Andy Warhol
mdeli
They had a large exhibition of his drawings; loads and loads. Well
take a close look if you ever get around there. Its mostly little more
than art school bathroom scrawl. A friend in advertising insisted
that he once drew shoes very well. Never knew he was that bad.
The so called paintings and silk screens where the usual crap I had
seen often in museums and galleries.
I guess I once thought Warhol had some artistic talent; no more.
All should take a close look at the Warhol product in order to see
what an artistically uninspired twit he actually was.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
Paul Laub
What's your problem? I'm new to this newsgroup; forgive me please for
being naive. I'm sorry your trip to Pittsburgh was a waste. The hills,
their views, and the three rivers of that city are what I remember. Did
you experience them?
Warhol annoys me too but good for him! I, citizen of 20th and now 21st
century America, need a little annoyance. Warhol's genius was in making
perfectly silvered mirrors that he held up to you and to me and to all
of America. The tawdry, the hackneyed, the commercial: that's us we see
in his paintings. Shoes were a radical thing for him; they got him
thinking, and then painting.
To me his paintings say: "Look, this is what we have become". Ugly,
perhaps, but we need to know.
Paul
P.S. Don't forget: Andy Warhol also produced "The Velvet Underground and
Nico" (1967), one of the most seminal rock 'n' roll albums ever. That
alone ...
In article <390de5de...@news.psi.ca>,
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Before you buy.
mdeli
wrote:
>Hey Mani,
>
>What's your problem? I'm new to this newsgroup; forgive me please for
>being naive. I'm sorry your trip to Pittsburgh was a waste. The hills,
>their views, and the three rivers of that city are what I remember. Did
>you experience them?
I guess you can't read. I never mentioned Pittsburgh. I had a great
time. Enjoyed the vistas the museums and university atmosphere etc.
Nice city!
>Warhol annoys me too but good for him! I, citizen of 20th and now 21st
>century America, need a little annoyance.
Warhol always amused me. He was a PR genius who posed as an artist.
Haven't anything against anyone who cons the boobs and makes lots of
money.
>Warhol's genius was in making
>perfectly silvered mirrors that he held up to you and to me and to all
>of America. The tawdry, the hackneyed, the commercial: that's us we see
>in his paintings.
Speak for yourself.
>Shoes were a radical thing for him; they got him
>thinking, and then painting.
They were of no help what so ever.
>
>To me his paintings say: "Look, this is what we have become". Ugly,
>perhaps, but we need to know.
>
>Paul
>
>P.S. Don't forget: Andy Warhol also produced "The Velvet Underground and
>Nico" (1967), one of the most seminal rock 'n' roll albums ever. That
>alone ...
I used to see them all in NYC when I lived there including Andy, at
Max's. Some were stupid, others boring, most were drug freaks
including Andy, a few were talented. Andy's films, which he really
didn't make, are a complete incompetent bore. They hardly amuse anyone
these days. The Velvet underground is dead and underground.
lake
influential figure, was Andy. Thanks for a very perspecatious analysis
of his life & times. I take my hat off to you on this one.
- Lake
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mdeli
Warhol, the prince of the pop-art clowns, took to glorifying some of
the very trivia which had formerly been considered nothing more then
cheap kitsch for the lower classes. He also turned the prevailing
views on MAA morality upside down. He praised superficiality, fleeting
fashions, and in a sarcastic roundabout way admitted that his work was
a fashion artifact with little lasting value. Warhol avoided the usual
pseudo-intellectual theoretical double-talk by substituting a steady
stream of comic relief. He was also the ideal life-of-the-party type.
Warhol invented the "new charlatan." In his social circle, anyone
could play at being a kind of modern nobility. He gave people an
excuse for being less serious about their personal defects. He had a
tranquilizing spirit which lacked pretence. He made believe he was
utterly spaced out and publicly announced his phoniness at every
opportunity. He intentionally instilled a good dose of doubt into just
about everyone. Warhol in his own way declared war on pretence. He was
the antithesis of the pompous blow-bag high priest of the Greenbergian
artworld. He could influence the crowd by being different and when the
crowd accepted that difference, he was already different again.
Towards the end of his life when the extremes of fashion in dress
became somewhat "tribal primitive", Warhol cleverly climbed back into
an ordinary business suit and tie.
It was all very attractive to the rich and famous and also the not so
famous. Instead of playing the intellectual, Warhol played the fool, a
modern Parsifal who hosted a perpetual series of parties and engaged
in social intrigue and gossip. He cultivated a showbiz deadpan
approach, feigned naivete' and eventually became North America's
favorite schlemiel intellectual. If you adopted a Warholian attitude
you no longer needed an excuse for remaining stupid; you could even
grow to enjoy it.
There were of course really two Warhol's, the counter-intellectual
show biz actor-social-pied-piper, and the painter. Modern critics
always fuse the artist with his personal life. Warhol the painter,
like many of the newer Modern Artists, came to fine art via commercial
art. He painted shoes and did window dressing. The critics say he did
this well, but a careful look at these works show otherwise. The real
essence of Warhol's fine art painting lies in his choice of subject
matter, which was of a nature traditionally avoided in art. It gave
the bored critics something new to make a fuss about. Warhol's
paintings are social memorabilia.
His familiar, soup cans, Miss Monroes and electric chairs, are really
no worse then the nothing-paintings of his predecessors like Pollock
and Rothko etc. He too couldn't paint, but unlike his predecessors,
Warhol admitted it and that admission became an integral part of his
appendage.
Warhol rarely engaged in any actual painting but figured out a
technique which got others to do most of the work. He hired skilled
craftsmen who did silk screens of his photos. After they produced the
unfinished dummy he would surcharge it with a few assorted colored
schmiers along with his money magnet signature. This resulted in works
which had the critically required lazy look, along with a wholly
innovative mass-produced appearance. He was in a sense a commercial
artdirecter at work, mass-producing what came to be accepted as fine
art.
Like a true clown, Warhol was also obsessed with failure and death and
like a secretive clown Warhol's real taste was surprisingly antithetic
to his work. He was personally quite knowledgeable about all manner of
classical art (he had studied art history). Consequently his home was
not the Pop mansion one might expect but was instead filled with fine
antiques. Warhol was a closet conformist who surrounded himself with
just the kind of stuff which MAA theology would condemn as forbidden
kitsch. Ironically the artifacts for which he was famous for
collecting, his trivia, was hardly to be seen in his home but was kept
in his warehouse; neatly packed up in individual lots and well out of
his sight, entombed one might say, waiting to be disinterred and
dumped on the public after the death of the master.
The auction of Warhol's Grand Crap Collection, his final Pop-art
gesture, his wake in a sense, was accomplished at the well publicized
Park Bernet "Warhol Auction." Here, every last bit of remaining
garbage, which was in his possession at death, was transformed into
gold. It was the most important "Happening" of the century.
It was an anti-Greenbergian paradox. For now the very trivia, which
all during those Greenbergian years was condemned as kitsch and
supposedly gave past critics all those chronic cerebral hemorrhoids,
was now proclaimed as glorious and gleefully snapped up for fortunes
by artsy collectors. Greenberg himself remained diplomatically silent
about this contradiction.
The spirit of Warhol now prevails in the multitude of new isms that
followed in the wake of his ideas. It has become a theoretical focal
point that competes with Greenbergianism.
The most curious thing about Pop and Warhol is that this sort of thing
has of course been with us all along. It was skillfully expressed in
the art of the cartoonist and animators. Perhaps this is why some
Popsters copied cartoons so diligently.