Electric Chair

Bruno Bischofberger|Silkprint Kettner, Zurich|Andy Warhol

1971 · Screenprint from a portfolio of ten · Drawings and Prints

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.

Artist

Bruno Bischofberger|Silkprint Kettner, Zurich|Andy Warhol

Date

1971

Medium

Screenprint from a portfolio of ten

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Robert Meltzer, 1972