Dans Papers - May 25, 2007 - Green Car Crash

Have you ever seen or heard about a car crash that cost over $71 million? This explosion was certainly felt on May 16 in New York City at Christie's when the anonymous sale of Andy Warhol's "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)", was auctioned off.

We're probably sharing a similar thought, "Who even has $71 million?" Believe it or not, someone does have that type of money, plus a lot more, and it was spent in a very interesting manner. When it comes to collecting art, passion prevails, as acquisitions need to be made.

Christie's Postwar and Contemporary Art auction reportedly reached a sky-high amount of sales -- to the tune of $385 million -- from Wednesday's auction. This was Christies' second most successful auction in their history. Other works of art that fetched millions of dollars were those of Jasper Johns, Arshile Gorky, Cindy Sherman and Mark Rothko.

As written by Scott Mayorwitz of ABC News Business Unit, Christie's Deputy Chairman, Brett Gorvy, explained, "There's a huge amount of money around the world available at the moment. You've got a lot of newer collectors coming in who basically have the financial facility to win any bidding war."

To provide a context in which Warhol's piece was sold, it's important to understand the pieces' place and influence in contemporary art. Andy Warhol, a 1960s Pop Artist, was a complex person, as exhibited through his artwork, and has left an indelible mark on American society. The 1960s was a time of Cultural Revolution -- youth dictating trends and styles, political turmoil and war juxtaposed with peace movements, mass consumption and production, mass media capturing society through new forms of technology and changes in law and education.

Pop Artists such as Andy Warhol were accessible to the masses as recognizable images reflecting everyday life were incorporated into their works. Artists were hitting the pulse of the time, drawing on inspiration from their surroundings, whether it be from celebrities, car advertisements or soup cans. On the surface, Pop Art may appear bubbly, but in reality, critical commentaries and messages are expressed herein.

This is certainly the case of Andy Warhol's "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)", a silkscreen printed on canvas from 1963. As part of his powerful "Death and Disaster" series, Warhol was intrigued by the public reaction of injury and death. A bit more obvious in this series, these themes were imbedded and revisited throughout his career. By finding newspaper images reflecting such disasters and continuously reproducing them through silkscreen printing, the series served was a way to desensitize himself to such events.

"Green Car Crash" was born from an image that Warhol found in a tabloid depicting an overturned car on fire in a residential area. The driver was flung out of the car and impaled upon a pole, suspended near death. It's hard to even comprehend what one might do in such a situation -- would you call for help? Try to help the impaled man? Freeze up in fear? Or would you keep on walking? As captured in the background, there is man with his hands in his pockets, just walking by. If we read between the lines, could it be possible that this passerby is unaffected by death and disaster? Does he de-value human life? This could certainly be one message Warhol was trying to convey. But then again, how can we truly know?

Warhol reproduced this image over and over again on his canvas, as if it were a filmstrip -- some areas of the image cropped more than others -- and, printed in green. It becomes jumbled and confusing at first look, really drawing the viewer inside, provoking them to want to know more about such chaos. Vested in this piece, the image makes you stop and think about this specific moment and Warhol's decision to re-create it.

So, why all the buzz around "Green Car Crash?" Why was the pre-auction estimate between $25-35 million, yet someone forked over $71 million for the scene of death and disaster? According to About.com's Art History guide, Shelley Esaak, "Had I a spare $35 million with which to bid for 'Green Car Crash,' I would do so without hesitation and here is why: when Andy Warhol painted 'Green Car Crash,' he was still at the point where he was more interested in becoming a great painter than he was in being Andy Warhol. When he ditched the former in favor of the latter, he pretty much lost me. Yes, you see, it was the "Andy Warhol, the Persona" phase that disappointed. It worked for him -- splendidly, you'd think -- but for me, it lasted too long. He'd only just gotten back into painting by hand and rediscovering his early vitality in the 1980s when, bam! Dead."

It's funny how life imitates art. Warhol himself became his own "death and disaster" piece, as he survived an attempted assassination, but died due to complications from a simple surgery. But even from beyond the grave, his spirit lives on in his work.