Red Disaster, 1963/1985, Andy Warhol
Yet dying leaves a perfume here
—Andrew Marvell, “The Unfortunate Lover”
It’s Andy Warhol’s birthday. Learn how the art of 17th century poet Andrew Marvell and 20th century pop art pioneer Andy Warhol intersect.
I’ve come to think of “The Unfortunate Lover,” alongside a handful of other Marvell poems, as recasting in elegantly rhymed and discordant words Andy Warhol’s “Death and Disaster” paintings: those astonishing orange, pink, blue, red, and lavender canvases of suicides, car crashes, race riots, and electric chairs. In a field sable a lover gules even suggests a fancy alternative designation for, say, Deaths on Red (1962) or Red Disaster (1963), and Marvell’s invocations of Death (“Yet dying leaves a perfume here”) and Disaster (“malignant stars”) suggest the series title itself.
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