Andy Warhol's portfolio of 14 color screenprints made from images seen in newspapers and on television offer a stark perspective on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, shocked the nation and the world. In his portfolio Flash - - - - November 22, 1963, pop artist Andy Warhol recounted the four days from the assassination of the President to his funeral on November 25, 1963. The artist's subject was not so much the events themselves as the continuous barrage of print and broadcast media coverage. Warhol was fascinated by the omnipresent emotional power of the media, later recalling that "It seemed like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't get away from the thing."
In Flash, Warhol explored the traumatic public experience of the Kennedy assassination, making his prints from the same photographs shown incessantly on television and in newspapers. Americans knew these emotionally charged images all too well: the smiling President and First Lady during the Dallas motorcade just before the fatal shots were fired, Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas police station, Oswald's rifle gripped by a Dallas detective. The equally familiar words of the wire service reports echoed in the stark narrative accompanying the portfolio.
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