What is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight
Painters (Part 1)". ARTnews. Archived from the original on 9 May 2014.
Temkin, Anne; Lehmann, Claire (2014). "Ileana Sonnabend - Ambassador for the
New" (PDF). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 May
2014.
Wagner, Anne M (1996). "Warhol Paints History, or Race in
America". Representations. 55 (Special Issue: Race and Representation: Affirmative
Action): 98–119 (p. 100, plate 2). JSTOR 3043740.
Race Riot, 1964 es una composición de cuatro imágenes poco común sobre los disturbios
raciales en Birmingham, Alabama.
A principios de la década de 1960, Birmingham era una de las ciudades de Estados Unidos
con mayor división racial, provocada por las leyes y la cultura. Los ciudadanos negros
enfrentaban desigualdades económicas y legales y la retribución violenta cuando intentaban
llamar la atención hacia sus problemas. Las protestas en Birminghan comenzaron con un
boicot liderado por Shuttlesworth con objeto de presionar a los dueños de comercios para que
dieran empleo a personas de todas las razas y de terminar con la segregación racial en
establecimientos públicos, restaurantes, escuelas y tiendas. Cuando los líderes de negocios
locales y del gobierno se resistieron a ello, la SCLC aceptó apoyarlos. El organizador Wyatt
Tee Walker se unió al activista de Birmingham, Shuttlesworth, y comenzó lo que ellos llamaron
el Proyecto C, una serie de sentadas y marchas que pretendían provocar arrestos masivos.
Al ver que la campaña tenía poco apoyo de adultos voluntarios, James Bevel, Director de
Acción directa de la SCLC, tuvo la idea de que los estudiantes fueran los principales
manifestantes en la Campaña de Birmingham. Entrenó y dirigió a estudiantes de primaria,
secundaria, preparatoria y universidad en la no-violencia, y les pidió que participaran en la
manifestación de una caminata pacífica de 50 a la vez de la 16th Street Baptist Church al
ayuntamiento, con el fin de hablar con el Alcalde sobre la segregación. Esto resultó con más
de mil arrestos, y debido a que las cárceles y áreas de detención de Birmingham estaban
llenas, el departamento de policía de Birmingham, dirigido por Eugene "Bull" Connor, usó
mangueras de agua de alta presión y perros policía de ataque contra los niños y adultos
transeúntes. No todos los transeúntes fueron pacíficos, a pesar de la declarada intención de la
SCLC de mantener una completa marcha no violenta, pero los estudiantes sí se atuvieron a lo
convenido. King y la SCLC recibieron críticas y halagos por permitir que los niños participaran
y se pusieran en peligro.