Red Elvis is a large, photo-silkscreen image that is emblazed by 36 exact duplicates of a headshot of the musician Elvis Presley. The headshots are in solid black ink on a solid red background, and it measures 175cm by 132 cm. (Rosenblum, 598, 1989). The contrast between the black and the red delivers a visual shock for what is in all essences an uninteresting photograph of Elvis Presley. This “shock of the new” (Collacello, 28) was evidently what Warhol was trying to accomplish.

Due to the process in which the photo is transferred over to a silkscreen, much of the photo’s detail is lost, giving the final image an artificial, almost abstract, appearance on the canvas. We know that the image is of Elvis Presley, but if the image was of someone else, would we recognize the image as being a face? The intensity of the black heads does

The finished screen is then placed on the painted canvas, and silkscreen ink is passed over, and with a squeegee effect, pushed through and applied to the canvas below. The parts of the screen which were burned by the light are the lighter areas, and ink does not pass through. The darker areas allow ink to pass through, creating the black Elvis head. This process is essentially the same used for commercial applications such as when creating posters, t-shirts or other consumer products, when a uniform finish is required.

Colacello, Bob. 1990. Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up. New York: HarperCollins.

What could easily be passed off as a simple piece of artwork, Red Elvis goes far deeper when cultural and commercial themes are considered. I feel as a whole the artwork is successful in delivering this message to me, as it provides me a clear critical message on the commercialization of images and celebrity. It is obvious that Andy Warhol, through his Red Elvis and Silver Elvis had a desire to investigate and deconstruct the issues surrounding the super stardom of Elvis, but also his own.

As far as I have been able to tell, the image was created using a standard silkscreen process which is as follows. Exact copies of the photograph are printed on transparency film and lined up in t

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