Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times

In 1962 Warhol began to cull images of tragic frontpage news stories. He silkscreened this image of a fatal car accident fourteen times. "I tried doing them by hand," he said, "but I find it easier to use a screen. This way, I don’t have to work on my objects at all." Warhol's distance from the work’s making parallels his diffusion of this gruesome image through repetition and deterioration. About the addition of "a blank canvas, the same background color," Warhol claimed, perhaps ironically, "The two are designed to hang together however the owner wants.... It just makes them bigger and mainly makes them cost more."

Credit: Gift of Philip Johnson