Andy Warhol

Gagosian Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1996

Frayda Feldman & Jörg Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962 - 1987, New York 1997, p. 44, no. I.4 [a], illustrated
Frayda Feldman & Jörg Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962 - 1987, New York 2003, p. 47, no. I.4 [a], illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is hinged at all four corners, and in two places along the top edges, to the backing board. This work is in very good condition. The paper is slightly undulated in the lower right quadrant. Close inspection reveals a very short tear to the lower right corner, and two further very small ones to the right centre of the bottom edge.
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Andy Warhol's Race Riot breaks from his characteristic neutrality by reproducing a highly charged image of violent police brutality during the famous civil rights demonstrations during the spring of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. These infamous riots provoked an unprecedented amount of publicity, and are today considered one of the pivotal events leading up to the legislation of the Civil Rights Act one year later in 1964. The source, photography by Charles Moore printed in Time magazine, was published under the heading 'The Dog's Attack Is the Negroes' Reward'. It depicts officers aggressively attacking demonstrators with high-powered fire hoses and police dogs.

 

Executed very shortly following these notorious riots, Warhol's creative cropping of the image directs the focus onto the point of violent impact and heightens the drama of the scene, while the black and white colour scheme maintains the journalistic integrity of the picture. Warhol quietly held liberal views during his lifetime, though in the climate of escalating racial tensions in Southern America, chose to make a provocative statement about inequality with this alarming and powerful depiction of a historically significant event. Nonetheless, though starkly commemorating political tensions explicitly reported in the mass media, the artist illustrates with typical Warholian aloofness, our distance from and perhaps even indifference to, the truly shocking nature of these violent images.