FREE4ALL, Part 12: The Ideal Copy

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Reporter: Andy, a Canadian government spokesman said that your art could not be described as original sculpture. Would you agree with that?

Reporter: Why do you agree?

Andy Warhol: Well, because it’s not original.

Reporter: You have just then copied a common item.

Andy Warhol: Yes.

Reporter: Well, why have you bothered to do that? Why not create something new?

Andy Warhol: Uh… because it’s easier to do.

Reporter: Well, isn’t this sort of a joke then that you’re playing on the public?

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It was in the early 1960s that Andy Warhol finally came into his own.

His reputation as a creative powerhouse has since been solidified among the cultural elite. Yet he remains a controversial figure among laypeople even now.

Was he a genius? A freak show? A con man?

It depends on who you ask.

One of the major charges against Andy Warhol is that he contaminated the art world with shameless, brazen commercialism.

Another attack centers on the notion that he simply copied existing designs. First by painting replicas of known brands. And then later by using silkscreen prints of found photographs. And sometimes even having other people do the printing for him.

What was he creating, beyond publicity stunts?

The third charge is that his pieces had no discernible meaning, they were just empty spectacle. This was a sentiment that Andy himself would often agree with!

However you may feel about his art, we can all agree that Warhol’s approach was radical and provocative for the time. It’s safe to say that our culture was transformed by his art and the movements he helped create.

The times indeed had changed. Warhol’s art spoke truths about our culture that no one wanted to admit. For a while at least. Eventually, everyone caught up.

Graven Images:

It’s worth taking stock of how much art had changed over the centuries due to changes in societal culture and technology.  

The first time a piece of visual art could be revered as a work of “genius” was the medieval period of Europe.

But the medieval painters of holy icons: they could channel the power of the Lord with their depictions of the saints, or of the biblical scenes. Like the Father who blessed them, these mostly anonymous men were able to create something from nothing, and touch the souls of others.

By the Renaissance, individual artists could actually gain fame and recognition for their unrivaled talent and creativity. European painters and sculptors elevated the standards for visual representation to the realistic depictions of the ancient pagan world.

The artists also granted their patrons a life beyond death by fixing their image in painted portraits or in stone. Aspiring artists took to copying the works of the masters in order to learn from them—and sometimes merchants sold such forgeries as originals.

With the Enlightenment came the industrial revolution, the dawn of rapid technological advancement and dramatic societal change.

By the beginning of the 20th century, cultural transformations due to industrial production were absolutely everywhere. The printing press enabled the formation of the first newspapers.

To be published in newspapers was to be made public, and publicity soon became a powerful way to capture the attention of the masses.

And it wasn’t just current events that were publicized.

Then, thanks to the invention of the photograph camera, realistic visual representations of the world were suddenly available at the press of a button.

For centuries, European painters had gained fame and fortune by rendering realistic pictures via careful strokes of oil on canvas. Suddenly this treasured method of visual depiction was out of date, and the status of artists as cultural heavyweights received its first major challenge.

Once realistic photos became so easy and effortless to produce, most painters concerned themselves with functions other than accurate representation of the material world. Instead, they focused on making images that were expressive, or mysterious, or conceptually intriguing, or politically potent.

And it was starting from this time that the public appreciation for art began to fracture and wane, as art steadily shifted away from fairly objective considerations of character and setting to increasingly subjective or esoteric ones. Hence the emergence of Impressionism, Abstract art, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism etc, etc.

Ironically, despite their popular dismissal as empty and decadent, modern painters often sought to restore a sense of spiritualism to the visual arts. But their spiritual transcendence always required their audiences to be challenged. And so their audiences diminished over time. Most people sought out simpler, more convenient, and more relatable pleasures.

Going forward, it would not be the weirdo bohemian geniuses who would dominate the new culture. Instead, it was clever business entrepreneurs using new media to capture common desires and turn a profit. 

Newspapers, magazines, radio, film, and then television; these were the public squares where most of the action took place.

God and Mammon

Despite being known as the father of Pop Art, Warhol wasn’t the first person to blend artistic and commercial motives.

George Gershwin and Berthold Brecht wrote operas based on popular music styles. Jazz bands created edgy, intellectual entertainment. Early art cinema aimed to please and also challenge the masses. And let’s not forget Toulouse-Lautrec’s stylish commercial lithographs from the late 19^th century.

But in the elite circles, there remained a great disdain for commercial art. Most visual artists avoided kitsch or commercial content in their pieces, or they approached it from a critical standpoint. To them the difference was like night and day. Either art was serious, or it was not.

Unlike most artists of his time, Andy Warhol was not born into wealth or privilege.

Thankfully, his family had a radio and television. As a child, Andy would soak up American culture as most people around the country did: through the news, through television commercials or radio jingles, through tabloids, through fashion magazines, through print ads, and through popular films.

Yet despite his humble background and working-class family, Andy was always unique, set apart from the rest of his community. And he dreamed of finding success in America’s biggest city. In 1949, after graduating college with a degree in Fine Arts, he moved to New York City to follow his dream.

Although his first works were not commercial, Warhol was nevertheless ostracized by most of the artistic cliques of the time. Why? Because he worked a day job as a commercial designer. After several years failing to keep up these two conflicting pursuits, Andy eventually decided to merge them together.

His first pop art work was a drawn copy of a panel from a Superman comic. Superman was a figure mostly worshipped by young boys at the time. This cartoon figure, made famous via stories printed on pulp paper and sold for a dime each, was given pride of place as a fine art exhibit. And as such, the piece served as the entry point of a new kind of cultural iconography.

The saints of Andy’s new religious canon included brand names like Brillo and Coca Cola. They included Hollywood celebrities, living or dead. They included tabloid stories and comic book heroes.

They included every flavor of Campbell’s soup can.

Warhol’s central accomplishment as an artist was really quite simple: he acknowledged the real gods of modern culture.

With his pieces, the notion of sacred high art was effectively killed for good and all. How did he do it? Not by trashing the institutions, as the Dadaists tried to do. He did it instead by venerating all of the aspects of modern commercial culture that elite artists reacted against.

Just like the portraits and still life paintings of the 1600s, he showed our culture largely as it was. Given that elite art circles were driven by bohemian ideals for almost two centuries before pop art emerged, this gazing into the mirror came as quite a shock. Many established artists recoiled in horror at the unseemly reflection.

Quid Est Veritas?

What about the painstaking efforts needed to cultivate detail and precision in a painting? It could be said that they were relics of a bygone era, before industrial technology changed everything.

Warhol was in fact a gifted illustrator, but his most powerful contributions were via his role as a curator.

He soon employed the techniques of the commercial industry to his work as well. First by using silkscreen prints of photographed images to create endless repeats of pop culture prints. And then, by assembling a team of workers to help him do the grunt work.

Well, what about the meaning of his work? Was it really just empty spectacle? Or was there truth or beauty to be found? There is certainly room for subtlety and sophistication in Warhol’s pieces.

Take for instance, his Marilyn Monroe Diptych from 1962:

These are repeated silkscreen prints of one classic photo image, with two different choices of ink color and some dramatically varying print quality. The compulsive duplication of Marilyn’s image for an art exhibit surely serves as a testament to Warhol’s reverence for the recently deceased celebrity.

But really, there is no one valid interpretation to Warhol’s pieces. Keep in mind that being open to interpretation was the defining feature of Western fine art following WWII. Warhol was no different in this respect from painters like Jackson Pollock or Robert Rauschenberg. Or composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Of course, a key difference from those precursors is that Warhol’s pieces can easily hit our pleasure centers.

And so, if you’re not motivated to engage in careful contemplation, then his pieces really can be nothing but empty spectacle. And let’s be honest, it’s often hard to find the time or energy to challenge ourselves these days. Our work days are long, life is complicated, and we all could use some time to kick back and relax. 

Simple pleasures and empty spectacles will almost always win out in today’s market. And for his part, Andy Warhol seemed just fine with that.

For all his moments of self-deprecation or his starry-eyed fixation with the world around him, Warhol was a thoroughly savvy figure, gaining widespread popularity and influence mostly by means of passive reflection.

And so he happily played into their stereotypes of him as a fad, a con man, and a mysterious blank slate. All the better to grab national headlines and showcase his works. He always did have an eye for good copy.

It would take a few decades for his innovations to sink in, but Andy Warhol helped to usher in the postmodern era of art.

From here on out, the lines between high art and low art were blurred beyond comprehension. Culture was sometimes incisive, and always entertaining. Meaning and value seemed a whole lot more subjective. Ultimate truth seemed elusive; perhaps ultimately unknowable. 

Whatever his works may mean and however they may be valued, Warhol’s ascendency to modern art legend undeniably marked the start of when the art world first learned to stop worrying and love…

The Brillo pad?

The Beatles?…

… What was the question?

[Note: This post was made from 40% recycled blog materials. Any resemblance to actual copyrighted works is purely coincidental and/or a unique recontextualization and/or a loving reference. Tee hee!]

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