'Little electric chair 1965', is a really striking image. set on a bright yellow background the electric chair and its surroundings are printed in harsh black ink and the eeriness of a death chamber has been caught perfectly. He's highlighted the shape and form of the chair so we recognise it straight away against the shaded, grimey backdrop. On one of the side walls in the print you see a sign with the word silence written across it and this really fixes the final image. Is the word aimed at the viewers in the prison room or at the prisoners who have been silenced forever? The electricity cable, now cut, lays on the floor in front of the chair suggesting its own life has also come to an end.
Warhol has captured an image showing a time and way of life gone by, and a time here and now. As i studied it i couldn't help thinking how sad an image it was.
All the lives it had taken and all the lives it had saved.
A stunning image and a real treat to see a Warhol in the flesh.
Another artist I looked at was Cy Twombly.
His piece 'untitled, (New York City 1968)' could almost be mistaken for a school classroom chalkboard with the scribblings of the children all over it. The ghost like forms of individual letters dance across the surface and the background of smeared chalky patches resembles figures walking in a darkened forest. The piece has real depth to it and was produced with oil based house paint and wax crayon on canvas. I really like his work and I like to use scribbled hand writing in my works, writing that you can't properly read but can just make out a few words, just enough to get the viewer interested in the possibility of a narrative but no final outcome.
Another painting that caught my eye was 'Ghosts 2013' by Douglas Gordon. The word ghosts is spray painted onto aluminium which is unpolished and distorted and as people walk past they literally look like ghosts floating across the face of the work. The image constantly changes and as i looked at it I caught myself looking behind just to make sure someone was actually there. The harder you stare at it the more ghostly the figures become.
The word just gives us the push we need to relate what we are seeing to what, as a piece of art, we are supposed to be looking at. 'Yes' says the artist, 'thats right, they look like ghosts'.
A very simple work but still very impressive.
The Gagosian is a beautiful gallery with some very impressive and intriguing works on display and I'll definitely be heading there again.
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