Twelve Jackies

Pop artist Andy Warhol’s fascination with fame and his complicated veneration of popular culture permeated every aspect of his career. Early on he adopted the commercial printing process of photoemulsion silk screen applied to canvas as a means of reproducing the same image, over and over, quickly and efficiently. His studio became known as the Factory, a reference to his preference for mass production. He embraced both household goods and Hollywood personalities, rendering Campbell’s Soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles as stars, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor as products, and vice versa. He also recognized that notoriety could be found even in tragedy. Twelve Jackies comes from a body of work created shortly after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As was his practice, Warhol worked from existing imagery; in this case, press photography from the slain president’s funeral. By cropping and enlarging the selected image of the veiled former First Lady, Warhol focuses attention on his “star” much like a director using a close-up lens. The effect is a chilling glamorization of the tragic. Warhol’s use of repetition not only emphasizes the feeling of mourning and loss but also imports a cinematic quality to the work. This emphasis parallels the artist’s interest in the language of film as well as his growing involvement at this time in the world of underground cinema.