Resumen de Disaster in Paris: Andy Warhol and the French automotive imaginary, c. 1964
This essay explores the response to Andy Warhol's first exhibition at Galerie Sonnabend in Paris in the context of changes in advertising and the discourse of motorization in France.Comparing Warhol's "Death in America" paintings to Robert Delpire's pop advertisement for the Citroën DS uncovers the critical confusion and material stakes surrounding the convergence of art and advertising in the eaarly 1960s. The symbolic and material ubiquity that led Roland Barthes to describe the automobile as an "object-sign" set the stage for a conflict between art and advertising that resonated with debates surrounding pop art and an expanding consumer society in France.
