REPLICATION / REPRESENTATION Andy warhol's Race riot(1964)
Andy Warhol’s Race Riot debuted in Paris in 1964. The work adapted images from a civil rights protest into a series of prints. Hung alongside one another in a succession of red, blue, and white, the piece showcased Warhol’s now trademark technique. Increasing the contrast between black and white light and adding texture with a screen of dots, Warhol applied the image directly onto a primed canvas. The once prominent faces faded into anonymous bodies, but Race Riot still contains the rage, fear, and disbelief that etched this moment into history.
Warhol’s inspiration for Race Riot, and the larger exhibit in which it premiered, present a moment to reflect on the dynamic between artists, objects, and the history they come to represent. How do artists mediate and leverage visual media to create new perspectives? What happens when these lines of sight overlap? How do artists communicate messages with their audiences, and each other? What can an object demand of its viewers? What can it incite? How far can a single image resonate beyond its place and time?
Given the notoriety of his work, it can be difficult to separate Andy Warhol from his artistic persona. Andy Warhol (née Andy Warhola) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928 to Czechoslovakian immigrants. Even as a child, Warhol his habits alluded to his later skill. He “collected photographs of film stars, read comics, and drew.” By 1950, Warhol moved to New York, anglicized his name by dropping the vowel, and began his career in art. His early portfolio was eclectic, bouncing between commercial art, illustration, and window display design. Nevertheless, by the 1960s, Warhol had begun creating his most iconic pieces: Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962), Brillo Soap Pads Box (1964). This was only the beginning.
Campbell's Soup Cans (1962)
Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962)
Brillo Soap Pads Box (1964)
Warhol committed himself to repetition and serial imagery. Each piece allowed audiences to see one object through a multitude of colorful lenses.
Rooting his work in icons of mass media and culture, Warhol “became a founder of Pop Art.” This movement, which dominated the art scene of post-war America, “sought to connect fine art traditions with...elements from television, advertisements, films, and cartoons.” With Warhol and his peers, including Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist, Pop Art encouraged the public to make new meanings of their everyday experiences. Warhol and his assistants produced a near dizzying amount of Pop paintings, sculpture, and film. When asked about his work ethic, Warhol notoriously responded:
By 1964, audiences had come to expect Warhol to imbue his galleries with vivid irreverence. However, when presented the opportunity to mount his own show in Paris, Warhol had his reservations. He feared that the European audience would interpret his work as a “seemingly overt celebration of mass-consumerism.” So, he took the opportunity to flip the script. Death in America opened in the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris in 1964. American life no longer glittered with celebrities and fruit. Instead, it stood in the shadow of suicides, electric chairs and gangster funerals. Death in America featured a “number of large-scale works on the theme of various typically American ways to die." When asked about his inspiration for this exhibit, Warhol noted: “When you see a gruesome picture over and over again it doesn’t really have any effect.” He recognized how “constant repetition” of an image may rob it of its meaning and form. Death in America thus leads its audiences to recognize how shock and awe can fade more quickly than color. Not everyone was so convinced of Warhol’s calculated apathy. Reflecting on the exhibit, curator Walter Hopps writes:
“Warhol’s art will convey the range, power, and empathy underlying his transformation of these commonplace catastrophes. Finally, one can sense in this art an underlying human compassion that transcends Warhol’s public affect of studied neutrality.”
Race Riot was featured in Death in America, perhaps as it most iconic work. The piece captured a moment of violent conflict in the American South.
Birmingham, Alabama was one of the epicenters of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The divide between black and white citizens cut the town deeply in two. So much so, that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and other civil rights organizations organized the Birmingham Campaign to bring an end to segregation there. Beginning in April 1963, SCLC members led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., worked to force the desegregation of the town’s businesses. Activists organized “mass meetings, direct actions, lunch counter sit-ins,” and even marches on city hall. Despite this commitment to nonviolent protest, Birmingham officials readily arrested many of those involved. In fact, when the state circuit court issued an injunction against the protests, King himself was arrested. He knowingly violated the court’s demands, stating: “We cannot in all good conscience obey such an injunction which is an unjust, undemocratic and unconstitutional misuse of the legal process.”
From his cell in the Birmingham jail, King penned his famous letter. “Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States,” he wrote. “It’s ugly record of brutality is widely known...These are the hard, brutal facts of the case.” The Birmingham Campaign continued undeterred. Reaching further into the community, the movement launched the Children’s Crusade that May. Organizers recruited and trained teenagers and children, and together they learned not only of the inequalities that plagued American society, but also of how to fight it. And, on May 2, 1963, they would march. Janice Kelley, recalling her experiences that day explains:
Janice and her peers convened at the 16th Street Baptist Church before heading into the streets of Birmingham. The young crowd walked in solidarity against segregation. Many chanted. Their demands, however, fell on deaf ears. Led by Sheriff Eugene “Bull” Connor, who was known for his especially ruthless tactics against civil rights protesters, Birmingham police met the young crowd with an arsenal of fire hoses and police dogs. When protesters continued their march in spite of police demands to yield, Connor opened fire. Streams of high-pressure water pummeled the young activists to their feet and over the hoods of cars. Officers followed others down the streets with batons and threats of arrest. Dogs chased the rest, stopping some between their teeth.
The violence and chaos of that day did not go undocumented. Charles Moore, a photographer for Life magazine, traveled to Birmingham to cover the march. Like Warhol, Moore was a creative force to be reckoned with.
A former boxer and military man, Moore had the wherewithal to handle himself and his camera in the field. His colleagues remembered his work for its “unsettling intimacy,” chronicling some of his era’s most graphic yet critical narratives at close range. Moore was also a born and bred southerner, having grown up in Alabama and was thus well acquainted with the shadow of Jim Crow. Looking back, Moore’s portfolio now reads like a timeline of the Civil Rights Movement: Martin Luther King Jr.,’s arrest, the Children’s Crusade, the Voting Rights March. Standing on the streets of Birmingham, he still found himself unprepared for that day in May. Observing the events behind the lens of his camera, he was “‘jarred’ and ‘sickened’ by the use of children and what the Birmingham police and fire departments did to them.” Nevertheless, he focused on “‘making pictures and staying alive.’” When a young, black protester had attempted to run from a police dog and his white handlers, Moore took his shot.
Life magazine published these and other photographs on May 17, 1963. Titled “The Dogs’ Attack is the Negroes’ Award,” the photo essay exposed the reality of Birmingham. The discrimination that weighed heavily on the lives of the “disinherited children of God” were now printed clearly for all to see. Moore’s pictures ran on the front cover of the essay, catching Warhol’s eye. He would ultimately appropriate and replicate these images in Race Riot.
Photojournalism and art are not two mutually exclusive categories. But this photo’s transition between historical evidence and artistic statement highlights the tension between creators and audiences. For as much as Warhol manipulated Moore’s shot to make a statement on the effect of mass production on the affective qualities of visual media, the actual consequences of the image say otherwise. The Birmingham Children’s Crusade is often lauded as a crucial turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. The presence of Moore, his fellow photojournalists, and a handful of TV crews produced a wealth of media that brought the eyes of the nation not only to Birmingham, but also to the issue of civil rights, at large. Printed and reprinted, broadcast and disseminated, these graphic images flooded American presses and air waves for days on end. The greater public confronted what many Black Americans knew to be a disheartening facet of their everyday life. Surely, in this exposure the image’s initial shock value faded with each viewing. As the movement wore on, images of protesters and police coming to blows became an unfortunately mundane narrative in American media. There is no denying that aspect of Warhol’s artistic thesis. But, in its initial cycle of mass exposure, Moore’s image proved to be the rallying cry the movement so desperately needed. In Moore’s Life photo essay, the caption read:
“With vicious guard dogs that police attacked the marchers--and thus rewarded them with an outrage that would win support all over the world for Birmingham’s Negroes. If the Negroes themselves had written the script, they could hardly have asked for greater help.”
Sheriff Eugene "Bull" Connor had earned the dubious distinction as “villain of the era.” New York Senator Jacob K. Javits insisted that the country “won’t tolerate [the violence].” An editorial in the Washington Post argued: “The spectacle in Birmingham...must excite sympathy.” The nation was affixed to that moment, and their gaze demanded action.
On June 3, 1963, President John F. Kennedy appeared before the nation in a televised address. Speaking on the “events in Birmingham and elsewhere,” Kennedy stated that the “cries for equality” can no longer be ignored. He urged Congress to consider civil rights legislation addressing discrimination on a variety of fronts, including voting rights, public accommodations, school desegregation, and federal programs.
Kennedy would not live to see this vision come to fruition, but on July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The bill outlawed segregation in places of business and banned discriminatory policies in public spaces, including schools, libraries, and pools.
At the same time, many of the voices from the Children’s Crusade have been preserved. Beyond Janice Kelly, Freeman Hrabrowski was 12 years old when he joined the movement. “I was not a courageous kid,” he explained, but he still confronted officers:
“The police looked mean, it was frightening. We were told to keep singing these songs and so I’m singing, [sings] I ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round...There was Bull Connor, and I was so afraid...I mustered up the courage and I looked up at him and I said, “Suh,” the southern word for sir, “we want to kneel and pray for our freedom.” That’s all I said. That’s all we wanted to do. And he did pick me up, and he did, and he did spit in my face, he really…he was so angry.”
James Stewart, 15 years old, remembered, “We said enough is enough. We’re not living with this...they brought the dogs and the water hoses out, that was a greater weapon that they were deploying. So for me, it was war time.” Arnetta Streeter-gray, 16 years old, still looks on the day in disbelief. "I just couldn't believe that children were being treated like that,” she noted, “That was just so dehumanizing."
The voice of the boy in Race Riot, however, remains unheard.
Along with Pop Art and civil rights, the 1960s also saw the birth of New Social History. This movement towards the creation of a more comprehensive, bottom-up historical record contributed to the creation of more robust archives. Filled with oral histories, photographs, art, folklore, music, and family heirlooms, they facilitate an intimate, more visceral experience with history. But, silences still persisted. In the case of Race Riots, this could be attributed, in part, to mass reproduction. Artists/producers emphasized how the image resonated with larger actors—King, Connor, Warhol, Moore. With each viewing, the memory of the activist not so much disappeared, but faded into the background as other visages came to dominate the frame. This begs the question then: with images reproduced and manipulated at the scale of Pop Art and mass communication, how responsible are artists to the memory of their subjects? Neither Warhol nor Moore preserved the activist’s name. But was that ever in their purview? They followed and critiqued American society and culture. Is it fair to hold them to the standards of a historian? Race Riot consequently demonstrates how an artistic perspective lends itself more toward transformation, rather than documentation. On the walls of the museum, the figure in Race Riot can now provoke viewers to think more critically about their relationship with outrage and apathy. These may not be the issues that compelled him to march in Birmingham, but his work is still committed to memory. The voices of Kelly, Hrabrwoski, Stewart, Streeter-Gray and their peers do not bring us exactly into the moment in Race Riot, but they give us enough context to appreciate it.
The RISD Museum acquired one series of Warhol’s Race Riot by 1967. The museum purchased it alongside 18 other works establishing the organization’s first substantial stake in modern American Art. This collection, named after benefactor Robert Pilavin, would grow and “arouse the collector’s passion in other breasts.” Writing in the collection catalog, Daniel Robbins argued, that “no museum can continue to be first class unless it engages this century of American Art.”
During the earliest showing of Race Riot at RISD in 1967, the work stopped viewers in their tracks. “The image was so simply terrifying and real,” Robbins wrote, “that even in the repressed context of a museum of art, whether it is art or not becomes a question only for the very self-conscious.”
Race Riot today hangs in the Paula Leonard Granoff Galleries. It competes for the eyes of visitors as it is surrounded by other Pop and contemporary pieces of sculpture, paintings, furniture, and clothing. Nevertheless, the draw of the painting is undeniable. Even from afar, a viewer knows that it’s a Warhol. Drawn closer to see a print by the legendary artist, the eyes then shift. The painting’s Pop, but not necessarily effervescent. They notice the dogs, the taut arms, the fleeing leg. Birmingham in 1963 is now a distant memory, but something about Race Riot still feels contemporary. Its composition can be found in newspapers and online today, with the unfolding of other social movement. Visitors now may not grapple with where they have encountered this image before, but question how long must they live with it?