Andy Warhol

Estate of the Artist
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
José Mugrabi, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Andy Warhol: Sammlung José Mugrabi, 1996-97, p. 185, no. 166, illustrated in colour
New York, Stellan Holm Gallery, Andy Warhol: 5 Deaths, 2002

George Frei and Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1, Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963, New York 2004, p. 444, no. 514, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the reds are much brighter and more vibrant in the original. The red is a stronger crimson red and has less brown in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is very minor rubbing to the extreme tips of the upper right and lower right corners. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"the car crash turns the American dream into a nightmare"
Neil Printz in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Menil Collection, Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters, 1988, p. 16

Andy Warhol's 5 Deaths, executed between August and September 1963, is the ideal of the seminal Death and Disaster series, which was one of the most provocative, confrontational and brilliant projects undertaken by any artist in the post-war years. Posited at the centre of this canon, 5 Deaths is Warhol's inquisition into two monumental themes of his career: the relationship between permanence and transience, and the cause and effect of celebrity. Its execution has been judged perfectly: an even lamina of silkscreen ink cast over blood crimson acrylic defines detail across the canvas, marking this screen print apart as an outstanding example in the cycle. Methodological skill and technical mastery here result in the immediate and extremely vivid exposition of this tragic scene. With the instant broadcast of this visual horror we respond as much through reflex as recognition. This is certainly not the case with other examples from the series where definition is lacking and narrative has to be sought out. 5 Deaths provokes an involuntary, visceral reaction because this specific image is truly outstanding in its registration. It thus provides the conditions necessary for Warhol's fundamental objective in the 'Death and Disasters' works: to prove that in a world dominated by mass media the agents of replication and multiplication undermine and anaesthetise significance itself, as embodied by the ultimate referent of death.

5 Deaths exclaims an immediately harrowing and intensely violent scenario: the instant aftermath of a brutal car crash. In an interview with Gene Swenson in 1963 Warhol stated that "when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have any effect" (the artist interviewed by Gene Swenson in: Art News, November 1963). In his 1970 monograph, Rainer Crone discusses how, although the car crash photos "evoke the immediacy of the actual event...this decreases as such occurrences become more frequent" (Rainer Crone, Andy Warhol, New York 1970, p. 29). The raw power of this confrontational image remains urgently accosting, despite our immersion in supposedly desensitizing mass-media representations of violence and brutality. The tonal polarization of the silk-screen impression bleakly particularizes the bewildered faces and dramatizes the empty stares of lifeless concussion. The atrocity here is highly quotidian: it is a thoroughly everyday catastrophe; typical of what Walter Hopps calls the "unpredictable choreography of death" amidst the "banality of everyday disasters" (Walter Hopps in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, The Menil Collection, Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters, 1988, p. 9). Warhol, himself obsessively fixated with the fragility of existence, here scrutinizes the public face of a private disaster and questions why anonymous victims are elevated to celebrity through their appointment with death.
Within the painting, the corporeal indications of five bodies are discernible: the man and woman emerging from the car's windows at the right of the image; the woman staring starkly out through the car's rear windscreen; the rear view of a body's trunk behind her; and the ominous hand drooping behind the car's rear wing at the left of the image. The undercarriage and main chassis of the stylized two-tonne automobile are cleanly silhouetted against the night sky. That this metallic expanse seemingly remains largely unscathed emphasizes the vehicle's massive form and accentuates the crushing effect of its weight on its mangled window frames and occupants. Intertwined with the deformed metal superstructure, jointly sprawled across the asphalt concrete, are the twisted human bodies: man and machine fused through mundane catastrophe. Thus one of the great symbols of 1950s and 1960s America, a facilitator of individualism and a key signifier of social mobility, the automobile, becomes the devastating spectre of indiscriminate fatality. As Neil Printz relates, "the car crash turns the American dream into a nightmare" (Neil Printz in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Menil Collection, Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters, 1988, p. 16). 5 Deaths reveals the flipside of the consumerist ideal and shows the version that the advertising campaigns don't mention.

5 Deaths offers the nightmare, but also concurrently normalizes this dystopian vision of sanitized suburban brutality. As ever with Warhol's oeuvre, import is incited not only by subject, but also by method, process and context. Silk-screened on naphthol crimson, the notionally horrific and terrifying subject matter is revealed through the patterned gradations of anonymous silk-screen dots. The nature of this rendering is strategically impersonal. Hopps succinctly describes that "Warhol took for granted the notion that the obvious deployment of traditional rendering need not be revealed or employed, thereby expunging manual bravura from his work" (Ibid., p. 7). In 5 Deaths the mechanical silk-screen dot and absence of "manual bravura" desensitize the subject, at once evoking the mass production of newsprint photojournalism and the unceasing everyday phenomenon that the car crash had itself become. In addition, Warhol faithfully reproduces the composition of the photojournalist, replicating the foreign aesthetic of a found image. The source for 5 Deaths was an 8 by 10 inch glossy black-and-white photograph distributed by United Press International, and discovered by Warhol's assistant Gerard Malanga amongst piles of news agency photos in a bookstore on 7^th Avenue and 23^rd Street. Despite the horror of the scene before him, the photojournalist has intuitively cropped the image through the view finder to engender narrative and provide an aesthetically satisfying picture according to compositional convention.

Also demanding interpretation in 5 Deaths is the role of celebrity. It is important to remember that contemporaneous with the Death and Disaster works are Warhol's iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jackie Kennedy: three superstars touched by death and disaster. Fame through death captivated Warhol, who himself wrote "I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish and everything could just keep going the way it was, only you just wouldn't be there" (the artist in: Neil Printz, 'Painting Death in America' in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, The Menil Collection, Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters, 1988, p. 17). The potential for a private tragedy to catapult anonymity into the glare of the public arena and the uncertain interplay between anonymous suffering and broadcast exposure of personal bereavement are pervading themes permanently locked into 5 Deaths.

The present work belongs to the second run of paintings from the 5 Deaths screen, comprising seven single-unit works. Warhol had completed the first set of paintings earlier in 1963, and these comprise multiple repetitions on the same canvas. However, after his experimentation with multiple canvases in the groundbreaking Ethel Scull commission, in the second run he broke the equation between image multiplication and canvas size by creating individual works which could be reconfigured and variously hinged together, either side by side or top to bottom. With reference to 5 Deaths, Gerard Malanga recalls that in "initiating Andy's serial imagery on separate identically shaped canvases" they were "anticipating the Flower paintings to come" (Gerard Malanga, 'Photograph of a Painted Photograph: 5 Deaths' in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Stellan Holm Gallery, Andy Warhol: 5 Deaths, 2002, p. 12). Frei and Printz further describe how the second run of 5 Deaths paintings serves as "a bridge between the work of the early 1960s and Warhol's Factory production beginning in 1964" (Georg Frei and Neil Printz, Eds., Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963: The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, New York 2002, p. 437). In 5 Deaths, therefore, repeated mimesis is no longer constrained by the dimensions of a single canvas, but initiated to engage more ambitiously with the effects of duplication, which would go on to define this most iconic of artistic careers.