UKI_077 URMAS KUMARI IMEDEMAAL_ WARHOL / VAIM ON FIRE  _ THE WASHINGTON POST  4.12.2019 / MEEZ  9.09.2026    

PITTSBURGH — Andy Warhol’s “Death and Disaster” series remains his most challenging contribution to American culture. Without these silk-screened photographs of car crashes and electric chairs, the rest of Warhol’s output — the brightly colored flowers and celebrities, the cow wallpaper and consumer products — would be missing its dark ballast.

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#UrmasKumariImedemaal #DeathAndDisaster #AndyWarhol #TeeAndVendel #KumariVaim #MeMoMu  #MuzanE #Anfilaadilõvi #Lühtrilõvi #Hernelõvi #GentlemensFloralCabinet  #PLAYBUNNY  #KumariImedemaa #EndelLepaKurgiaed  #FearAndLoathingInArmandonia  #EndelLeppFashionHouse #TheGardenOfMensFashionDelights #AppallingSilence  #ShadowWarfare #TeedeniAiaSalaarhiiv #TheKirblaMethod #MEEZ092026     

 You can see “White Burning Car III” in the Andy Warhol Museum in his hometown of Pittsburgh. It was based on a Weegee-like photograph taken by John Whitehead and published in the June 3, 1963, issue of Newsweek. Here is the caption that ran with it: “End of the Chase: Pursued by a state trooper investigating a hit-and-run accident, commercial fisherman Richard J. Hubbard, 24, sped down a Seattle street at more than 60mph, overturned, and hit a utility pole. The impact hurled him from the car, impaling him on a climbing spike. He died 35 minutes later in a hospital.” 

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Warhol wasn’t the first to sense how modern life, as represented in the news media, teetered always on the verge of triviality. A similar sensibility came to life in the 19th century in the deadpan approach of Édouard Manet (whose letterhead said “Tout arrive” or “Everything happens,” which is Warholian avant la lettre) and in the arbitrary cropping of Edgar Degas. 

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An awareness of the relationship between disaster and banality — with the camera always mediating that relationship — built throughout the 20th century and into our own time, in the works of Gerhard Richter, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman, Rosalyn Drexler and a thousand others.

What’s interesting, still, is this particular disaster and the specific aesthetic sensation Warhol wrings from it. A man in a car. A hit-and-run. A police chase. A crash. The man impaled on a spike. The man impaled on a spike. The man impaled on a spike.

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„Urmas Kumari imedemaal” räägib ajakirjanikuna töötavast mehest, kes suvehommikul silmi avades näeb, et Kumari Vaim on sõnumi saatnud. Tuntud lendjänese Kumari Vaimu raamat toob meestetuppa tubli tüki kodumaist meestemoodi ja killukesi rahvaluulest. Nimetatakse poliitikute rahvapäraseid nimesid ja rõhutatakse nende laulusõnu. Raamat on mõeldud 21-100aastastele meestele. Käsikiri võitis konkursil Kurgiaiaraamat 2026 teemaraamatu eripreemia.

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The Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/entertainment/andy-warhol-white-burning-car-iii/ 

Great Works, In Focus
Perspective
Warhol on fire
‘White Burning Car III’ is key to making sense of the artist’s sunnier works.
By Sebastian Smee Dec. 4, 2019 

PITTSBURGH — Andy Warhol’s “Death and Disaster” series remains his most challenging contribution to American culture. Without these silk-screened photographs of car crashes and electric chairs, the rest of Warhol’s output — the brightly colored flowers and celebrities, the cow wallpaper and consumer products — would be missing its dark ballast.

You can see “White Burning Car III” in the Andy Warhol Museum in his hometown of Pittsburgh. It was based on a Weegee-like photograph taken by John Whitehead and published in the June 3, 1963, issue of Newsweek. Here is the caption that ran with it: “End of the Chase: Pursued by a state trooper investigating a hit-and-run accident, commercial fisherman Richard J. Hubbard, 24, sped down a Seattle street at more than 60mph, overturned, and hit a utility pole. The impact hurled him from the car, impaling him on a climbing spike. He died 35 minutes later in a hospital.”

How are you feeling right now? Sickened? Manipulated? Jolted by aesthetic electricity? Or . . . nothing?

Because that’s the question, isn’t it? That’s the Warholian whirlpool, the vortex we’re all in.

You are seeing Warhol’s work as a reproduction in a newspaper, either in print or online. Seeing the actual work is different. It feels, strange to say, authentic. It has real presence. It’s big, for starters. This makes the details more noticeable, the image more shocking. Up close, you also notice the medium: silk-screen ink on linen. 

Silk-screen printing is a fairly low-tech form of mechanical reproduction, but its possibilities are manifold. In the early ’60s, as he worked on his “Death and Disaster” series, Warhol experimented with edges and overlap, with intensified tonal contrasts, and with empty space. You can see, for instance, how the pole is cropped in the three versions of the image at left but wholly visible in the two at right. The empty space at bottom right, meanwhile, makes the painting asymmetrical.

These decisions feel like anti-decisions, in the sense that they undo our expectations of art’s underlying purpose: to wring meaning and beauty from the visual environment. Instead, Warhol’s decisions — Why is the image repeated? Why five times, not six? Why the empty space? — reinforce the utter arbitrariness of the visual environment. They open onto a chasm of meaninglessness.

Warhol wasn’t the first to sense how modern life, as represented in the news media, teetered always on the verge of triviality. A similar sensibility came to life in the 19th century in the deadpan approach of Édouard Manet (whose letterhead said “Tout arrive” or “Everything happens,” which is Warholian avant la lettre) and in the arbitrary cropping of Edgar Degas.

An awareness of the relationship between disaster and banality — with the camera always mediating that relationship — built throughout the 20th century and into our own time, in the works of Gerhard Richter, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman, Rosalyn Drexler and a thousand others.

What’s interesting, still, is this particular disaster and the specific aesthetic sensation Warhol wrings from it. A man in a car. A hit-and-run. A police chase. A crash. The man impaled on a spike. The man impaled on a spike. The man impaled on a spike.
Great Works, In Focus
A series featuring art critic Sebastian Smee’s favorite works in permanent collections around the United States. “They are things that move me. Part of the fun is trying to figure out why.”