Flash (Robert Kennedy)

“Every time I go out and someone is being elected President or Mayor or something, they stick their images all over the world, and I always think I do those… I always think its my work. Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves”—Andy Warhol (Andy Warhol, quoted by S. M. Atkins, Andy Warhol’s Pop Politics, exh. cat., Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, 2009, p. 3). “Sometimes… I fantasize about what I would do if I were President—how would I use my TV time?” (A. Warhol, quoted by S. M Atkins, Andy Warhol’s Pop Politics, exh. cat., Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, 2009, p. 9) In the late 1960s, alongside his iconic renderings of Coca-Cola bottles, Campbell’s Soup cans, and Hollywood icons, Andy Warhol turned his perceptive gaze to an area of American society which also bombarded the airwaves with ubiquitous images: politics. Having witnessed the several political campaigns, he quickly realized that selling a candidate involved the same modus operandi as selling a soft drink—a clear simple message and appealing image, repeated over and over again. “Every time I go out and someone is being elected President or Mayor or something, they stick their images all over the world,” he once said, “and I always think I do those… I always think it’s my work” (A. Warhol, quoted by S. M. Atkins, Andy Warhol’s Pop Politics, exh. cat., Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, 2009, p. 3). Painted in 1968, Flash (Robert Kennedy) is a unique and important early example from a body of work that would sustain the artist throughout much of his career; beginning with his Electric Chairs, Red Explosion and Race Riot paintings of 1963, Warhol’s politically-charged canvases charted the turbulent social climate of the 1960s. He also produced a number of portraits of famous political leaders, including Chairman Mao and various American leaders, quickly realizing the power of the political portrait in capturing the cultural zeitgeist. Although Warhol appeared apolitical in his choice of subjects—he produced portraits of both Communist dictators and paragons of Western democracy—there was one political dynasty which he returned to again and again: the Kennedys. Beginning with his Jackie series, which featured the grieving widow of President John F. Kennedy, Warhol would go on to feature several other members of the family clan, including JFK himself in Flash-November 22, 1963 (1968), JFK’s brother, Robert (the present work), and the youngest of the Kennedy children, Edward—himself a distinguished United States Senator—in Edward Kennedy, 1980 (Founding Collection, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh). Flash (Robert Kennedy) is a supreme example of Warhol’s unique ability to capture the essence of his subject in a simple image. Using the official photograph from Kennedy’s 1968 presidential election as his source image, Warhol renders it in modest black-and-white. This clearly displays Kennedy’s familiar features; his tussled hair, penetrating eyes and enigmatic smile all mark him out as a member of America’s most famous political dynasty. Unlike many of Warhol’s serial portraits which were executed in a rainbow of electric hues, the monochromatic palette of this work acts to focus attention on the elements of the image which make up its iconography. As such, the restrained nature of the palette does much to enhance both the power and poignancy of the image.
Even though Warhol would paint many members of the Kennedy family, it is with Robert that he had the most direct and close relationship. The artist served on the Senator’s arts committee, and was a vocal supporter of ‘s political ambitions. In 1965, Kennedy wrote a personal note to Warhol thanking him for this support: “…the fact that you supported my candidacy was important to me.” But perhaps the most poignant connection between the two men is that Warhol was shot by the radical feminist Valerie Solanas, just two days before Kennedy’s fatal shooting in June 1968. When Warhol was recovering from the surgery to treat his injuries, he remembered hearing the shocking news about Kennedy: ““When I woke up somewhere—I didn’t know I was at the hospital and that Robert Kennedy had been killed. He had been shot the day after I was—I heard fantasy words about thousands of people being in St. Patrick’s Cathedral praying and carrying on, and then I heard the word ‘Kennedy,’ and that brought me back to the television world again because I realized, well, here I was in pain” (A. Warhol, quoted by S. M Atkins, Andy Warhol’s Pop Politics, exh. cat., Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, 2009, p. 7).But more than an act of remembrance, Flash (Robert Kennedy) is a prescient examination into the nature of modern American politics. Executed at a time when politicians were still held in some form of high esteem, Warhol had already spotted the power of the image to represent a façade of reality. At the dawn of an age when political imagery began to fill the mass media, the artist identified and distilled the power of a single image. “His portraits stand as more than records of the individuals; they position the leaders within cultural tastes and political values… Warhol’s images of these commanding personalities highlight the interrelationship between politics and celebrity culture in the twentieth century—connections that remain ever present today… Like his images of Hollywood celebrities and social elite, these political portraits relate not only to ideas of fame but also to his fascination with the social fabric of American life” (S. M Atkins, ibid., p. 4). In this regard, Robert F. Kennedy was the perfect subject for Warhol’s investigations. The Senator has frequently been described as the ‘greatest president America never had,’ and following the untimely death of his brother, the younger Kennedy carried the political hopes of an entire generation. Born into the famed Kennedy family, Robert’s early political ambitions were eclipsed by those of his older brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who would become the 35th President of the United States. After his brother’s election, the younger Kennedy was appointed to serve as United States Attorney General, before leaving government following his brother’s death and serving as a United States Senator for New York between 1965 and his own assassination in 1968. His tenure as Attorney General is best known for his advocacy for the civil rights movement, his fight against organized crime and the Mafia. As a Senator, he opposed the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and raised the issue of poverty to national attention. In 1968, he was the leading candidate for the Democratic Party nomination when he was shot in a Los Angeles hotel , shortly after winning the California primary. He died in hospital the following day. Delivering his eulogy, his younger brother Edward Kennedy said “My brother [should be] remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it” (E. Kennedy, quoted in New York Daily News, June 8, 1968, via https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/tribute-to-senator-robert-f-kennedy-june8-1968 [accessed 7⁄28/2021]).
Despite claiming not to follow politics, Warhol was clearly aware of the impact of the modern political portrait. Just as he had done with his portraits of Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, and Elvis, he realized that these images were artificial creations, designed to be consumed by a hungry and gullible American public. As with so much of Warhol’s work, Flash (Robert Kennedy) becomes a modern icon, a glowing beacon promising a better future, yet ultimately one that was extinguished. Warhol uses both the politicians and our own visual constructs to maintain this image, leaving us with the ultimate question: “I always thought politicians and actors really summed up the American way,” Warhol once said. “Politicians and actors can change their personalities like chameleons… Do they ever wonder: where’s the real me?” (A. Warhol, quoted by S. M Atkins, Andy Warhol’s Pop Politics, exh. cat., Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, 2009, p. 14).