Guns, C 1981-82 by Andy Warhol

Guns, C 1981-82 by Andy Warhol
AmmoLand features Firearms related art from time to time as they are an integral part of the firearms or shooting sports lifestyle for all Americans.

Guns, C 1981-82 (High Standard Sentinel Revolver) by Andy Warhol

Guns, C 1981-82 (Believed to be a High Standard Sentinel Snub Noes Revolver) by Andy Warhol

Artist Andy Warhol

The Factory, Midtown Manhattan, NY - -(AmmoLand.com)- In the early 1980s Andy Warhol painted a variety of iconic objects, including guns, knives, and crosses.

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 and because it is the right of all Americans to keep and bear arms.

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 by criminals and law breakers.

This particular gun type a 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.

We purchased our framed reprint of this famous image at imagekind.

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