Andy Warhol

Warhol Paints History, or Race in America Author(s): Anne M. Wagner Reviewed work(s): Source: Representations, No.
55, Special Issue: Race and Representation: Affirmative Action (Summer, 1996), pp. 98-119 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3043740 . Accessed: 24/01/2013 05:43
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ANNE
M. WAGNER
Warhol Paints History,or Race in America

IT MAY SEEM INAPPROPRIATE, given my title,to startwitha photograph that puts us in Paris in 1964, at the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend (fig. 1). Andy Warhol had his first European solo exhibitionthere,a show he wanted to in call "Death America,"thoughitactuallyopened under a tamerrubric,bearing name.I The Sonnabend exhibition was proof that,onlytwo years onlythe artist's afterhis notoriousdebut as an "artist" (thatshow lined up soup can paintingson a shelf,just like soup cans), Warhol had made his name. And he had left his beginningswithCampbell's cans farbehind. Even the most glancingdescription of the paintingsshown in Paris-suicides, electricchairs,fatal car crashes, porof twowomen who losttheirlivesto taintedcans of tuna fish(unlikely traits saints, to fade away, of theirmartyrdom)theyseem literally along withtheinstruments to come to Warhol's explains whysuch an ambitiousand morbidtitlewas the first mind. There was onlyone image wheredeath was not directly pictured,a version Race Riot will of Race Riot of 1963; yetit took pride of place in the installation. and even suppliesitssubtitle: "Race in America." have the same statusin thisessay, As in Paris,death is not faraway. canvases on thissubject,thoughonlythree Warholproduced at least thirteen on the wall-sizedscale of the one shown at Sonnabend; the group's existenceis the bluntassertion:Andy Warholwas a history the reason I offer painter.This is not a notion withmuch currency, past or present; nor have Warhol'sRace Riots a spebeen studied before. Yet in thisessay I claim thatthese picturesconstitute cial-and specially recalcitrant-categorywithinWarhol's work. Its difference is above all a matterof race. fromhis othermain mode of representation This is mymain proposition.Making itstickinvolvesfirst definingWarholas of his forayinto a painterin general,the betterthento spell out the implications the particulargenre called history. My argumentproceeds fromthe conviction thatour understandingsof Warhol'spaintingand of history painting,and even all have something to gain fromthe result.But our grasp on the notionof history, above all thereis somethingto be learned about the waysthe two keytermswork and together:about whathistory paintinghas been, in the late twentieth century, or givesmeaningto,contemporary how it makes meaning from, events.Some of those meanings, where Warhol was concerned, involve race in America. Like
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FIGURE
exhibitionat the 1. Installationphotographof Andy Warhol, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, 1964. Photo: Harry Shunk.
much of the recentAmerican pas t-the 1960s in particular-their implications live on in the present,in waysI mean to show. to admitthatthe odds seem stackedagainstme: problems Let me be the first and objectionscrop up rightfromthe start.There is an issue about definitions, let alone a history is it to call Warhol a painter, for example. How satisfactory a him or even an label We can artist, better, certainly, conceptual artist; painter? Those identities we can termhim a performerand discuss him as a filmmaker. and professionalawards are by now securelyratifiedby criticalinterpretations the and a Warhol museum sited back in Pittsburgh, and mass-cultural notoriety artist'shome town.Such labels siteasilyon an individualwhose career aimed to as pure mechanics,and who made this intentionpatentlyclear rewriteartistry critical When Warholfirst attracted attention. fromthe momenthe first explained in November 1963, he famouslydeclared: "The his paintingto an interviewer, reason I'm paintingthiswayis thatI wanttobe a machine,and I feelthatwhatever
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I do and do machine-likeis what I want to do."2 In keeping withthis purpose, Warhol'stechniquesare a compendium of waysto circumvent the need to paint, fromthe projectorhe used to trace comic books and newspapers and advertisements,to the silk screen, where "painting"simplymeant sliding a squeegee up and down and back and forthand side to side, and accepting any accidents of But even thisdescriptionmaybe too inkingor registration thatwere the result.3 evoke personal,maymake Warholseem too activein the process,maymistakenly thatthoughhe was somea notiontoo close to painterly practice.Note, therefore, he was notnecessarily timesphotographedworking, theone to man the squeegee, certainlynot the one to make the silk screen, nor the one to design the image fromwhichthe screen was cut. "This way,"he said, "I don't have to workon my Warholused images fromelsewhere, images at all."4In keepingwiththispractice, raided tabloidsand magazines and wireservicesand supermarketshelves; like a photographsand mug shots and squatterhe staked his claim to studio publicity the stripsof snapshotschurned out by photo booths-this is how the nearlyparodic narcissismof a serial portraitsuch as EthelScull36 Timesof 1963 came to in unique images and be. He recycledhis silkscreenswithappropriatedisinterest thesquare footageand priceof his screenedcanvases doubled, sometimestripled, byjoining to them emptymonochromes.5Is it any wonder he called his studio The Factory,or that photographers recorded its stacked-up contents as they would any warehouse packed withgoods? Is thispainting?To pose thisquestion is not quite the same as asking Is this lies in the factthat Warhol'swork-or these strategiesand art? The difference I am describing as his work-was easilyassimilable techniquesof "mechanization" art-as-behavior so to the notions of art-as-concept, art-as-decision, art-as-event, in Marcel and so the ratified renovated decisively early epochally by Duchamp 1960s, both in Europe and the United States.Hence Warhol'spromptemergence as "one of the for his contemporariesas a questionerof traditionaldefinitions,6 of all time,"whose main lesson was how to negate "the principaldidactic artists How betterto uniqueness of the art object, and even its claim to originality."7 support this claim than throughrecourse to Duchamp himself?Warhol's commade sure to citePapa Duchamp's opinion on Warhol'ssignaturework: mentators "If a man takesfifty Campbell Soup cans and puts themon a canvas, it is not the us is the concept that wants to retinalimage which concerns us. What interests put fifty Campbell Soup cans on a canvas."8To cite Duchamp on Warholin 1965 of the 1960s about Warhol: the possibility was a wayof signalingwhatinterested assimilatinghis art to the emerging conceptual paradigm-of emphasizing its not as picture,but as idea. interest, For some writers, of course, Warhol'slesson had (and stillhas) a somewhat tricks were not merelyideas-they were ideas wider scope; his appropriationist world. By these lightshis art takes itscue straight from about the contemporary
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PLATE
1. Andy Warhol,Red Race Riot,1963. Synthetic polymerpaint and silk-screen ink on canvas. Andy WarholFoundation, New York.Photo: X 1996 Andy Warhol Foundation,Inc. I ARS, New York.
PLATE
ink on Race Riot,1963. Silk-screen 2. Andy Warhol,Little polymerpaint on canvas. Presentlocation synthetic unknown.Photo: Courtesyof the estateof Robert Mapplethorpe,(? 1996 Andy WarholFoundation Inc./ ARS, New York.
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David Hammons, Injustice Case, 1970. Mixed media print. Los Angeles County Museum of Art,Museum Purchase withMuseum AssociateAcquisitionsFund. Photo: ? 1996 Museum Associates,Los Angeles County Museum of Art. All RightsReserved.
modernity, though whetherby posing as itsclone or its criticseemed-may still seem-harder to say: did his workexpose, or merelyecho, the numbingrepetiThe idea of Warhol's art as critique lagged slightly tivenessof the commodity? behind the notion of it as concept; its emergence seems, in retrospect, to have of artand criticism in the aftermath been contingent on the politicization of 1968. The Warholmachinewas thenretooled,regeared to take a different culturaland criticalcourse. The new directionis clearlyindicated in a 1971 essay by Gregory and art world weathervane.9 Battcock'sopinion Battcock,a minorman of letters to art is not to be found in the paintis emphatic: "Warhol'sgreatestcontribution ings themselvesbut ratherin the factthatthroughhis paintingshe exposed the artand society.... He has revealed the shoddy mechanicsof both contemporary of the social system and the absurdity of itsculture.'0 hypocrisy The main problemabout puttingthesequestionsto the issue of the tone and It is thatthey postureof Warhol'sart is not thatthe questionsare not interesting. are not answerable in any veryreliable way.The argumentsboil down to claim versuscounterclaim-the impassionedyesversusthevehementno. Does Warhol's the cultureit images? Both answershave been given,yet it art expose or reflect has been the speaker's own beliefsand criticalprotocolsthat count the most in eithercase. And no matterwhich side is argued, in the first wave of Warhol litin anythinglike erature one encountersfewsuggestionsthathis work functions in other as or as "retinal a traditional way: paintings, words, images,"to cite Duchamp once again. One meets withfew claims that the formshis picturestake theirsubjectsand theviewer'sunderstanding.Like Battcock,critshape or inflect ics read past or through"the paintingsthemselves," withoutreally asking how theylook or how viewersrespond to them-if, thatis, the retinalhas reallybeen leftaside. These omissionswere necessaryforWarholto play his assigned roletheywere needed ifitwas to be claimed,to citeBattcockstillfurther, that"Warhol foresawthe end of paintingand became its executioner."" I want to correctly ratherthan acted as paintargue, pace Battcock,thatWarholexecuted paintings, ing's executioner. of thiscritical Againstthe uniformity backdrop (rememberthatI am describof the 1960s and early1970s above all), opinionsto contrary ing thecriticism stand out like sore thumbs.Yet theydid exist:in demonstration of thatclaim,I want to citethelate HenryGeldzahler,who,fromhisbase as a curatorat the Metropolitan Museum, was one of the most influential forcesin the art world of his day; he made the rounds of studiosand galleries,and of course was to be spotted,microphone in hand, discoursingat a symposiumon pop art convened at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1963. The panelistsspent the day trying to answer a question theyfound troublesome:theywere discussingwhetherpop art is really art at all. By the following year Geldzahler had made up his mind. The answer, in the case of Warhol,was yes:
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Warhol's paintings strike us as notbeing artatall,as notbeing enough, as not sometime[s] beingsufficiently from different life,from our ordinary experience. The artistry with which they aremadeisconcealed and reveals itself slowly and thebrash and brazen image, all we can see at first, in time, becomes, a painting, something we can assimilate intoour livesand experience.'2 Although Geldzahler'swas an isolated opinion, I thinkit is an importantone. It is important to myargumentbecause itis theresponseof someone who does more than supply expectationsto Warhol'swork. Instead he seems to have looked at it and aims to speak of a processof viewingand itsresult, a transformation of image to painting.As Geldzahler describesit,thatprocess involvesdistinct stages,each marked by changes in the statusof the image. At first the image is too familiar, too close to ordinaryexperience for the viewerto see the difference-in other words,to allow a secure enough distinction fromthe experience of the everyday. is the dominantcharacteristic of a Warholcanvas: it is "all we can see Familiarity at first," and itinitiates a purelyvisual experienceof thework.To become a painting, Geldzahler claims,the image mustcome to seem lessfamiliar. This happens as we look. Only in looking-in a paradoxical process-when itseems less visually presentand obvious,does itbecome a painting;onlythen,when itcan be understood as more than merelyfamiliar, can the picture'sartistry be seen, can itbegin to mean somethingforitsviewers'"livesand experience." Geldzahler's definitionof painting-of Warhol's painting in particularcrops up in thiscontextbecause it is useful in understandinghow his pictures mightfitthatcategory-the category"painting"-rather betterthan theydo that of "conceptual art."The pointis essentialto mypurpose-important enough for me to wantto showstraightaway how itstermsmightapply to a particularWarhol canvas. If familiarity is the key, whatcould be more familiarthan Warhol'simage of MarilynMonroe-the Diptych he famouslygeneratedwithinweeks of her suicide in August 1962 (fig.2). And whatcould be more brazen in itspursuitofjust that"familiarity" effect? It is produced notjust byWarhol'smakeoverof a studio stillshot by Gene Kornman in 1953) into a silkscreen inked portrait(a publicity fastand low-cost and re-inkedto look likea particularly printingjob;and notjust byhiscarefulchoice of a photographtakensome tenyearsbeforeMarilyn's death: his source shows Monroe in her screen idol heyday,as the representationthe of familiarity woman was to become.'3 The effect also resultsfromthispainting's chief technical procedure; it revels in its own redundancy,insistingwith each repetitionthatthe viewerhas surely gottenthe point. There's no question about it: one image equals the next, or at least differs from it meaninglessly;repetitionpromptsindifference and licenses us to turn in resisting away.It is only in refusingthatpermission, redundancy,thatwe are able to speculate about such differences and effects as do emerge:14 perhaps,faute de mieux, to make sense of thecontrast we startto try betweencolor and black and white,forexample, and to see it as a matterof medium,or to registerthe quasi102
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--------L-
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ink on 2. Andy Warhol,Marilyn 1962. Silk-screen Diptych, London. synthetic polymerpaint on canvas. Tate Gallery, London /Art Resource. Photo: Tate Gallery,
filmicsuccession of the image frame(filmic because changes are so veryimperceptible); we note the waythe image bothblackensand fades,conjuringpresence and absence throughopposite means. The apparent integrity of Marilyn's glamorous visage-its partedlipsand archedbrowsand beautymark-becomes a mask that even familiarity cannot keep fromfragmentation and decay. In its veryexhaustion,the image is remade as itsvisual opposite. It is as ifWarhol,in insisting so utterly on a single image as a singularmeaning, is backhandedlycourtinga kind of referential plenitude. It mightbe possibleto claim thispicture,and otherslike it-Warhol's Blue Liz as Cleopatra, forexample, or his seriesof Suicides-as history paintingbyvirtueof of the glamour and redundancy and immanent violence of their registration American life under late capitalism.These paintingsdeclare theirdependence on particularcircumstances of time and place: indeed, their reliance on them is complete. Yet theydo not describe or analyze those circumstancesso much as adopt the moment'sunderlying protocolsas theirown visual termsand rules. The meanings of these works-if theyhave meanings-are not the particular eventsand individualstheyillustrate-this car crash,thatmovie star,thiscan of Warhol Paints or Racein America History, 103
soup. Instead they refer outside themselvesto a particular set of conditions, which,howeverreal, cannot be illustrated as a totality. They refer,thatis, to the system-the "image world"-of commodification and desire thatgivesthemcurrency, and invokethatsystem as a setofgeneralities. We mightsaythattheyconvey their meanings allegorically, producing themselvesas "phantom proxies" of a larger whole.15Marilyn"means" the entertainment industry the way a mirrorin a seventeenth-century Dutch painting"means" vanity:the equation seems sufficient,even satisfying, thoughthisis onlythecase byconvention, bya kind of tacit agreementor assumption.That thesepicturescan so referis dependent of course on the initialchoice of image; be itbrazen or blatant, itmustalso possess the kind of contentthatcan make it representative of a wider category-and conversely lack those contentsthatwould stand in the wayof such reference.The appropriated image must be both resonant enough-and emptyenough-to allow the process of allegorizingto occur. Warhol'sworkfrom1962 onward demonstrates his uttercommitment to this way of painting.Repetitionand silkscreen had come to stay, and theirapparent almosthypnotically willsus to forget how deliberately simplicity theseeffects were achieved: it takespokingat the edges of Warhol'searlyproductionto understand that his brand of deadpan took some finding.We need to look, for example, at his earlydrawingsand paintingsof soup cans withthe labels tornand sullied,or withdollar bills,to see thathis mostfamiliarmodels once were shown in stuffed different postures, even assigned a kind of attitude.There is plentyof metaphorical pathos in evidence in those drawings,and not much metonymiccool. Likewise we should look at other 1962 paintings-Before and After, for example, and the Do It Yourself series-to see withhow much glee and ironyWarhol bore down on regularity and dumb repetition as his paintings'centraltropes.
I thinkit is certainthatwhen Warhol painted his Race Riots,sometimeearly in the summerof 1963, he borrowedtherequisiteimageswiththeserequirements in mind,withthe intention, thatis, of givingthemhis signaturetreatment (plate 1). Silk screen and squeegee stood ready to transpose three news photographs intoa handfulof paintingsin red and mustardand mauve. We can onlyconclude that the chosen photographs seemed to Warhol to possess the necessary resonance-had allegoricalpotential-although givenour own distancefromthismomentthirty-three yearsago, it cannot come amiss to spell out why. The reasons are somewhatmore various than theymightseem. For a start, anypictureof black protestwas in 1963 emphatically topical,given thatblack achad reached new urgencyand visibility under theJohn F. Kennedyadmintivism and the leadership of the Reverend MartinLuther King Jr.Remember istration that since the late 1950s King had been advocating"directaction,"his termfor in the name of civilrights-demonstraof peaceful demonstration the strategy 104
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as wellas those of thousands of other tionsthatbroughthis own repeated arrests, and arrestswere meantto be visible:when King was blacks. Both demonstrations booked in 1958, at Montgomery, Alabama, under the eyes of his wife,Coretta Scott King, the camera of Charles Moore was presentand so, byextension,were the nation'seyes. In the charged springof 1963-the centennialyear of Negro emancipation-King had focused the attentionand resources of the Southern of another Alabama cityChristianLeadership Conferenceon the integration Birmingham-a citythatdespite itswishful self-advertising (itsgatewaydeclared of being,in King'sbluntphrase, it"The Magic City")had theappalling distinction "the mostsegregatedcityin America."'6To say Birminghamwas segregatedis to sayitwas racist:under theleadershipof Commissionerof PublicSafetyBull Conand exclusion held sway; the citywas notablyrenor, a policyof discrimination insistenceon theirrightsto the mostbasic civicservices-to sistantto protesters' eat, for example, at public lunch counters,to use public restrooms,to swim in public pools, to play on public playgrounds.Connor's intransigencemade Birmingham ideal for a demonstration:action could count on reaction; King was prepared both to riskand to milkthe response. He welcomed photographiccovand when he was again imprisonedin the course of erage of the demonstrations, in April 1963, he wrote his celebrated "Letter fromBirmingham these efforts, Jail"-a document, among other things,of his tirelessabilityto use the controversyhis actionsaimed to provoke. But Warhol's subject was not just generallytopical; the specificimages he chose for his Race Riots were also familiar.They were lifted from Life, that mainstayof American photojournalismand prime source forwhitemiddle-class impressionsof the week'sactualites. Life,itis said, was at the timethe "singlemost 7 important organ of themedia, reachingmore thanhalfof theadult population."' The three screens Warhol used in the Race Riotscame from the Life exclusive "They Fighta Fire That Won'tGo Out," a photo essaybythe same Charles Moore, a civilrights veteranas dedicated as he was skilled(figs.3, 4, and 5).18 Though he was part of a press corps thatflockedto the city-other photographersare often visiblein his pictures-Moore is theone who seems to have been mostin the thick of things:he was therewhen the dogs were called out and therewhen the highpressurefirehoses wereleveledat theprotesters and thereagain whentheyrallied and regrouped on nearbychurch steps in the course of one long and turbulent weekend. It is symptomatic of both the media's presence, on the one hand, and on the other,thathe got himselfphotographed by an unMoore's own tenacity, identifiedmember of the press corps at work making one of the same pictures Warholwas soon to use.'9 Yet looking at Moore's photographsand Warhol'ssilk-screenedpaintingsmatchingoriginalswithcopies, then back again-questions emerge concerning Warhol'schosen source. The images may have been familiar, but are theyquite emptyenough? The question is relevantbecause one main requisiteof Warhol's Warhol Paints or Race in America History, 105
FIGURES
3, 4, and 5. Charles Moore, Birminghampolice using police in Birmingham, dogs againstblack demonstrators photographsfrom"They Fighta Fire That Won'tGo Out," Life,17 May 1963. C 1979 Charles Moore/Black Star.
testedpainterly strategy-thatsensationof attention sapped or exhausted in confrontation witha repeated visual form-no longer prevailsin quite the same way. Though now suffused withcolor,the photographssurvivewithin Warhol'spaintings: a bit grittier, more like newsprint, theystillseem pretty much intact.The more we look at both originalsand copies, the clearerit becomes whyMoore was the photographerLife used for an exclusive,and whyhe then defended his authorship(the photographereventually sued Warhol forunauthorized use of his These photographshave protagonists work).20 and action and drama. The same set of characters-dogs and officers, onlookersand victim-groups and regroups beforeMoore's lens. Looking throughthesequence itis obviousthatMoore meant a narrativeto unfold.The story is thatof the youngblack man withthe hat,who wheels around in surpriseand annoyanceas his trousersare ripped fromhis leg. Then, in the second image, he strainsto get away.At first the attackis isolated, 106
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but the ensuing photograph-the third-shows that his vulnerability seems to have been communicatedto other officers and beasts,who are quick to join the fray.His first attackersthenback off, as ifcontentto let the othersfinishthejob. Under supervision,thatis: the lead dog surelyhas some fight leftin him-he is ready to take on Moore. One way to confirm the drama and narrativity of Moore's photographsis to compare them with the images that circulated in the daily press. Of these, an AssociatedPresswirephoto of anotherconfrontation betweena youngblack man, a dog, and his policeman handler was by far the most widespread. Unlike Moore's work, the photograph is notablystable; it freezes black and white together,with the lunging dog to link the two. Yet out of their formal equation comes not similarity but a pointed rhetoricaldifference; thismaybe one reason that the picture'svarious captions-"A citypolice dog lunges at a negro youth," or more simply"With police dog"-override the presence of three protagonists withinthe image and provide the policeman a protective invisibility. These four photographs are only the tip of the iceberg: a whole varietyof images of the Birminghamactionscirculatedin the public realm; theyincluded many others taken by Moore himself.His Lifeessay,as I say,showed protesters drenched by hoses, rallying, praying,and being carried offtojail. All these pictures take sides and tell storiesand use words to tie down meanings thatimages alone could not convey.Take the caption thataccompanies a photo of a wet and worriedyoung black man: "Face of Hatred. Glaringsullenlyat firemenwhojust soaked him with hose jet, Negro expresses Birmingham'slong-standingracial These same firemen, we have already learned fromthe Lifeessay, bitterness."22 a firethatwon'tgo out." Put these twoimages togetherare the ones who "fight in fact theywere printedonly pages apart-and thatfiretakes on a face and a meaning: what burns,we are meant to understand,is the "hatred" and "bitterness" of the young and virileblack male. withtheirrhetorical Withso manyimages in circulation, charge at maximum, theissue of Warhol'schoiceof imagestakeson specialurgency. Whythisparticular ratherthan some sequence of a black man harriedin freshand repeated attacks, otherimage of theday?WhynotMoore's photographsofwomenprayingor being takenbodilyintocustody?-these too were publishedin Life.Or whatof the phoor thebodies of teenagersbeing pounded into tographsof childrenunder arrest, buildingsby the relentless jet of high-pressure spray?These last mightwell have of the Birminghamprotests,since thoucharacteristic been seen as particularly sands of childrenactuallydid take to the streetsto be arrested.These were the childrenforwhomblack parentsacted, and who acted themselves:theywere the ones who integratedthe schools, those littlegirlsin pigtailsthat photographers recorded crossingthe trackson theirway to the classroom,the same littlegirls that painters even more pointedly commemorated-my example is Norman WeAll Live With, Rockwell'sbrilliantand passionate canvas, TheProblem painted 108
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forLook in January 1964 (fig.6). The main questions concerningWarhol'sRace thereis no sure way Riotsare not so much howhe chose his imagery-ultimately forin these questions,in the implications of telling-but whathe chose and why, of those choices,lie his works'connectionsto history. I submit, fromtwospecifiable Warhol'sRace Riots, painthistory pointsof view. First,he paintsas a liberal,and thispoliticalstance helps explain the factthathe is actually workingin such a surprisingly traditionalway. We need to make a betweenthesignature"look"of theRaceRiotpictures-the silkscreens, distinction the appropriation,and the like-and the nature of theirchosen photographic frames.The frameshe uses bear comparisonto Salon painting,in fullhistorical actionsand reactions,onlookers and acflight. They have singularprotagonists, tors,all caught equally in the ongoing swirlof events.The sequence narrates.It back withthe"significant We are nearly moment" is charged withbeforeand after. so dear to Jacques-Louis David and his school. Warhol'sinterestin such effects accounts likewisefor his decision to screen more than one image into a picture: of living rememberhow rare it is forhim to do this.Apart froma fewportraits sittersthat use sequential snapshots-think back to Ethel Scull primpingin the
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WeAll Live With, 1964. Oil 6. Norman Rockwell,TheProblem on canvas. Norman RockwellMuseum, Stockbridge,Mass. Photo: X 1964 Norman RockwellFamilyTrust. Warhol Paints or Race in America History, 109
photo booth-the Race Riotsand his portraits ofJacquelineKennedyin her tragic transition fromFirstLady to widowhood are the major examples in his work. In interrupting his standardstaccatowithsuch variationand phrasing,I thinkWarhol is taken over by a special, unaccustomed purpose: to return narrativeand temporality to hisworkand thusto locate his work'snarrative within the temporal world. Hence the care exerted,in RedRace Riot,forexample, to use threescreens in strict narrativesequence, withrepetitions foremphasis: a mini-morality play. One framealone would have reeked of untidyhappenstance,the apparentlyaccidental freezingthat is the news photo's stockin trade. As it is, an image that startedout as chance ends up as drama-to repeat, a mini-morality play. And when thefinalscreenis cutand partly repeated (along theupper right-hand edge) the effect is emphatic,not disruptive;the repetitiondoes not break the overall narrative flow. On thecontrary, the story starts up again, to finish onjust the same note. In the case of the Race Riots,thisdecision to returnto narrativeis bolstered is suspended in otherways.For example, in byother moves,and mere repetition Race Riots,foursmallerpicturesthatmake use of a singlescreen a group of Little (the one I have called the second in the sequence), redundancy is countered by color: the screensare pointedlytintedred, white,and blue, those eminently nationalist hues (plate 2). Yet that'snot quite right:theyare reallycolored red, red, admixturesof blue white,and blue. The tworeds are different throughdifferent forprecisedescription-preferablyone attuned and yellow, thoughonlya stickler to the stressthe artistso consistently places on repetition-will notice this false redundancy. amount to? I thinkthe chain of colors connotes the What does thisdifference flagand blood. The thoughtsends me back to the contextin whichWarhol spoke of his coming show in Paris and death in America: Street. It'sa fantastic so cool. We walked We wentto see Dr.No at Forty-second movie, a cherry bombright threw in front of us, in thisbig crowd. outsideand somebody And I felt likeI wasbleeding all over. I saw there wasblood,I sawbloodon peopleand all over. in the paper lastweekthatthereare morepeople throwing them-it'sjust partof the is going tobe called"DeathinAmerica." I'll scene-and hurting people.Myshowin Paris chairpictures and thedogs in Birmingham showtheelectric and car wrecks and some suicide pictures.23 "I feltlike I was bleeding all over."Thus empathizing, Warhol arrivesat "Death in America": at fatalaccidentsand suicidesand executions,and, yes,the dogs in Thus empathizing, Warholseemsto lose sightof distinctions Birmingham. among and causes-about the agentsand objectsof history. and victims Yet perpetrators these are the same distinctions that,as painted,his Race Riotstryhard to supply. more or less despite themselves.They do so I thinktheydo so unconsciously, is never because there about the matterof race any confusion,in representation,
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REPRESENTATIONS
in America. The dramatic narrativeand personae preexistWarhol and outlast him. He paintswithinthem: theyboth containand overridehis empathy. their To speak of the unconsciousof Warhol'spaintingsis to specifyfurther point of view.Warhol is representingthe drama of race, yet in so doing works withand withinthat drama's structuring assumptions.Those assumptions,like Warhol's pictures,endlessly-repetitively, redundantly-dramatize the encounterbetweenblack and whiteas a conflict betweenblack and whitemen. The white man has the dog and the stickand the belly; we don't need Danny Lyon's 1963 photographof defiantstatetroopersin Clarksdale,Mississippi, to understandhis characteristically phallicstance(fig.7). Nor do we need Lyon'sphotographof the of the black male body Marylandarrestof a black man to grasp thatthe stripping emasculates: unmanned, it is the obscene gesture'scounterpart(fig.8). Let me about is racialized. What is striking statethe obvious: in both images masculinity and echo the meaningsof WarLyon'sphotographsis how directly theyconfirm hol's paintings,and of the imageryhe used for them. The same point could be of black and whitemen both lived made again and again; on it hinges a history of race in America? and representedas masculineantagonism.Whatis thehistory Or betterstated,what is the imageof race in America? Whetherheroic or abject of men. It is the mutilatedbody of the (or both), it is the physicalconfrontation fourteen-year-old EmmetTill, a Chicago boymurderedin 1955 whileon vacation in Mississippiforallegedlyhavingwhistled at a whitewoman: his motherinsisted thatan unretouchedphotographbe published inJetfor"all the world" to see. It is the 1991 beatingof RodneyKingbyfourLos Angeles police officers; thebeating as captured on video has now become the image repeated in a paintingbyDanny Tisdale, just as Birminghamwas repeated in the Race Riots.It is the declaration of the sanitationworkerswho in 1968 marched in Memphis,each one bearing a placard withthe same emphaticstatement: "I am a man," theyeach insisted,because the manhood of black laborerswas not functionally obvious to the powers theyaddressed.24It is the Million Man March, when in October 1995 hundreds of thousands of AfricanAmericanmen descended on Washingtonfromall over the country formuch the same purpose: to announce and reclaimtheiridentities as men (though thistimeclass allegiances seem to have been and responsibilities leftat home).25What is striking about thisseries of eventsand images is notjust itscontent;it is itstragicrecursiveness. When Warholspoke of painting"thedogs in Birmingham"-when he painted Race Riot,in otherwords-he declared throughhis words'omissionshis historical parti pris. What is omitted?Exactlywhat is presentin each picture.White male master,black male victim:the standard drama of race. Though these characters are his paintings'actors,theyare also its givens,its unconscious,you mightsay. They take over the painted image, somewhatagainst its will. By this I mean to point to the way that in Race Riot the mode of allegory (Warhol's tested way of
Warhol Paints or Race in America History,
111
FIGURE
7. Danny Lyon,Policemen,Clarksdale,Mississippi,1963. Photograph.? Danny Lyon,Magnum Photos.
of sameness,of rote and standard repetipainting)is undermined.The rhetoric tion, can no longer be made to apply. Pictorialstructure makes a semblance of but recaststhemin the language of nationand history. these effects This is not only because Warholwas waylaidby his loyaltiesas a liberal-by his need to "feel" and "identify"-but also because race is a different kind of or "celebrity" historicalobject than the "commodity" or "mass production." It cannot be allegorized. The mirrormay be vanity, MarilynHollywood, but what are black and white men? They emerge as scripted narrative,no matterwhat Warhol tries.(Perhaps he called his pictureRace Riot,ratherthanProtest, or Demin tacitacknowledgment or StateViolence, onstration, thatthiswould be the case.) Their bodies are presentas violence and power: thisis the essence of the story theyhave to tell. These same narratives are likewisethe assumptionof the AfricanAmerican historicalexperience,so much so thatpaintingsbyblack male artists done in the wake of Warhol-David Hammons'sInjustice Case of 1970, say,or Philip Lindsay Mason's Manchildin thePromised Land, painted the year before-also seem to internalizethe plot (plate 3, fig.9). No, not internalize, so much as embody: both analogize theblackexperienceusingbodilymetaphors.Both understand,to paraphrase Fred Orton,thatmetaphoris foundedon a proposed analogybetweenthe
112 REPRESENTATIONS
FIGURE
8. Danny Lyon,Arrestin Cambridge,Maryland, 1964. Photograph.C Danny Lyon,Magnum Photos.
literalsubject-black experience in the American promised land-and a subject forit,theblackmale body-the kid withthe targetT-shirt;the bound substituted When black is and gagged black male.26But the metaphor goes even further. he is the object of an oppressiveor lethal gaze; forwhiteto embodied as victim, be embodied as vieweris to be the aggressortoo. While I thinkthatWarhol'scanvases likewise imaginewhiteviewers,I am less confidentthat he grasped the complexityof his imageryand its central metaphor.27He did know that photographywas central and why this was the case. Photographynot onlycommunicatedthe image of racism,it gave racismhistoric form.(It seems thateven afterpaintingthe Race RiotsWarhol was stilldrawn to the paradigm: figure10 reproducesanotherphotographof police and protester thatentered his clippingfilein the summerof 1963.) The sheer ordinarinessof the photographic image comes throughas gray grain and loss of detail: visual saturationis once again the rule. But we've seen that the rule was not merely stretched;it was broken: the resultingpicturesdon't quite operate as savvystacor translate intoa quick fixon the"information Warhol cato repetition metonym." could not resistretellingrace's story;could not freeze or stop its narrative.The result is images caught between modes of representation:stranded somewhere between allegory and history. They have actors and drama and even a moral Warhol or Race in America Paints History, 113
'by:; A^PEP
FIGURE 9.
in the Promised Land, 1969. PhilipLindsay Mason, Manchild Oil on canvas. Presentlocationunknown.Reproduced fromRobertDoty,Contemporary in America BlackArtists (New York, 1971).
purpose, yet the drama staysdisconnectedfromany wider explanatoryframeTheir only work-anything as namable as "mass culture"or "the commodity." contextand framework is racism; yettheyare itsimage, not its proxy.And they are more hauntingthan any phantom could ever be. Warhol was caught in the circuitry-thecircularity-ofracism,more or less despite himself.He was right: this is death in America, and it isn'thistory. Can anyone fail to notice that the absent from his and childrenand labor-are exactly subjects pictures-women those thatare absent fromour currentsocial policy, even whileour culturefeeds itselfon the endless spectacleof conflict betweenblack and whitemen? That is why,thirty yearslater,thisimage of black proteststillcannot be laid to rest.It is much too useful: ithas too much mythic clout.Note thatthe climactic in Moore's has turned photograph sequence recently up again in the national media-in Newsweek, to be precise (fig. I1 There it helped to give an image j).28 to thewaningofaffirmative action-or, as itis euphemistically, (and ajustification)
114
REPRESENTATIONS
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FIGURE 10. Associated Press, Bound for police van, NewYork Times,
13 August 1963. Photograph.Photo: LibraryServices, of Californiaat Berkeley. University
of "theDream." I sayhelped, because parodically, termed,thecurrent "rethinking" the photograph was given a partner,rather than made to work alone. It was witha picturecaptioned "California 1995: Defending prefprintedface-to-face in Sacramento."The second image-in fullcolor erence programsforminorities of blackand whitewomen and children, a cluster thistime-shows people, mostly Acgathered behind an upraised sign: "No Retreat!Stand Up For Affirmative but the momentchosen bythe 1995 photograph tion."The words are vehement, construesthisaction less as a contained dramaticencounterthan as an insistent, withthe magazine's readers (no other object is in even querulous confrontation is a matter ofbodies and formats as wellas an issue of address: sight).The contrast and leashes the tensediagonals of Moore's photo (theangularweave of nightsticks and dogs and legs and whitelineson the road) and itsdisjunctive scale (look back
Warhol Paints History, or Race in America 115
the Dream
ve s,,,mat
FIGURE
11.
the Dream," Newsweek, 26 June 1995. "Rethinking PhotographsbyCharles Moore and Lou De Matteis, IB Pictures.
at the way the black victim is dwarfedby the looming cop) are replaced by welldressed, well-fedpeople standingin solid self-possession, oblivious to the light rain. Their placard has been professionally printed; like its bearers, it seems to issue its commands froman establishedposition; given its sheer visual stability, the photo too takesitssubjects'partquite formally, dwellingon how comfortably, how easily,theyclaim entitlement. Of course such photographicconfrontations are meant to be open to many I am readings,and it would be wrongto tie thisone down too firmly. But partly, sure, it is meant to put into images an argumentdear to currentopponents of affirmative action,regardlessof nicetiesof political(neoconservative/neoliberal) stripe. Once upon a time, says the black-and-white photo, there was the Civil Rightsmovement-a heroicstruggle forbasic human dignity. Look whathas happened to thatheroism,saysthe full-pagecolor update: it has turnedintonothing more than the assertiveself-interest of raciallyadvantaged individualstrying to hold onto theirperks.Once again Charles Moore's photographis called on fora job of ideological work,conjuringwomen and childrenoffthe stage of the "historic"civil rightsstruggle,so thattheycan reappear as a 1990s "special interest group" angling to keep "preferenceprograms"intact.For Newsweek readers to itseems,they mustbe therights approve ofcivilrights, of theabsolutely victimized. 116
REPRESENTATIONS
mustbe "special." The problem withthat If you are not a victim, your interests nowadays ends up label, of course, is its politicalimplications:"special interests" effort to escape fromthe vicnamingalmostany concertedor collectiveminority and "aggressors," moreover, tim'srole. In a male-dominated discourseof"victims" seems desperatelyhard to secure. any loosening of these new politicalstrictures Nor will we be able to attend to the social threatsagainst women and children, have been put away.Only then willthe whatevertheircolor,untilthe nightsticks inscribedin Warhol'spaintingshave passed out of currency. versionof history
Notes
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the contribution of Beth Dungan to this paper; her workas myresearchassistant was accomplishedwithgreatintelligence and efficiency. I am gratefulforsupportfromthe Committeeon Teaching, University of California at Berkeley,which made the assistantship possible,and to Dean's Research Funding forillustrations and permissions.Thanks also to Sabine Kriebel for her help in gatheringphotographsand to RichardMeyerforalertingme to thepresence in theWarhol Archiveof the photographhere reproduced as figure10. Andy Warhol declares thisintentionto name the show "Death in America" in an interview withG. R. Swenson. See Swenson's"What Is Pop Art?"ArtNewsvol. 63, no. 7 (November 1963): 60. The catalogof theSonnabend exhibition prints briefcomments byJean-JacquesLebel, Alain Jouffroy, and John Ashbery.Of the three, only Lebel to the Race RiotWarhol had put on view; he makes it evidentthat its speaks directly narrativewas perfectly clear: "L'assaut des manifestants anti-segregationnistes par la chienneriedes state-troopers dont nous suivonsle deroulementreel a traversquatre phases: le chien policierapproche, il mord, il arrache le bas du pantalon d'un manifestant, celui-cis'd1oigne.... le tout [he means the whole listof subjects he has just described] dans un rose de Times Square, un blanc de laboratoirede pharmacie, un bleu d'acier et un noir de sang caille,un noir de supplice." Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Warhol (Paris, 1964), unpaginated. My thanksto Sarah Kennel for tracking down the catalog at the Centre Beaubourg, Paris. Warhol,as quoted in Swenson,"What Is Pop Art?"26. To citeone of his studioassistants, Nathan Gluck: "Andyhas always said over and over, 'It's too much trouble to paint.' And that'sone of the reasons he silk-screened." See PatrickS. Smith,Warhol: Conversations with the Artist (Ann Arbor,1988), 60. As quoted in Frayda Feldman and Jorg Schellmann,AndyWarhol Prints:A Catalogue Raisonne' (New York and Munich, 1985), 14. They are quoting a remarkfromAndy Warholet al., eds., Andy Warhol (Stockholm,1968), unpaginated. For two different accounts of the meaning of Warhol'smonochromes,see Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, "AndyWarhol'sOne-Dimensional Art: 1956-1966," and Marco Livingstone,"Do It Yourself:Notes on Warhol'sTechniques," in K. McShine, ed., Andy A Retrospective Warhol: (New York, 1989), 46-48, 72. Art inAmerica vol. 53, no. 1 (February1965): 100. IrvingSandler,"The New Cool-Art," Barbara Rose, "The Value of DidacticArt," vol. 15, no. 9 (April 1967): 32, 35. Artforum WarholPaintsHistory, or Race in America
1.
2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7.
117
8. Marcel Duchamp, as quoted by Samuel Adams Green, AndyWarhol(Philadelphia, 1965), unpaginated. see my"Reading Minimal 9. For a briefaccount of GregoryBattcock's artworldactivities Anthology (Berkeley,1995). Art," in GregoryBattcock,ed., Minimal Art:A Critical 5 (February 10. Gregory Battcock, "'an art your mother could like,"' Art and Artists 1971): 12. 11. 'Ibid. Art vol. 8, no. 3 (April 1964): 35. 12. Henry Geldzahler,"AndyWarhol," International 13. Livingstone,"Do It Yourself," has identified and printedthe stillWarhol used, complete withhis cropping marks. 14. In his "SaturdayDisaster: Trace and Referencein Early Warhol,"Thomas Crow has offereda suggestivereading of the Marilyn pictures;he sees theirtone as mournful See ArtinAmerica valedictory. (May 1987): 129-36. 15. The termcomes fromSamuel Taylor Coleridge's scathingdefinition of allegory,adof 1816. See SamuelTaylor vanced in hisLaySermons Coleridge, ed. H.J.Jackson(Oxford, 1985), 661. WeCan'tWait 16. MartinLutherKingJr., Why (New York,1963), 50. King'scharacterization whichalso make clear the poverty of the is borne out byotherstudiesof Birmingham, blacks.See in particular ed., Birmingham, Alabama, city's working-class DavidJ. Garrow, 1956-1963: TheBlackStrugglefor CivilRights (Brooklyn,1989); alsoJames A. Colaiaco, "The AmericanDream Unfulfilled: MartinLuther King,Jr.and the 'LetterfromBirvol. 45, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 1-18. minghamJail,"'Phylon 17. Steven Kasher,AppealtoThisAge: Photography 1954-1968 Movement, oftheCivilRights (New York, 1995), unpaginated. 18. Charles Moore, "They Fighta Fire That Won'tGo Out," Life,17 May 1963. Many of Moore's civilrightsphotographshave been collectedin Michael S. Durham, Powerful Moore(New York, 1991). Days: TheCivilRights Photography ofCharles Newsand is reproduced in 19. The photograph was firstpublished in the Birmingham and Southern: Race Relations David R. Goldfield, and Southern Culture, 1940 Black,White, tothe Present (Baton Rouge, 1990), 173. I am gratefulto Steven Kasher forthisreference. It seems to me likely, given the oftennoted resistancein Birminghamto integration,thatthe appearance of thisparticularphoto in the paper was meant to signal in cityaffairs. the presence of "foreign" journalistsas interlopers 20. For an account of the dispute between Warhol and Moore see Gay Morris, "When Newsvol. 80, no. 1 (January 1981): 104-5. Art Artists Use Photographs," 13 May 1963; and in news21. This picture appeared in Time,10 May 1963; Newsweek, 4 May 1963. These include theLos Angeles Times, papers theweek before,on Saturday, I wager it appeared in manymore. Chronicle. NewYork and San Francisco Times, 22. Moore, "They Fighta Fire,"32. 23. Warhol,as quoted in Swenson,"What Is Pop Art?"26, 60. 24. Reproductionsof theJet photographof thebodyofEmmetTill, Danny Tisdale's painting, and the 1968 Memphisworkers'marchare all included in Thelma Golden, Black in Contemporary American Art(New York, 1994). Male: Representations ofMasculinity 30 October 1995, ran Les Stone's photo 25. Both Time,30 October 1995; and Newsweek, of Ben White,both arms raised in an exultantsalute, as one image of the March. In thisphotograph,as in the 1968 image, a printedmessage is visible: it may be worth notinghow much the message has changed. In 1995, White'sT-shirtread: "Million Man March Led by MinisterLouis Farrakhan." 26. Fred Orton,FiguringJasperJohns (London, 1994), passim.
118
REPRESENTATIONS
for thissuppositionlies in the presumed audiences forLife,as well 27. One justification a monthly thatmodeled itsformat high art. Note too thatEbony, as forcontemporary on Life,while addressing a black audience, made no mention of any events in Birmagazine imagingblacksuccessand upward minghamin spring1963. It was a lifestyle were definitely out of place. mobility: racial demonstrations the Dream," Newsweek, 28. Evan Thomas and Bob Cohn withVern E. Smith,"Rethinking 26 June 1995, 18-2 1.
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Warhol Paints History, or Race in America Author(s): Anne M. Wagner Reviewed work(s): Source: Representations, No.

Warhol Paints History,or Race in America

Summer 1996 (C THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY

Warhol Paints History, or Race in America

* ' 'I 'tYCW

Warhol Paints or Race inAmerica History,

WarholPaintsHistory, or Race in America

Warhol Paints or Race in America History,

7. Danny Lyon,Policemen,Clarksdale,Mississippi,1963. Photograph.? Danny Lyon,Magnum Photos.

8. Danny Lyon,Arrestin Cambridge,Maryland, 1964. Photograph.C Danny Lyon,Magnum Photos.

NEW YORK TINMES, TUESDAY,

f Labor rial Or-j ay over1

bur. and hu front of true a ditchdiggi

pureed pu at theyl whesherla

at a South Si At least 5( wer, 8strators lice used boi ing tackles

dian. He wa-c without ch and smallchi

tend to: ch and! BO UND FOR POLICE

rse the i rse the!

se egtn IThey swant

13 August 1963. Photograph.Photo: LibraryServices, of Californiaat Berkeley. University

WarholPaintsHistory, or Race in America

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