Andy's Interminable Fifteen Minutes

Andy Warhol's Green Car Crash (1963), a.k.a. Green Burning Car I, will be up at auction on May 16, 2007 at Christie's New York. Also among the 78 lots at auction in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale will be Warhol's Yellow Marilyn (1962), Four-Foot Flowers (1964) and Self Portrait (1966-67), more, presumably less exciting Warhols and works from other Big Names we know and love. The biggest buzz surrounds Green Car Crash, though, for it is expected to set a new Warhol high water mark based on its pre-sale estimate of $25–35 million (US).

But why? Why the buzz? Why the anticipated gavel price of $25–35 million? Ah, well. A bit of background:

• Green Car Crash is a screen print reproduction (in, yes, green) of an early 1960s tabloid image of a real (you guessed it) car crash, repeated a number of times in rows and columns up, down and across the canvas.
  
  
• The crashed car is overturned and on fire. Its driver had been ejected at top speed in said crash, and is here seen impaled upon a pole--unfortunately not yet dead.
  
  
• A passerby is passing by, hands in pockets. This dolt is not whipping out a tourniquet or a syringe of morphine, fashioning a ballpoint pen barrel into an ad hoc tracheotomy tube or, indeed, performing any sort of human gesture that might prove comforting to the impaled victim. He is instead simply walking past the fiery mayhem with his hands in his pockets. This last is meant to tell us all things about the meaninglessness of human life, or modern middle class man's indifference toward the sanctity of human life, or something else really profound and deep.
  
  
• Green Car Crash was created during Andy Warhol's Death and Disaster series period. The Death and Disaster series is supposed to be "seminal." Because I am pretty sure that a lot of artists prior to Andy Warhol depicted both death and disaster (granted, not via electric chairs, automobiles or ambulance collisions), I take "seminal" in this case to mean "seminal in the Pop Art sense."
  
  
• Green Car Crash has been privately held for thirty years. It is also one of the few Warhol Car Crashes that utilizes a color other than black and white. This makes it a very juicy prize indeed. "Unobtainable," in other words, "highly coveted" in still others. "Look for it to go straight to a different private collection," is what I'm saying.

Now, lest you suspect I've some bone to pick or ax to grind with him, I like Andy Warhol. A lot. He was, at the very least, not a boring person. He was good with words, which is not all that common in a visual artist. He wasn't afraid to branch out into other areas of creativity. The Factory was a cool concept, in theory, and Velvet Underground was a great band to have discovered and championed. Pop Art and I are about the same age, I am old-shoe comfortable with the movement and it was benevolent of Andy to take it to the masses. The man was a marketing genius. There is a lot to like about Andy Warhol, the Persona.

Had I a spare $35 million (US) 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.

So, yes. The buzz is warranted. Green Car Crash represents the young Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol the visual artist in the full flower of his artistic vigor. And we all know that the art market will bear nearly anything, up to, including and even beyond $25-35 million. This should be interesting.

(May 17, 2007 update: It was.)

Image credit:

Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), 1963
Synthetic polymer, silkscreen ink and acrylic on linen
90 x 80 in. (228.6 x 203.2 cm)
© Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Photograph provided by Christie's