Friday, December 02, 2005

Who are we comfortable visualizing in Andy Warhol's electric chair?

Bennett Capers has written an essay for the forthcoming California Law Review exploring the relationship between law, art, and social discourse, specifically with respect to our society's collective response to Andy Warhol's Electric Chair paintings.
The essay contends that the paintings, and their iconic status in our culture, call attention to our fascination with death in general, to state-administered death in particular, to the spectacle of capital punishment, and to our history of obtaining pleasure by gazing upon death. It also argues that Warhol poses an important question, one that implicates race and gender and religion and disability and age and comfort: Who are we comfortable visualizing in the chair?
Via CrimProf Blog.

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