Bellevue II

Bellevue shows the body of a suicide slumped on the pavement, surrounded by police officers and hospital staff. Death was an important theme to Andy Warhol in the early ‘60s, when he also created his paintings of road traffic and airplane accidents, and scenes of the electric chair. Warhol based Bellevue on a newspaper photo. The image was printed onto the canvas fourteen times in a four-column grid. Warhol used the silkscreen process to directly transfer the photographic image to the canvas. His working method was intentionally imprecise; because some of the images overlap, each one is slightly different. Warhol found the silkscreen technique ideally suited to creating art in a relatively neutral, impersonal manner. By repeating images, Warhol intended to show life as it is – no less tragic or more sensational than the everyday news that confronts us.