Andy Warhol’s Most Transgressive Subjects

Feature image: Pink Race Riot, photograph by Gene Pittman via Sotheby's

Andy Warhol’s subjects were often safe, recognizable, vibrant depictions of celebrities and products. These most well-known works have become representative of the artist as a whole. Because of this, some are likely unaware that during the 1960s, Warhol created a series of works featuring graphic and grisly subjects, including car crashes, suicides, and race riots.

How did this series come to fruition, what makes it different from the rest of Warhol’s oeuvre, and why did he create it? Learn about Andy Warhol’s most transgressive subjects and why this series is often overlooked because of its taboo representations.

The Death and Disaster series is a loosely bound collection of 70 works by Andy Warhol from 1962 to 1967. Warhol curated this selection of paintings and serigraphs featuring photography initially published by news outlets because they depict graphic scenes of violence or death. Warhol chose silkscreen printing as the primary medium for Death and Disaster, transferring images from news coverage directly onto the canvas. The series is mainly composed of works that use the same base image but are colored differently or printed multiple times, which Warhol alluded to in many of the works’ titles.

Warhol’s inspiration for the entire Death and Disaster series was allegedly spurred by the apparent suicide of Marilyn Monroe in 1962. Monroe later graced one of Warhol’s prints in 1967, which became one of his most celebrated works. The first work in the Death and Disaster series was 1962’s 129 Die in Jet! 

The first work in the Death and Disaster series is a painting, not a serigraph. But 129 Die in Jet! still manages to faithfully recreate the June 4, 1962, front page of the New York Mirror, which reported on the Air France Flight 007 disaster that took place the previous day. The plane crashed upon takeoff from Orly Airport, claiming the lives of 130 passengers. Many of these travelers were from the Atlanta Art Association, heading home from a tour of European artistic treasures.

Warhol’s rendition of the New York Mirror’s coverage does not feature any graphic imagery but does depict the plane’s wreckage as bystanders solemnly look on.

Warhol manipulated and edited journalists’ source photos for his serigraphs with 1962’s Suicide (Fallen Body). As the title implies, Suicide (Fallen Body) forces the viewer to confront morbidity directly. The source image for Warhol’s serigraph was one originally taken by Richard Wiles for Life magazine in 1947. It features the body of Evelyn McHale, a bookkeeper who took her own life by jumping from the observation deck of the Empire State Building on May 1, 1947. McHale looks eerily peaceful as her body rests atop the crushed car she landed on, with her ankles crossed and her hand across her chest. With its subject’s body in a uniquely unmangled state, this photo has often been described as having captured the “most beautiful suicide.”

Warhol was surely intrigued by the unsettling elegance exuded by the photo and by the fact that Richard Wiles thought to take it in the first place. Wiles’ source photo stands in sharp contrast to the gruesome, messy reality of typical suicides--photographs of these would scarely be deemed fit to print

Electric Chair (1963) is a series of ten color prints, all featuring a photo of an empty electric chair. The vivid colors of the prints—pink, orange, light, and deep blue—serve to highlight the strong image of the device that has inhumanely executed so many. Warhol was possibly moved to feature the electric chair in this series of prints as, in 1963, New York State ceased the use of the electric chair as an execution method. The Guggenheim Museum notes that Warhol’s work “emphasizes the pathos of the empty chair waiting for its next victim, the jarring array of colors only accentuating the horror of the isolated, expectant seat.”

Tunafish Disaster confronts the unexpected unfairness of death, which can be caused by something as mundane and unassuming as a can of tuna. The “tunafish disaster” in question refers to the March 1963 deaths of two Detroit housewives who experienced botulism poisoning after eating tainted tuna from the brand A&P. The “ordinariness” of the two women and their untimely deaths are emphasized in Warhol’s Tunafish Disaster, which features a source image from Newsweek. The source image features a photo of the tuna can that caused the freak accident, along with photos of the two women and the caption “Seized shipment: Did a leak kill Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. Brown?”

Car crashes were a common subject within the Death and Disaster series. As they often graced front page news, car accident photos lent themselves well to Warhol’s motif of repetition through screen printing. By this time, Warhol had found it easier to use a screen to print headline images rather than copy them by hand. “This way, I don’t have to work on my objects at all,” he said.

Orange Car Crash (5 Deaths 11 Times in Orange) (Orange Disaster) uses a source image from the United Press International Corporation, originally taken in 1959. The car is overturned, with several crushed bodies underneath it visible. The deep orange color of the print signals alarm and urgency, exacerbating the panicked feelings the viewer might have when observing the numerous prints of the crash as its victims seem to plead with the viewer for help.

Another car crash scene, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), cemented the legacy of this iconic series. This expansive double canvas print features a mangled body slumped across the interior of a totaled silver car. Its large scale facilitates an unobstructed view of the carnage, including the bent driver’s side door and the scattered tiny pieces of debris surrounding the car.

The serigraph was held by a private collector for over 20 years. In November 2013, Sotheby's auctioned Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) and sold for a record-breaking $104.5 million, making it the most expensive Warhol piece ever auctioned.

"It's the monumentality of the image that is so powerful," said auctioneer Tobias Meyer to the BBC in 2013. "It's as if life and death come straight at you." Its legacy continues as essential 60s reference material. In 2024, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) also played a key role in the plot of an episode of Amazon Prime’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”.

Delving into the at-the-time taboo subject of race during a pivotal year for the Civil Rights Movement, 1964’s Birmingham Race Riot is not as heavily edited as some of the other works in the Death and Disaster series. The source image from Life magazine is powerful on its own: two police dogs attack a protester at a Civil Rights demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. One dog bares its teeth at the man while another pulls at his clothes from behind.

Warhol’s interpretation of the image doesn’t feature repetition and generally presents the source image as it was originally published—Warhol’s only edits were enlarging and reversing the image. The original photographer, Charles Moore, would later sue Warhol for unauthorized use of his work. Since the source image is presented with so few edits, it is unclear what kind of statement Warhol was trying to make with this print. Although fitting the overall themes of the Death and Disaster series, Birmingham Race Riot stands out among the other notable works of the series due to its lack of manipulation.

Warhol’s fascination with the macabre only grew with the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In perhaps the most sensationalized event of the early 60s, the nation was captivated by the footage of President Kennedy’s shocking death and the subsequent reaction of his widow, Jaqueline “Jackie” Kennedy. Warhol was no different. Nine Jackies sought to capture the vulnerability of the First Lady who was at that time already beloved as a public figure.

The first row of images of Jackie Kennedy in Nine Jackies features the smiling First Lady prior to her husband’s assassination, wearing the iconic pink Chanel suit that would later become an indelible image from that day. The middle row of photos, taken after the assassination, shows Kennedy solemnly looking on as the President’s flag-draped casket was carried to the Capitol. In the final row, the First Lady is stricken with grief as Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as President. The Whitney Museum of American Art notes that “by using photographs from before and after the event, Warhol created a modern history painting in which the murder of a president is unseen yet tragically present.”

Warhol loved “all forms of daily media” and “recognized the power of mass-circulated media images in American culture and appropriated these as source material for his artwork,” according to The Andy Warhol Museum. The latest news and tabloid headlines often informed Warhol’s works, with Warhol being particularly interested in how the sensationalism in media fostered desensitization. The Death and Disaster series allowed Warhol to explore this phenomenon.

In a 1963 interview with Artnews, Warhol remarked, “When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it really doesn’t have any effect,” alluding to the repetition of the graphic news imagery in his series, likening the repetition in Death and Disaster to the repetition of daily, exploitative headlines found in tabloids. Critics have varying opinions on the series.

The Death and Disaster series starkly contrasts Warhol’s most famous works, which feature bright colors and easily digestible visuals. The artist’s unique style of screenprinting and insistence on repetition make these disturbing images stick in the viewer's mind. With today’s constant and instant access to a plethora of pictures and videos that feature graphic violence via social media, the Death and Disaster series is more relevant than ever.

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