Electric Chair

1971

Not on view

Warhol’s Electric Chair reiterates 10 times in 10 different, often lurid hues the same 1953 press photograph of the chamber at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York where Julius and Ethel Rosenberg would soon be executed. Warhol famously endorsed repetition as both an artistic strategy and a personal philosophy: "I like things to be exactly the same over and over again," he once said. Despite his cool, neutral delivery, Warhol’s use of repetition is charged with compulsive energy, especially when he replicates scenes of trauma, violence, and disaster, as he does here.

Artwork Details

Title: Electric Chair
Artist: Andy Warhol (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1928–1987 New York)
Printer: Silkprint Kettner, Zurich
Publisher: Bruno Bischofberger
Date: 1971
Medium: Screenprint from a portfolio of ten
Dimensions: Sheet: 35 1/2 in. × 48 in. (90.2 × 121.9 cm)
Classification: Prints
Credit Line: Gift of Robert Meltzer, 1972
Object Number: 1972.735.7
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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