Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

“While creating an inventory of American superstars and supermarket favorites, (Warhol) also compiled an anthology of the American way of death, from car crashes and race riots to the electric chair itself…And it turned out, too, that the most commonplace instruments of death, guns and knives...would eventually turn up in Warhol's art as isolated objects, as iconic in their spaceless environments as the famous Campbell's soup can that launched his international fame." 
- R. Rosenblum, Andy Warhol, Knives: Paintings, Polaroids and Drawings, February-April 2001, reproduced at www.speronewestwater.com