Age Gap Electric Chair

screenshot of sophie pinet's instagram post of a very cluttered office in a loft space full of dark medieval furniture, warhol bric a brac, and a big ass electric chair painting propped on a console behind the desk. it's red, almost exactly the same red as all the walls and ductwork. fred hughes's office in warhol's last factory

Deep in the carousel of images @sophiepinet posted last week of Warhol’s last Factory was this picture of Fred Hughes’s office, and that is the best install of a giant Electric Chair painting I think I’ve ever seen. When in doubt, just add more red.

Maybe if Christie’s had hung that Big Electric Chair painting on a matching orange wall, it wouldn’t have flopped. And anyway, was it even that big? It certainly wasn’t THIS big.

a nicely lit nighttime photo of warhol's last factory on east 32nd street is like four or five stories tall, and narrow, a mid-block building, with a facade of mostly supertall windows, a former con edison station. via sophie pinet's insta but idk who the photographer was

I figured I’d need the catalogue raisonné to figure out what painting this was, so I was just going to shoutout this low-key magic photo of the Factory and be done. [It used to be a ConEd substation running between East 32nd & 33rd Streets, which Warhol bought in 1981, and used from 1984 until his death in 1987. After that it became the first home of the Warhol Foundation, but in the early 2000s it got replaced with a condo tower. RIP]

a vertically oriented dark red warhol with a grid of twelve electric chairs screen printed in black, this is the 1963 half of what became a diptych that warhol sold to the mfa boston after he added an identically sized red monochrome panel to it. absolute boondoggle behavior.
Let’s call this Red Disaster (detail) for dramatic narrative effect, 93 x 80 in., via mfaboston

But then I found it, and I needed an eye rubbing in disbelief emoji, because the unpainted bottom edge of Hughes’ painting perfectly matches the Red Disaster painting at the MFA Boston. Which is almost 8 feet tall. And it is dated, 1963 and 1985. And it is a diptych. Or rather, it’s a diptych now.

warhol's red disaster diptych is a red monochrome panel on the left and red panel printed with black electric chairs on the right. the reds don't quite match, whether that's the fact they were painted 22 years apart, i don't know. via the mfa boston
Warhol, Red Disaster, 1963/1985, 93 x 161 in., acquired in 1986 by MFA Boston

The MFA acquired the painting(s) in 1986, direct from the Factory, almost while the paint on that monochrome panel was still wet. That paint, which looks like it matched the red of Hughes’ wall more than the 22-year age gap red of its partner. Someone in Pinet’s comments called this Hughes’ Diana Vreeland room

Was doubling the painting Hughes’ idea? Did the MFA request it? Were they just in the market for a bigger painting, too bad all you have this single panel…? Did they get the brushoff from Philip Johnson? Did Warhol bulk up any other old paintings like this? Are Warhol’s diptychs often hung as two entirely separate paintings? As if age gap wasn’t enough, they need wall gap, too? Have they ever been exhibited stacked on top of each other? Or maybe propped up on two tables?