Visualizing Death

Andy Warhol, Orange Car Crash (5 Deaths 11 Times in Orange) (Orange Disaster), 1963 

 It is as a further result of his ability to travel in the supernatural worlds and to see the superhuman beings (gods, demons, spirits of the dead, etc.) that the shaman has been able to contribute decisively to the knowledge of death. In all probability many features of "funerary geography," as well as some themes of the mythology of death, are the result of the ecstatic experiences of shamans. The lands that the shaman sees and the personages that he meets during his ecstatic journeys in the beyond are minutely described by the shaman himself, during or after his trance. The unknown and terrifying world of death assumes form, is organized in accordance with particular patterns; finally it displays a structure and, in course of time, becomes familiar and acceptable. In turn, the supernatural inhabitants of the world of death become visible; they show a form, display a personality, even a biography. Little by little the world of the dead becomes knowable, and death itself is evaluated primarily as a rite of passage to a spiritual mode of being. In the last analysis, the accounts of the shamans' ecstatic journeys contribute to "spiritualizing" the world of the dead, at the same time that they enrich it with wondrous forms and figures.

—Mircea Eliade, Shamanism

With Warhol, we encounter the radical de-spiritualization of death, its banalization. The flat orange background showing through the transparent photographic reproductions arrests attention on the surface: the painting is formally and connotatively superficial. Repetition transforms the image into visual noise.

The genius of Warhol was to have intuited that the profanation of the world facilitated by photography and its mechanical reproduction is best conveyed by reproducing reproduction. To the extent that one can find elegance, if not beauty, in Warhol's work, it derives from his having discovered the perfect means to frame banality, to make modern vacuity palpable.