More about Race Riot

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For a guy renowned for his Campbell’s Soup Cans, Andy Warhol’s Race Riots goes a level deeper.

It’s like John Lennon moving from writing songs like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to writing songs like "Revolution."

Race Riot is perhaps not the most aptly named painting, since the protest in the painting actually began as a peaceful demonstration and only turned violent when the unprovoked police unleashed German Shepherds on protesters and sprayed them with fire hoses. The protest was  led by Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernalthy, and Fred Shuttlesworth to oppose lunch counter segregation. The photographer Charles Moore, whose photo Warhol reproduced in this painting, described the police assault, saying, “In Birmingham when I saw the dogs I don't think anything appalled me more, and I've been to Vietnam.”

Warhol essentially stole and reproduced the image from Moore without gaining permission. The picture originally appeared as a full page spread in Life magazine. To take the pictures, Moore faced people who “tripped him, jostled him, and threatened to break his camera.” He even got arrested during the protest for disobeying a police officer (by taking pictures) and faced six months in prison as a result. Moore pulled a classic hide and wait-it-out, and he left the state then waited for the ruling to be overturned. Considering everything Moore went through to take the pictures, it feels fair that he sued the pants off of Warhol for reproducing it without permission. They would ultimately settle the case outside of court, but for some reason, this became a trend for Warhol in the 1960s. He seemingly paid little regard to copyrights and permissions, stealing pictures from both Patricia Caulfield and Fred Ward as well.

Warhol included Race Riot in a series of paintings he titled “Death and Disaster." The series began with 129 Die in Jet (inspired by a plane crash) and continued on to include electric chairs, atomic bombs, and wrecked cars.

Race Riot remains one of the greatest symbols of the Civil Rights Movement, even now. It was owned by Robert Mapplethorpe until 2014, when it sold at an auction for $62,885,000, making it one of Warhol’s most expensive paintings.

 

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Here is what Wikipedia says about Race Riot (Warhol)

Race Riot is an 1964 acrylic and silkscreen painting by the American artist Andy Warhol that he executed in 1964. It fetched $62,885,000 at Christie's in New York on 13 May 2014.


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Comments (1)

Jason Boo

Good morning! Thank you for this Race Riot painting, it is very interesting picture! Not all that dissimilar to what is happening today.