Flash—November 22, 1963 1968

Curator: Right, so, feast your eyes on Andy Warhol’s print from 1968, titled "Flash—November 22, 1963." He made it using screenprinting, you know, that really iconic Pop Art technique. Editor: Immediately, that singular shade of lilac grabs you. It's both calming and unsettling against the grainy, almost newsprint quality. Feels distant, even faded—like a half-remembered dream. Curator: That tension is Warhol all over! He took images and moments – some deeply tragic – and reproduced them with mechanical detachment. The arrow, oversized and looming, sort of dominates everything. It’s all part of the *Flash* portfolio; he was playing on the idea of a collective trauma, broadcast through the media. Editor: That arrow's interesting to me, because of what it suggests about direction and viewership. Considering the title, it points less to progress, and more toward that architectural space: brick, stone, whatever. What were the means by which we were shown—given—access to information on JFK's assassination? What were the social consequences of those visual systems, and who benefited? Curator: Absolutely! And beyond just news coverage, it highlights how quickly this collective image becomes part of popular culture, repackaged for consumption. Think about it: the grainy texture mimics television screens of the era—low res, a constant broadcast of anxiety. He really nails the moment. Editor: It feels incredibly conscious of its production too. Pop art can flatten experience to be more readily exchanged; look, here's crisis repackaged and delivered directly to you as a domestic print. The commodification of, in this case, very specifically trauma itself—fascinating, and kind of brutal. Curator: Brutal, yes! Yet also… a way to make sense of the unfathomable. Maybe Warhol’s detached approach offers us a weird sort of protection. Like, look, we can engage with this...at a remove. What was important was his rendering of that, our understanding and processing it. Editor: Perhaps detachment, ironically, facilitates exchange. Assembled as it is of architectural details and basic semiotics, its mode of address mirrors its subject matter. I can definitely appreciate how he’s making us reconsider media consumption with such deliberate material choices. Curator: And really feel it, in your gut! Like an old photo you find in a dusty box, its immediate but strangely surreal presence evokes such specific memory. It feels relevant. Editor: Right—like that image, mass-produced and delivered across various materials. We get to contemplate the material reality, and impact, of it all.