Jackie Triptych

Andy Warhol

John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Andy Warhol turned his, the nations, and Jackie’s pain into art. Dissatisfied with the media coverage, and acutely aware of the symbol that Jackie Kennedy was becoming, without agency or choice, Warhol re-enacted the event over and over again by silk-screening images of the grieving Kennedy taken from Life magazine. The work is at once compassionate and detached; by focusing on the first lady’s face, he emphasis and reminds us of her bravery, her courage and her grief, but he also participates in the process of removing her humanity and making her become an image, a representation of the nation and a historical event. Warhol, in 1964, was only beginning to get to grips with the new art of screen-printing, having started less than two years earlier. The Jackie works marked a turning point, as he realised the power of a repeatable medium, and how the images that were flooding public consciousness could be replicated, distorted and recontextualised to speak to a wider idea permeating the culture.

Sunday 31st May

The Moon is in Scorpio, deepening the atmosphere as it continues to swell towards fullness. Scorpio brings a quality of transformation, drawing our attention beneath the surface to what is hidden, composting, renewing, and quietly changing form. As the Moon gathers light, it can illuminate not only the outer garden, but also the inner places where something in us is ready to shift. On this final day of May, we stand at a threshold, looking back over the growth of spring while sensing the fullness of summer beginning to rise. In the garden, and in ourselves, transformation often happens unseen before it reveals itself. Today invites us to honour that mystery, to let the old soften, and to trust what is slowly becoming.