image of an actual electric chair at Sing Sing state prison in New York. The chair had been the worlds most famous, with a total of 614 inmates being put to death. In 1963 the chair was abandoned for a more humane means of execution, the lethal injection. Produced just the next year, the painting shows an image of the unoccupied chair with the word silence eerily placed in the top right hand corner. Warhols color scheme involves using dark shadows to give the execution chamber a gloomy dungeon atmosphere. In addition to the shadows, the work itself is blurry and somewhat unclear, which adds to the melancholy feel of the execution chamber. It is obvious he is trying to paint an extremely negative portrait of the death penalty, a kind of artistic protest. He condemns condemn capital punishment by making the prisoners seem like the victims. One can imagine this painting as the viewpoint of a condemned prisoner, walking into this morose room and viewing the instrument of his death. However, challengers to Warhols belief can argue that while the electric chair we see in this work is barbaric, we dont know what crimes were committed to lead to a room like this. Someone facing this electric chair could have committed a gruesome crime and deserved such a fate. Warhol only gives us a viewpoint of the scared inmate, if we were to know what led to this person being executed, we would be less sympathetic. Warhols use of the infamous Sing Sing chair did not stop with this one painting. In 1967 he produced Big Electric Chair, which differed from its predecessor in many ways. In this version, he focused in on the chair itself, making the chair stand out, as if it were on stage. This time we see much less background, giving the impression that someone might this time be in the room. Perhaps this is a new viewpoint Warhol gives his inmate, a closer vantagepoint for his condemned prisoner. The color used in this work seems to take away from the gloomy, ...
