Green Car Crash Painting by Andy Warhol

Green Car Crash, a "painting" by Andy Warhol painting sold for $71.7 million on May 16, 2007 at the famous auction house Christie's in New York. The painting colored acid green is called: ``Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)'' of 1963 was estimated to sell for between $25 million to $35 million. The painting is on a 7.5 foot canvas and was part of a``Death and Disaster'' series, which included images of electric chairs and other unpleasantness.
Warhol created ``Green Car Crash'' using a photo of a bizarre accident published in Newsweek Magazine in 1963. The accident occurred during a police chase in Seattle when a fleeing car crashed into a telephone pole. The accident killed a 24-year-old driver and he was impaled on a spike in the pole. The picture was describe din Newsweek as: “End of the Chase: Pursued by a state trooper investigating a hit-and-run accident, commercial fisherman Richard J. Hubbard, 24, sped down a Seattle street at more than 60 mph, overturned, and hit a utility pole. The impact hurled him from the car, impaling him on a climbing spike. He died 35 minutes later in hospital.”

According to art critics, Green Car Crash is the most important Warhol in his Death and Disaster series. At least one critic sees echoes of the internet popular culture, writing "the sensibility that is conveyed by Warhol’s Death and Disaster series can be seen as the bedrock for the transient world of YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook and blogging on the internet, dimensions where everybody and anybody can act out their tragedies and be on stage for the world to see." I wonder what the art critics would say of Car-Accidents.com!!! The terror of modernity is upon us and we don't have to spend 70 Million to capture that feeling, just spend a few minutes browsing the stories and pictures on this site. But unlike Warhol's nightmare vision "his terrifying oracle" the internet gives us room to reflect, interact and engage in catharsis. BK 5/17/07