Guns: Warhol silkscreen prints at the Tate Modern, London

233/365 - Cows & guns
Originally uploaded by Dan-Unitt

In the early 1980s Andy Warhol painted a variety of iconic objects, including guns, knives, and crosses, explains Warhol.org.

Warhol rejected the idea that his work functioned as social criticism and instead described himself as an American artist who was merely depicting his environment. This description suggests that his paintings of guns be read in the same way as his images of Campbell’s Soup, Marilyn Monroe, or Coca-Cola—as simply images of American icons.

Yet, as with many of Warhol’s statements and works, there is the surface of things and then the multiple meanings below it. Gun ownership in America is hugely popular, in part, because it gives people a sense of security.

Hollywood imagery and video games add to the allure of guns. The gun is also, through its widespread use and availability in America, a tool of real and commonplace violence.

This particular gun, the .32 snub-nosed pistol, was of the type that Valerie Solanas used in her 1968 assassination attempt on Warhol. In his choice of such richly associative iconic objects, Warhol becomes a truly artful social observer.

Warhol quote from warhol.org:

"When you hurt another person, you never know how much it pains. Since I was shot, everything is such a dream to me. I don’t know what anything is about. Like, I don’t know whether I’m alive or whether I died. I wasn’t afraid before. And having been dead once, I shouldn’t feel fear. But I am afraid. I don’t understand why."

- Andy Warhol after he was shot and seriously wounded in 1968