From The Village Voice:
Triggering interpretations that fence personal obsessions with death, sensationalism, and our preoccupation with “terror,” a theater of the macabre, Americana-style, swings into motion with the pairing of “Skull” paintings (1976) against the Washington Monuments. Ricocheting in a visual sight line from the front to the back of the galleries and activating the museum’s enormous scale, the skulls greet us like enormous sentries and draw us through the permanent installation of the mysterious “Shadow” paintings (1978–79). They pull us past Louise Lawler’s photographs of Warhol works and deliver us to a rear gallery they share with two oversize “Last Supper” canvases (1986), beyond which are a stash of six hardcore “Disaster” paintings (1963–64). Abetted by the towering cartoon monotony of the Washington Monument, the trail of skulls, and traces of Jesus Christ, the horrific spectacle of multiple real-life death scenes (plus one bloody birth scene) catalyze the Wow! moment and fuel momentary amnesia. Has Warhol ever been presented with such Spielbergian intensity?
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