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The Chair
April 6, 2006
Wayne Thiebaud, Electric Chair, 1957, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2005.5.69
Tyler Green writes about an off-key Wayne Thiebaud given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum last year as part of a bequest by Arthur and Edith Levin. It's a 1957 painting of an electric chair, which places Thiebaud on the capital punishment beat several years before Andy Warhol stepped his Sing Sing photograph into production in the early 1960s for his iconic electric chair series. Warhol used the chair at various points (and in various combinations with his other icons) for years; the earliest of these prints was made in 1961–62.
Warhol illustrated with the electric chair as he did with any number of sources (Marilyn, Mao, et al.), deploying this icon as yet another in his American pastiche. But Thiebaud's chair is an expressionist departure from his norm, which was deadpan Pop Art. (Only a few short years after this painting, he began to focus on the pastry paintings that would dominate his mature period.)
What (or who) put Thiebaud, living on the West coast, in mind of the electric chair in 1957? Though capital punishment was practiced in the state of California at the time, the gas chamber was the only method used (lethal injection was introduced in 1992). The 1957 execution of Burton Abbott, who was convicted in Alameda, California, sparked enormous controversy when a late-breaking reprieve from the governor failed to reach the prison in time to stall Abbott's death. The case eventually attracted the attention of Albert Camus. But again, Abbott's was an execution by gas, not by electrocution. Perhaps the research or journals exist that prove a causal claim, but I'll hazard a couple of obvious guesses as to why Thiebaud picked up on the chair: first, the Rosenbergs, whose execution four years earlier ignited a discussion that touched every corner of the nation, especially among activist and academic populations, groups Thiebaud would have likely encountered as he sought advanced education at the time in California. Second, the chair is simply a readier iconic image than the others.
Posted by Kriston on April 6, 2006 in American Art Here
Comments
I have another theory about what influenced Thiebaud’s different iconography, having lived in L.A. at the time he did this.
Big news in California at the time was Caryl Chessman who was on death row in San Quentin for a series of 1948 rapes and murders. Chessman was a more "immediate" story than the Rosenbergs. It certainly was for us in California where he was put to death in 1960.
Posted by: Jeff Gates | Apr 6, 2006
I would have to seriously interrogate the meaning of any aritst (especially of Thiebaud's generation) who has taken up the subject of the electric chair in their art who would not have seen and been heavily influenced by the riveting and haunting surreptitious photographic news image of the electrocution of Ruth Synder.
As is well known, this image was captured at the exact moment of her death by a New York Daily News photographer who smuggled a camera into the death chamber of Sing Sing prison by taping it to his leg. I personally don't think there has ever been a work of art created about the death penalty that captures the shear horror of this form capital punishment as this one image does. It resonates today just as strongly as it did in 1928.
I also think that artists like Thiebaud and Warhol were even more influenced by the context of the reproduction of the original black and white film photograph on the front page of the newspaper, surrounded by a loud blaring headline and other "less important" news of the day. I suppose there was something insanely artistic about the appearance of the entirety of the front page of the edition of the newspaper that featured the photograph in question at the time as well. In someways, I think that the edition of this newspaper presaged the future of American art.
Some digital images related to the Ruth Synder electrocution can be viewed here http://members.tripod.com/~deadw/rs.htm.
Posted by: James W. Bailey | Apr 7, 2006
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