129 Die in Jet, 1962

Donna De Salvo: 129 Die is amongst a number of paintings Warhol did beginning around 1960, where he takes the front page of the newspaper and makes it the subject of his painting. 

Narrator: Donna De Salvo. 

Donna De Salvo: Now of course the bold headline, the very spectacular nature of this plane crash, is one of the things that Warhol would have been attracted to. The idea of currency and what's topical is always key in Warhol's work, throughout.

Narrator: Like all of the paintings in this gallery, this one was painted by hand—Warhol wouldn’t start working with the mechanical process of silkscreen until the following year. But even his hand-painted works show a great interest in the technology of mass reproduction. 

Donna De Salvo: He's painting something to look like a photograph. And not only that, it's of early technology of the wire service where the photograph actually comes through electronically, and it never has the crispness of the photographs that we know today.