The problem is the word "Art" do we mean skilled people who sweat over learning techniques, color, areal perspective, anatomy, composition....Or do we look at "Ideas". The trouble is that the inflated value of work that somehow gets to share a stage with Rubens or Monet and the rise of the art critic and the enlistment of academia, to value "game changing artists that reinvent the way we look at art" vs legions if people that value beauty, realusm, and evoking emotion in work but can't pay their bills or are forced to do a 9-5 like the job I'm at now.
Watch it till the 27:48 and you’ll see this guy did his homework before releasing this video. Just a very compelling argument and referenced video. Hard to disagree with or prove otherwise.
Medieval artists did understand perspective. A lot of aesthetic choices were made for a variety of reasons but lack of skill or talent isn’t one of them.
They sometimes used perspective, sometimes didn't. It's hard to talk about such a long part of history with two words. In different ages they needed different ways to get the message across. They actually used a lot of reversed one point perspective, I think there was a psychological reason for that. It makes you feel small compared to what is on the painting.
Medieval artists did not unlearn to draw after the fall of Rome only to learn to draw again during the Renaissance (of Rome) - this did not interest them for a few centuries
They didn't value perspective in 2 dimensional iconography and techniques were forgotten since it was a repeated chore not a creative job (because God works though you and you create for him), a job like being a blacksmith. They were doing wonders in architecture, statues, etc btw
Those Warhol fans remind me of certain strains of economists who obfuscate what is happening with absurd narratives to justify economic policies, when something outrageous but fairly simple and concrete is covered in complex terms and tales of austerity and scapegoats.
This is a great analogy. He found a way to sell art to people who usually couldn't afford art. By calling old fashioned merchandising "pop art" he turned consumerism into fart sniffing. He is the reason we have "collector figurines" like funko pops now. He's the reason putting the word "Supreme" on a coke bottle is some kind of profound genius now.
Andy Warhol was a genius because he saw a way to use his artistic skill to live the way he wanted to live, in one of the most expensive places on Earth to live, and all on someone else’s dime, and without having to really do much in the way of real work. He created the world around him, by being an enigmatic weirdo - hence the iconic hair, and the company he kept - and he made himself the centrepiece of his own culture, knowing all the while, it was all a con. He very likely believed that credibility bubble would be popped early on, but as the con continued, and grew with enormous amounts of random outside support, he just let the bubble carry him along wherever it would. It’s no coincidence he started out working in the ad world. Imagine how easy it would be for a genius level conman to make the connection between the commodification in the ad world and the possible further commodification of the art world by using the image of an ordinary commodity - a soup can - as an actual example of, capital, ‘A,’ art. Transfer an ad copy image of a commodity to a NYC hanging canvas in a legitimate art gallery show, and whamo - deeper meaning, revolutionary art, nothing but the best parties, and money, money, money. I don’t know anything about you, and your channel, or how passionate you are about your own art, but I assume you’re making videos, instead of painting all the time, because you need the money. If this is the case, it’s exactly what Warhol did in the sense that he wanted to survive in the world solely through his artwork while being his own boss, but unlike you Warhol got super lucky, like some guy who’s homeless, and decides to go out, and live in the foothills, stumbles across a small hole that leads into a cave filled with gold nuggets. Warhol got lucky, and gave the media, and art world just what it wanted, a commodifiable legitimacy, so yeah Warhol was a genius, but as you say, not as the art critics would have us believe. Art is dead, History is dead, etc, etc, ...keep your head up, I’ve heard Baudrillard is dead. How does the esoteric, and often opaque language of the philosopher compare to the esoteric, and opaque language of the art critic? Are we not all just scaffolding up our own constructed realities so we too can afford soup? Thanks for making videos eh.
Picasso «created the world around him, by being an enigmatic weirdo - hence the iconic hair, and the company he kept - and he made himself the centrepiece of his own culture»
There’s a popular theory going around now that capitalism is moving towards neo-feudalism (economists like Yanis Varoufakis and Michael Hudson for example). The contemporary art industry seems like a good example of this movement from traditional productive industrial capitalism to the modern unproductive financialized neoliberal rentier capitalism.
We live in an age of consumerism, capitalism doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did. Contemporary art is a good example of that though, where the act of consumption itself is all that matters(in arts case, the consumption of its image and perceived value), the value is its value. The object is irrelevant next to its symbolic value. Which yes has always been the nature of art, except now that art exists in an entirely symbolic world, where the very act of perceiving it is itself a symbolic one, of consumption. Hyper meta. Or as Buadrillard kindsa said, hyperreal.
Warhol's "genius" was his ability to bullshit people. His "commentary" on society was that society was foolish enough to view Andy Warhol as an artistic genius. He demonstrated that you don't need talent to become a successful artist. You can't argue with the message. The world undoubtedly is just as stupid as Warhol was saying it was. But that doesn't change the fact that he was a shit artist. In fact, his lack of talent is a necessary part of the message. Warhol knew he was a shit artist. He wanted to be a shit artist. That was the point.
@@lana-jg4ho I'm not going to argue with someone replying to a 4 month old comment. The point of view expressed in this video and comment is extremely reductive and shows a lack of knowledge in art history.
Warhol is the perfect representation of how capital ownership is disconnected from labor yet dictates the demands of the entire economy. Andy Warhol is the CEO, who has never set foot in one of the factories, sending down a memo telling line workers & riveters how to do their jobs. His legacy is found in the motivational meme poster on the wall of the office, 50 years after his death, as the "founder" with a vision. Warhol is a mirror the proletariat holds up to the bourgeoisie & says "omg he's totally me."
Fake aav is the language of upper class people trying to emulate authentic culture these days. It's fake, yes. It's always been a decade or two behind actual underground culture.
@eleaticeyes813 it's bastardized AAVE. The theft of Black culture by white people has been a US tradition for hundreds of years, and exported globally for about 80 years.
So out of curiosity i tried looking up that documentary, _Mona Lisa Curse_ . Doesn't look like it even got a dvd release. An award-winning documentary and there is no way to watch it legally.
i agree with everything you have said here but i feel it might be a more productive discussion if we flip the subject/object here, to discuss why we as a society is so obsessed with Warhol instead of drilling into ontology/teleology of him/his art. still good video! good piece as always.
This reminds me of the bit in family guy where Peter begins to record a plastic bag flowing in the wind and monologues about it’s profundity, while God who is witnessing this remarks “that’s just a bag!”.
He did push The Velvet Underground upwards though (money + exposure through association with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable), so I commend him for that 😄
@@DigaDilson I get you, but rn I'm going through a phase where the abrasiveness and audacity of White Light/White Heat is very appealing to me. When the Velvets dig deep there's few other bands like them. But yeah, Nico was a very nice contrast to their wild experimentation.
"Am I insane, or is it everyone else?" If you've been to enough workplaces, you've eventually seen the words, "You don't have to be crazey to work here, but it helps." What you may not remember so clearly is that, while you were an evil gleam in your father's eye, your unborn soul was shown the words, "You don't have to be crazy to live as a human being, but it helps." One of the main throughlines of Plastic' Pill's (I apologize, your name escapes me at the time of writing this comment) discussion of Postmodernism is the idea that once upon a time human's made images and lived in relative existential harmony with them, but then oen day the fire Nation attacked and now images call the shots an we live in a fever dream of culturally-induced hallucinations known as The Spectacle. Though this idea fascinates me, I'm not entirely convinced by it because I don't think there was ever a time where people didn't live entrenched in images. It's just that we've never had the productivity avalible to externalize them on the scale made possible by modernity. (Man has always felt fallen and at odds with his own nature. The story of the Garden of Eden shows very clear signs of predating not only Christianity but Judaism as a monotheistic religion. It could very easily be 10,000 or more years old.) The point I'm getting at is people don't necessarily believe things because they are true or even because they are desirable. The believe them because in beleiving they adapt themselves to the environment they live in. If you are born into a society where people worship the God known as the Forge of Days and you makea big scene out of being an apostate, they'll throw you out beyond the pail and you'll die. But if you swallow the myth, then you cooperate with everyone else and live even though this god only exists in people's heads. Anothe way of phrasing the above insight of Postmodernism is to say that the spectacle has made it so that people survive on sufferance to a pretence. All I'm saying is that pretences are the means by which human beings have always survived, the way birdslive on sufferance to the wind. Image is the medium we move through as conscious beings. The situation we find with Warhol, where the object of divine reverance and supplication is so transparently undeserving of such lurid exhaltation, is almost to be expected by the nature of social myths: If a socially sustaining myth were true, it would not need to function as a myth. If it were too flagrantly untrue, it woud be too incredible to bind individuals into a group identity. faith always fastens onto a situation where a kernal of truth is in precise tension with the unrealized needs of the population. Nothing would kill the myth of Warhol's genius than actally proving that his art has merit because then there would be nothing to engage with; no suspense. No divine drama demanding faith. If you could prove scientifically that Jesus rose from the dead, Christians would be ecastatic for a while and the grow bored and move on to another myth. So the answer to the question is, you're not insane, but there's nothing morbid about people believing that Andy Warhol is an artistic genius anymore than it is for children believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. As a rule, people don't grow out of myths. That's a misconception. They grow into them. You have far fewer illusions as a child than you do as an adult in this respect. So, really, the fact that children adopt Santas as a kind of practice myth shows that they're growing up.
The minimal facts argument for the resurrection convinces enough people as a pretty reasonable proof/explanation of what happened in Easter Sunday and those convinced by it do not simply move on but generally work on themselves and their communities...
@@LosOdium141In other words, their myth teeters so they accept the smallest possible evidence that matches with their predispositions and then quite literally move onto other things.
@@gavinyoung-philosophy if we're being reductive, sure as that's a very human tendency common to all points of view. I fail to see your point. I'm attempting to argue away from the above idea that "they'd move on" once something is proven. I fail to see that in action, as the specific example given happens to directly contradict my experiences and observations. For some, that is as close to rigorous proof as can exist for such a claim, and once it convinces them (or aligns with their confirmation bias, if I go along with your cynicism) it is not treated as some background fact to be discarded a la Sherlock Holmes learning that the Earth goes around the sun; rather, it empowers them to move on, yes, but then do something with their lives based on the evidence and arguments that have convinced them. What is the alternative? That once something is proven (if anything can be truly proven under materialistic presuppositions) we mull it over and never sway from the act of pondering it? To quote that Donald Duck meme, all knowledge is ultimately based on that which we cannot prove. Will you fight, or will you perish like a dog? To hold to ideals such as mercy, justice, and love is as big a fight as I and many others can muster in a cold uncaring universe. Forgive me if it seems foolish to believe in such things and that they ultimately have some greater source, one that happened to meet us on our level, then died and resurrected to prove it as we remember this week.
@@LosOdium141 I would like to think of the 4 historical stages of Nihilism: First would be organized religion that NoReputation kind of envisions. One could actually even read Dostoevsky's Great Inquisitor as yet another nod to Nietzsche who afaik really liked the one ( terribly translated) copy of "Underground" he read. Second stage, Modernity, the "enlightened" version of it, including "God is Dead, We killed Him" , culminating in the emptiness of Capitalist Cultist Consumerism. Third, the cult of Postmodernism, Anything Goes , including figureheads like Warhol: We do not believe in Modernity or anything anymore anyways. Let's have some fun and reproduce it, as a simulation. And then, fourth could well be called the Rust Cohle stage, of complete disillusionment: We are individuals in a completely atomized society. And, Warhol just made a cult with followers like any other. - Nietzsche's Zarathustra otoh was at least a book written for Everybody and Nobody. 😉 Finally I agree with NoReputation: No child starts off as nihilist of any stage: "Growing up" , potentially including all the foul compromises with the society one lives in, is making you one.
The more I know about Warhol the more the book "American Psycho" seems to partially be about him. Or maybe not, but he seems to be kind of a recurring theme in it in a subtle way.
@@canti7951holy crap. Well idk anything about Warhol but I remember reading about American Psycho and vaguely recall the author of the book had some feminist views. And that Patrick Bateman was basically a caricature of psychopathic men. So glean what you will
warhol seemed to ME to be the beginning of the socialite. quite mysterious and having a 'funky' personality, but most likely they just have clinically diagnosed anxiety. confident but self aware enough to not get too cocky. not really good at anything. has 'a' talent but if you think long about it, you start to wonder what the talent is ... (most of the time it's a talent of marketing ... e.g. the kardashians)
The classic and provocative account of how art changed irrevocably with pop art and why traditional aesthetics can’t make sense of contemporary art is probably one of the most thrilling and fascinating notions in the philosophy of art.
Warhol's Purple Jumping Man is one of the first pieces of art to give me a feeling like I was being hit by a truck when I first saw it. I believe Andy Warhol liked to mess with people and for the most part, there was nothing beneath the surface and the circus around him was far more interesting than the man himself. But with some of his work, the surface was enough to call it art, imo. There were definitely more interesting things going on in art around the time of Warhol, though, like Gysin, or the collaboration between Ulay and Abramovic. I like performance art, especially when it cannot be captured by any medium. 90% of it is crap, though, but that's the case for everything.
@@MM-my9zr I like her early work about consent, endurance and pain, and the collaboration between her and Ulay is one of the best examinations of love in art, imo. But when they split up, they definitely went down two separate paths in the art world.
I remember one trip to the Warhol museum (where they change the items several times a year because Warhol was nothing if not prolific) and standing in a room of rainbow colored prints of Mao Zedong. You could find one to match your sofa!
Yeap, I studied fine arts, painting. And this guy is a BIG part in my total lack of respect for the art world. It's 99.999% bullshit. And yes, Rothko is the .0001% that is not bullshit. I literally cried in the Rothko Chapel, like a baby, no explanation.
You are correct. Roasting mediocre, over-hyped or shit art is justified. Any love for art I had was devastated in my 4 years in art school. Graduated saying: "if you are not a designer, you are worthless".
In reality, graphic designers are worthless. If you're an artist, you can sell your art. You sell art, you make money, you do it for a living, as simple as that. Designers however, everything they do has to come out from the mouths of capitalists. They cannot work for themselves. Use a certain color, make the logo bigger, use a Sans Serif font, for what? To generate more revenue. Graphic design is an inherently soulless and dishonest field that should be abolished so that artists can get paid again.
@@KalitayySorry but I don't think that you are 100% correct. I studied graphic design, but i also studied and love art. So i can Say that yes design Is pretty much dipendent tò capitalsm ecc... But i don't really think that Is completely useless. I think that It can be important for information system and things likes books (i mean a well organized book Is Better). And at the same time i don't think that with the death of the designers the artists Will be free, in the society of the Capital. The art became the slave of the market (yes Is aldready the slave of the market, but for a more exclusive consumer) , and the artist Is not free tò make arts, if the artist Need to make art that become and object tò sell. We can see this things Also in the recent art history with the end of the abstract expressionist (AE) that was endend also for the "choice" of the market to be interested in a new genre of art (pop-art), so a lot of this AE artist endend miserly. I don't want to make a book with this message, but i Just don't want to start a war to Say that art useless or GD Is useless, but Just too Say that the two, under capitalism, are under the subject of the market, so are not free. I would likes to Say that in this context art Is the most destroyed by capitalism, also because there is the false myth that artists are free to make what they want when they are not (look Pollock and his dripping painting). So the two are not free under capitalism. Sorry for the long message and also for my shitty english
As a boomer in the 70's I studied art history that included the architecture of each time ... with a professor who had a great passion for it all ... as he used prance excitedly between 2 slides illuminated sharing the richness of each story behind them. So his classes always meant the most to me. I ended loving the Impressionist era the most. But when it got to the so called modern art, I was bored out of my mind ..... but did not know then why and what the hell it was for. And I certainly never knew that was simply Warhol's message, so thank you for making sense of his "art". In my lifetime I have been watching all creative artistic forms that include music & movies slowly slide into the toilet ... and as a conspiracy nutter ... seems more or less on purpose ... happening so slowly each new generation is conditioned to believe that they have the best music. Surreal times.
I connect Warhol's 'revelations' with Huxley (The Doors of Perception, thanks Jim Morrison), the transportive experience, borne of ordinary visual stimuli (curtains and drapes) that resonate with innate, possibly Platonic forms. Warhol is telling us that what we are seeing is also what transports us. I, too, perceived him as the death of art, I've been saying it since the 70s.
I'm glad you're back. And I'm glad I finished this video eventually :D It feels like you posted this a long time ago, and it probably just goes to show you I've been thinking about this far too long. I just wish more people saw it, watched it till the end and subscribed... So about my experience - at first I was pissed, had to stop, get back, eventually finish it and got soothed. I think what you're doing here is super sneaky, and it's probably the second video like this - same thing happened with the objectification video. Using controversy, getting people mad to ultimately arrive at something interesting. Still, I guess it's kind of your presonal beef with Warhol (he was just there for the ride), but never mind at this point. I just want to take a moment and appreciate your ability to construct an argument and put your message across - the structure of it it's really enjoyable. Btw, just fiinshed watching Zizek promoting his new book on Times Radio, and he's repeating your point about Trump being the ultimate postmodernist. I wonder if he's watching your stuff :D
what about art as anthropological context? like the fact that those paintings by that man are what our society venerates says a lot about what it values aesthetically and morally, and so is imbued by its popularity with meaning. even if those values are ultimately anti-art. ok maybe that's what you're saying ultimately, that the paintings are the product of a society that places no value in art. right that makes sense i got there just had to talk myself through it lol. good video thanks!
An excellent take on the idea of Warhol and its legacy. I do find his throw away comments about the surface useful as a starting point for messing around with the sublime and some of Lacan's and Baudrillard's ideas. Another, thing I find interesting is that he was/is often misattributed where the interviewer often put words into his mouth, born out of frustration from trying to get something from him other than sound bites. This was perhaps because he was such a bad speaker, bordering on the immature when under pressure, and to the point where it eventually became a part of his act. I think it was actually the case with the famous G.Berg interview you mentioned. It ties in with what you were saying about everyone trying to create meaning from his work and the idea of Warhol itself, when in fact as you correctly pointed out he states himself that there was none. Although, I still find him fascinating and I do find the images A Woman's Suicide and Race Riot interesting if not for their artistic value but for their observations of a voyeuristic society. I also find the series Ladies and Gentlemen very intriguing for one obvious painting. PS, loved the R. Hughes clip, and the shock of the [true]!
Your commentary is fresh and honest. I'll try to write as short as possible (thus not be so much more boring) 1- as you mentioned, we must analyze and understand Warhol as a part of [late] Capitalism as a whole. In this sense, it will be fruitful to look at him and his art as capitalist "phenomenon". the word "art" or "artist" should be defined under the circumstances of this age. 2- I think it is impossible to separate the "idea" or better to say "concept" of the art from its actual state. You yourself very well quoted Jean Baudrillard's commentary of Warhol and arts in general. We can say that one of the functions of philosophy in our age is to consolidate the vapor-like nature of affairs and things into more solid, coherent entities, naming them and thus enable us to pinpoint, grasp, nurture of even destroy them. in this sense one might look at the " art in the age of technological reproducibility" by Walter Benjamin, in which he cleverly points the condition of art in capitalism. He shows that what happens to "aura" ( what you called the secret) of Artworks, when it can be reproduced indefinitely. (take a look at Susan Buck-morss's great articles about it.) 3- As you've said, the process was started much earlier, at the dawn of 20th century. Beside what Duchamp and Dadaists were famous for, selling white empty canvases with just the artist's signature by Salvador Dali can be a better starting point. But the vigorous attempt of the American artistic space to invent an "American art tradition" by obfuscating its European precedents (thus making a new tradition without history which is consonant with the American dream) has complicated out path toward understanding the current situation of art. 4-You are completely wright about the banality of the quest for meaning in art of our time. this desperate attempt also gives the "lords" more power and money. From this point i want to pass to a better way tho understand the Warhol phenomenon: instead of focusing on its meaning, we must ask "what are its functions?";" what does it do?". you very well pointed out a couple of its functions (including constant production of meaning) for capitalists, powers, etc. To add one, we can look at the way in which his works shows us that makes something "art" in our age is just the stage, the setting, the space, not the piece itself. it is the museum/gallery that produces the Aura, not the piece itself. Warhol was the critique of late capitalism. He was its total embodiment, its ideal type of the "artist". He was the caricature that revealed the true nature of art in the age of technological reproducibility: He just merged the museum with supermarket by his constant media publicity. nothing more. he was not a good artist per se. but his works are symptoms through which we can understand our situation: the capitalist space is an all encompassing one, trying to conquer and integrate each and every time-space into its [ir]rationality. 5- Last but not least: what about the death of Arts? Yes. something is dead. An autonomous Space of Art disintegrated. But through its explosion, various [much more local, smaller] spaces of art emerged: take a look at outsider art, graffiti, or even what you've drawn so beautifully. The age of invention has begun and i see your commentary as way to pinpoint the "old" and its attempt to stay dominant, thus enable us to move forward. P.S: it was going to be short. 😅Excuse me for this lengthy comment.
@@Name-ql7jf a seminal work. the gimmick is in "technischen" or technical, which for some reason is translated as "mechanical". Benjamin was trying to refine the Marxist conception of "modes and means of production" by adding a layer which he calls "the technical". Marx carefully exempted art from his analysis of capitalist mode of production; but Benjamin folds it back to political economy and enriches it so that one can see the The essay has much more to offer than just "the art". It is a tool to detect "metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" of commodities.
The commentators of Art often don’t make Art. Those who do and have seen the process have a more realistic idea of what’s involved in the making or manufacturing of Art. Andy Warhol was a manufacturer of Art, he made designs and often had others mass produce these images and often just put his signature on them. The genius at work was that he made a lucrative trade of Art. His life is reflected in the images of course and as an American his images speak to “Consumerism”; did Andy really find happiness in this? He didn’t seem very happy but I’m sure he enjoyed making people smile seeing that they could recognize the image he made and it helped them become more nostalgic even if it were just some soup cans. I will say Andy was adept at what he did to produce on that scale “Pop Art” and maintain a consistent style that anyone can recognize as being his. By seeing his work up close in a museum builds credibility that he didn’t just make screen prints; there was a production and perfection to a degree that’s undeniably above and beyond what others could’ve ever done. Andy started out as a window decorator for some high end fashion retailer; perhaps his genius was that he was secretly bringing Art into the world as a consumerist item to be admired by the masses; often people overlook that he took things most take for granted and gave those ideas attention. Was he sued for his work replicating other things like Coke bottles or Campbell Soup cans? I think he was by Coca Cola but not too many talk about that. Also, Andy knew color and design better than anyone of his time and he pushed the boundaries of what printing could do. The little imperfections are what is the proof that Andy Warhol was human. And we all know he really didn’t like himself so why are people so quick to attack his work? Andy was like a rockstar in that he just did his thing and he was successful as if it was always meant to be.
People dont think about that it takes a lifetime of work doing what he did, there is a resillence in his work, he was living between and for art. To critize the work of another artis, u need to know about everything in its context, history, society, economy, politics, etc
No one and nothing, will ever kill art. But the prices / market for representational art was killed by photography, especially color photography, not Andy. But fear not people will always add style and creativity to everything that we make. It is built into our brains, and we will always pay extra to have creativity around us.
Brilliant, what a great watch , it reminds of last weekend at the Tate Modern, someone saw me staring at Marcel Duchamp’s “piss pot”and inwardly chucked, she asked me “what does it mean? I asked, “objectively for subjectively? 😋
Andy Warhol IS a genius: he convinced the entire world that his shit means something. But that makes him the most brilliant thief of all time, not artist
Art generally has no intrinsic meaning. Meaning arises in the confrontation with art. Warhol was definitely naïve enough to understand this and make it the subject of his art.
Excellent commentary. The emperor's new clothes was exactly what was going through my mind listening to this. It appears Warhol has unintentionally become a symbol: on one hand - of desperation to salvage art, on the other - of its death. To me this paradox is rather beautiful as it accentuates the very opposite of what the man himself preached: art is in fact essential, even if we have to continually figure out its purpose and rediscover new definitions of geniuses, art - the absolute - remains, just as truth does (even if it's assassinated) or as does love. Misattribution of it onto something less than art/truth/love merely exposes our collective confusion and a deep craving for the real thing. But this comment might also place me in the same category where all the Warhol fans belong. Funny..
I’m a practicing Artist, professional “officially” since 1992. Warhol is a conceptual artist on the 1960s when that was rife across the world, E.g. Peter Blake’s paintings of the 1960s. Warhol bridges Fine Art and graphic design. He made Coca Cola even more popular via his redesign of the curve to the Coca Cola logo. He was primarily commercial. He translates icons from film, television and music and the mundane every day objects around us into simplified iconography. He was obsessed about recording everything around him which fed his final works. This is why he is not a solely traditional artist. He and his cult entourage moved to make work that was more memorable via it’s “graphics” ideal for advertising.
I'm at the stage of my life where, instead of saying something is bad (art), I'll simply say, "I don't understand it as yet" (Thanks Bliss Foster for opening my mind to this). One thing I've learned, it's very hard to understand pieces from a different decade, let alone one 30 years, if you never lived through it. You ask for meaning in his art. At 18:13 you literally placed it on the screen and didn't even realize it (assuming you didn't mention this later in the video. I haven't finished it yet). Your quote reads "During the hippie era people put down the idea of business - they'd say 'money is bad', and 'working is bad', but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art". That quote itself sums up where his inspiration came from. Hence why all the cooperate arts works. Coca Cola, Campbells, Monroe...yes.. Marilyn was a product of Hollywood. One of the biggest businesses in the world.
Do you have a video on Benjamin's Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction? I read Berger's "Ways of Seeing" and he seems to make many of the same points that Baudrillard does
Before judging Warhol, please do check out Warhol's early freehand drawings! They're of exeptional beauty. Not just the Illustrations he did for magazines, but also his very intimate drawings of couples, portraits, nudes etc he did. You will find that he was an extremely gifted Illustrator. This early body of work is often overlooked, but very rewarding to look at, and for me much more intersting than his later works.
art as object isn't important at all, people will find profundity in anything you put in front of them, our imaginations were the real artists all along.
Yes, his art is meh…but the context and audience reaction synthesises something unique. He seemed to understand this without perhaps authoring this meaning. But that doesn’t mean seeing his work in countless galleries evokes emotion. When I see “good” art I’m moved. When I see his it’s like seeing a commercialised object that cites some sense of meaning but that is ultimately empty itself. It is an excellent emblem of the decline of culture and art under American capitalism in the 20thc. Maybe AW is art’s tombstone.
I'm no Andy Warhol fan either but imo, this makes him the most honest artist ever. Perhaps the only honest artist. Nothing more nothing less. The secret is exactly that there is no secret and he seems to knows it full well. I find it kinda similar to Adorno's poetry after Auschwitz. What is art after our disillusionment with society? Isn't art just a high class form of barbarism? I think the thing to do here is not to stop making art but to make art that blatantly acknowledges this. Of course there's the irony of his work being praised by these high class "cultured" people and taken seriously but I personally appreciate this irony as this completes the premise of his work to begin with. Imo, he did not kill art but showed it for what it really is. And this is not me desperately trying to cling on giving any sublime meaning towards his work. I think it's the exact opposite. Imo, to understand Warhol you have to be a skeptic of the "sublime". The idea that great art is profound. I find that reading to be purely sentimental and at times, nostalgic. Overall, I don't think it's like Warhol and so called modern artists did some crime to art. The crime was already committed, the only thing to do left is depict it.
i literally just had the craziest 25+ minute conversation (with myself) the other day on andy warhol .... but (un¿)fortunately i was high so i literally don't remember what i had said ... i guess i just find it funny that this is in my recommended now. EDIT: I MADE A VOICE MEMO ABOUT IT OMG i am so smart for being high and aware that my sober self's memory is S-H-O-T
15:16 in my opinion I never looked up to Warhol nore really saw anything special but there was respect for the man anyway. And that’s what I think, there’s a lot of respect for Warhol and his art
Art can't be dead if it never came into existence in the first place... My favorite depiction of Warhol was when David Bowie played him in the movie Basquiat.
Relax peeps. No one killed Art. Art isn't dead. If you believe that then you don't understand what art is. Or more accurately; what it isn't; and Art is definitely not a picture or an object, although it may be found there at times. Which is the glaring problem with this video; assuming that the Great Art of Warhol lies in the quality/labour in the objects he created. Instead of worrying about Warhol, go out and realise your "ideas" into actions or objects and have fun doing it. Inevitably some of your shenanigans will contain Art. Enjoy!
My friend who went to art school told me the only reason Basquiat got famous in the first place is because Warhol wanted to smash so he was always gassing him and his work up
The problem I have with art appraisal is the idea that it must amount to some profundity. Art is not dead. People just get agitated when it does things they think is beneath it or outside of it's scope. Art can simply tell a story without being transcendent. Our need for art to liberate every fiber of our being is childish. That would be like suggesting that all clothing must comport with regal of even divine significance. A hoodie is clothing. It's not necessarily cultural, spiritual, or imaginative. Clothing CAN be those things, or it can be more practical and personal. Furthermore, meaning has ALWAYS been a foreign import. No art is intrinsically meaningful. It has always been bridges to other perceptions.
Art is the idealization of the real world according to human standards of beauty and perfection. With her art, the artist is saying, "This is how life can be and ought to be."
great video,but i don't think the "idea of art" is dead but instead it just changed,just like how R.mutt changed the idea of art,the people of his time would say again and again,art is dead,literally every event that challenged the idea of art would lead to this line of thinking,i don't really like andy warhol,but i don't really think he killed art,he did make it full of bullshit with those incredible prices,but it would eventually happen anyway with nfts art still matters,it is still valuable to society,if it did not,it would not be made anymore,a bunch of artist still make very meaningfull art,and people still feel the need for it to be made,be it for teaching lessons,expressing and evoking deep emotions,or just making the human experience something more bearable and i don't think a guy with a funny hair and a cult following composed of a few very rich guys trying to turn art into a product can change that sry for bad english btw
Finally, a straightforward perspective on the man who utilized art to access and construct a persona as demanded by Western 'culture.' I appreciate craftsmanship and experimentation, and perhaps I could overlook works where the printing machine ran out of ink or mistakes occurred. However, overall, his 'art' lacks any enduring value that I would attribute to it.
I watched "The Mona Lisa Curse" a couple of months before this video, so this was a perfect continuation of that. Great video! You could have talked more about art as commodity but that may be a bit too obvious. Just one thing: Emile de Antonio, who was labeled an "art critic" here, was actually a great anti-imperialist documentary filmmaker. He shouldn't be reduced to a friend and defender of Warhol. He made "In the Year of the Pig" about the Vietnam War and "Mr. Hoover and I" about the FBI and much more. Warhol actually filmed him getting drunk, that "film" exists, but no one's allowed to watch it.
After originally getting hype for part 1, I couldn't bring myself to even care about part 2. I grabbed a torrent of it pretty quick in case I change my mind or someone gets me drunk enough, but after how hollow the first part is, I've found myself really appreciating the Lynch adaptation way more. It's definitely flawed, but it has so much more personality shining through it (Lynch has extreme difficulty restraining himself, praise be to God) while also possessing the same mystical and religious themes that are vital to what makes the books unique. Even if they are one-to-one copies of the events described in the book, these new dune movies hardly possess any of that same vitality and just feel like a mish-mash of Hollywood-who's-who and redditor-approved (the book says this! My movie must be like this!) aesthetic design. At least they gave the audience a cool worm flashlight
I've never had any appreciation for visual art beyond esthetics, it's just never had an impact on me. Auditory art is the only form that can have an impact on me emotionally
A lot of people misinterpret Warhol. You're right to say that there was very little in the aesthetic portion. His works are not beautiful in the sense that a Vermeer is beautiful. His works were closer to Duchamp's in the rejection of conventional ideas of beauty. The way I see it, he was intent on speaking the truth, and the truth was pretty ugly. There's a reason for the focus on business and the art industry as a focus. There's a reason that he spoke so plainly. He was making a statement about the way things were well before they became that way completely. He was taking aim at the superficial and absence of meaning because he saw through a lot of the bullshit. This has an effect that we should not ignore. By saying through your work that art is dead and reducing art to a mere object, you call upon those who are true artists to prove you wrong. It is like the person who is about to do something drastic with their lives saying "If God exists, he will show himself to me now!" It's a challenge. Then, when God doesn't respond, the challenger says "See? I told you!" But God does not respond to commands from his creation. I should be clear here. I'm agnostic. I'm using God as a metaphor for art. Art is supposed to be powerful and transformative, but the transformation to which it is currently primarily applied is in the sale of products. To the extent the audience is ok with that, Warhol is relevant and poignant. When the audience turns away from "art as a means to sell product" and turns towards the mystery of being, art as it was formerly conceived becomes relevant once more. What we find ourselves doing right now is waiting for art to lead us out from meaninglessness. If the transformative power of art is real, then the inspiration that a true artist has and follows to completion for the sake of the transmission of a message that is not yet completely understood (even perhaps by the artist themselves) can have a profound impact on us once we are arrested by the ideas that emerge in physical form. When you say "Art is dead", you call forth that artist and their ideas. You dare them to come forward and prove you wrong, just as Warhol did. My hope is that when such an artist emerges, we will be open to the work and allow it to transform you. If the work is good enough, you may not have a choice. I say this as though the art I'm talking about is out there in the world, not yet discovered. They are just as likely to be you or me. All it takes is to pay attention to that small voice that directs us to create the thing that we know we ought to create, but not because it will grant fame, money, status, or access to decadent pleasures. When we create because it honors that voice and allows it to speak as it wishes to be heard, art is reborn. Try it. Or don't. I certainly will.
I think you're giving Warhol to much credit. I haven't seen evidence that he thought all that deeply about it. He made what sold at the time and continued to generate fame and attention. I think it's a stretch that he was attempting to challenge artists to prove him wrong. I think he's still worth investigating as a symptom of a crass consumer society but I wouldn't say he offered any real social critique. He was just emblematic of the hollowness of the new art establishment of the 60s.
I wonder why people see the ruse of NFTs but not the art market. Integration? You can’t display it so socialites get little value outside of the internet. Basing this off value and buzz of things things falling flat, from what I can tell.
Robert Hughes pointed out that art is a form of financial instrument, a medium of investment. That you have people capable of using art that way does not always denigrate the significance of the actual work (if Modern Art actually has any significance). You can be a brilliant artist, but if you are not in a location with an important stock market and serious investors you will probably never get anywhere. Most of those behind Picasso, Warhol, Braque etc. were influential Jewish individuals with links to financial centers. If Van Gogh's brother, Theo, had not been an art dealer then all of his works may have been simply destroyed. Art is an ideological instrument too, to promote empathy for the mentally ill, new aesthetic standards or to encourage and aggrandize the decline of standards in Western culture and society. I personally think that Art has made a great contribution to the decline of Western nations in the last 70 years. Art is the acid test. If you will believe that Picasso or Jackson Pollock were genii and not just opportunistic attention seekers, then you will probably believe anything. People will be pensively affected by even the most trite puerile sentiment like, "All You Need Is Love". I personally think that if Leonardo was a genius he would not have painted Virgin Marys and Last Suppers because he would have known better than to foster the ignorance of the Church. Picasso was the product of marketing, the sucess de scandale. Picasso is basically kitsch. Nothing more - Like all Modern Art. The genius of Warhol was his honesty. Art is marketing like anything else, except it is for the wealthy seeking blue chip investments, and that is its principle agenda. Picasso pointed out that the only thing most people know about art is its cost, and for a reason. The art product does not matter if it makes you look more slender, or if it tastes good. It is pure substanceless marketing, moreso than any other product because if you are marketing to common people then they have common sense and you have to make the product itself to suit them because the profit itself can not be the sole pretext for future profit. You can not say that Warhol is nonsense and Picasso was true art. That suggests to me that you are a straight man politically offended by Warhol. You use the ungrammatical intensifier "butthurt" which is very telling. Art is either all rubbish or all a gnostic transport. I think that it is all aesthetic garbage. Art is a dictatorship, not a democracy and they say that this is great art because it was inevitable that it would be so and we say so. So, if you question them you are an outlier. If you question art you are questioning the right of the British monarchy to reign, or the established narrative of WWII, or that America was predestined to lead the world. There are many things premised on fictions, and to question them at first - it is to become a philistine... But, of course, the human primate has hierarchies that are instinctual, and those who have attained privilege in that hierarchy, have power, and it is not whether something is objectively right or wrong, but the capacity for ruling elite to punish you for having contrary opinions. Michel Foucault was right when he said that all human relations are relations of power. They pollute the minds of young people by implying that there is an intrinsic value to art and that is what defines the value of art, but in reality art is a financial instrument dependent on the proximity of the artist to financial centers; the art object must be like money (unique, difficult to counterfeit and of a unquestioned provenance); and subject to influential marketing. Young people will often go into art, and if they are not mentally ill when they start, they may very well soon be. Finding meaning in art, or having ambitions to become a seemingly sincerely unambitious aesthete (like arch phony "Bank"sy) is like roller skating in a room full of ball bearings because there are no objective standards to hold onto. The only one that has any long term significance is what sells, and to pursue that line for a lucrative career, while you are still alive. That they take the works of dead people and make massive profits from the suffering of the deceased artist is the worst moral indictment of the Art World. Art is The Emperors New Clothes syndrome. You must see what is not there, for the advantage of those you do not see, or who you fear.
Los devotos de Warhol creen que su trabajo tiene un sentido ontológico, pero se equivocan. No porque Warhol no logre desarrollar tal sentido, sino porque lo ontología misma es un mito. Por esa razón es que no creo que el arte este en estado de "descomposición", la transformación campeada por el dadaísmo permite al concepto de arte trascender sus contradicciones y proyectarse a nuevos devenires. Warhol no es contracultural, más bien lo contrario en este sentido.
Theres like a hundred ways i want to interpret "emperor that wears no pants" can someone tell me what its actually supposed to communicate? In my mind its like Ceasar didnt wear pants, im sure it was a toga or whatever
Andy Warhol gave birth to graphic design. Companies then found out it's much more profitable to hire some untalented guy who can put letters and images on a paper than hiring an actual artist. Graphic design is a tumor in the art world, and it has grown malignant in a form of AI art.
Never forget: In Hitler-Germany there was a infamous exihibition "Entartete Kunst" (among them Picassos), and one of the prime arguments wree: "What you see here, a child can do."
I'm an artsy person, I've always hated Warhol's art, thinking it seems both boring & shallow. I'm so sick of people assuming I like Warhol. Thank you for making this video.
The artwork went beyond that of duchamp. In duchamp's time consumerism was not as powerful a force as in the time of Warhol. Warhol's work was about the elevation of popular items or pop culture to that of "high culture." It was about the blurring of the lines between high and low culture. Culture is now self referential and the ubiquitous imagery of consumerism has replaced the old high art. By putting soup cans in frames the artwork is saying that this imagery has replaced the "good" paintings of the past.
All thru this video all i could think was the movie Maestro and all those oscar bait films that come out every year. You often don't hear much about the intrinsic quality of those films, analysis, interpretations and such, but you do hear incessantly thru the media how x actor transformed in the main character after spending 3 years locked in a closet or about how the director has already been nominated 3 times for an academy award or the universal acclaim the "specialized critics" have bestowed upon the film (even tho we are never told why those specialized critic are authorities of film quality). And then you watch the film, and if you didn't pay attention to all the hype around it, you'll leave the theater the same as you entered, wondering if you even watched something. All the validation for this films ultimately comes from the circlejerk the media plays around the critics, the critics who criclejerk around the academy and the academy that circlejerk on itself. If we remove all the media, all the critics and all the cinema priests, will there be any cinema art left? Are they the only thing that keeps us thinking all the mass produced Marvel garbage, endless reboots and such is still something worth watching?
I'm boomer age... so I was a young adult hearing the praise of Warhol in college art major... Professors really went along and valued "social commentary" instead of beauty. It was a terrible time to be in "art school". If we produced anything of beauty we would get a "C" or "D" at most because they wanted to discourage that kind of "art'
i know its not exactly your field, and especially not what you seem to be trying to work on with this channel, but will there ever be something on spinoza? maybe even deleuze on spinoza, idk. or maybe is there something on your patreon?
Thanks for the video. Been reading fred Jameson's postmodernism and trying to think through the idea of what is called postmodern culture being at the same time a kind of realist response to living in the age of what jameson calls multinational capitalism as well as being kind of a part of the fetishism of this age. My favorite thing to come from andy wathol's world is the paul morrissey films flesh, trash, and women in revolt, with candy darling, jackie curtis, holly woodlawn, and little joe.
If i could quote Willy Wonka "YOU'RE WRONG, SIR YOU'RE WRONG!" /insincere No, I will not back myself up. I am automatically right; therefore, I win I do agree that he was definitely super cynical, but who isn't this day in the art market these days Banksy art is anti-capitalist art, and it makes a profit. The world is overall hail to the overlords of capital!
I always knew I hated Warhol when I was younger and I never got into the “art world” to be able to accurately or effectively explain why. So thank you for this. I’ve pissed soooo many artists off by expressing my disdain but it feels like I’m living in a bizzaro world that my opinion is the odd one out.
It's not the odd one out though. Look at all the comments, hell, look at most people saying contemporary art is trash nowadays. I think it's overly simplistic to resume Andy to that criticism.
Dude, your assessment is spot-on. Artists' statements about themselves never seem to be taken at face value. If he says there's nothing behind the surface, I believe him. I think he just did what he wanted to do, and people built a myth around him. If there's any genius to him, it's in the revelation that what we value now is emptiness.
I don't particularly like the Campbell's Soup cans or Brillo boxes. When I was younger I thought he had actually designed the packaging and wanted to memorialise it as art. Not into the flower paintings, electric chairs or disasters. But I do really like Warhol's commissioned portraits of rich people and celebrities. That's how he made most of his money when he was alive and that was his main business. When people talk about the Andy Warhol style it's usually the portraits they usually have in mind.
I agree, 😂 the art world is incredibly pretentious in many cases. Btw there’s much better modern painters who reproduced images, the likes of Sigmar Polke. He made incredible paintings
It’s so funny, his pencil marks aren’t a statement about a catholic doctrine they’re about the solipsism of twentieth century existence, everybody knows that
You have no clue what art is or what it is about. Your view of art is that one of a child's.
agree
The problem is the word "Art" do we mean skilled people who sweat over learning techniques, color, areal perspective, anatomy, composition....Or do we look at "Ideas". The trouble is that the inflated value of work that somehow gets to share a stage with Rubens or Monet and the rise of the art critic and the enlistment of academia, to value "game changing artists that reinvent the way we look at art" vs legions if people that value beauty, realusm, and evoking emotion in work but can't pay their bills or are forced to do a 9-5 like the job I'm at now.
my three year old could have written this comment
Agreed, and all around too smug to be thoughtful about the matter.
ooo la la
Much of what was said here was said by Baudrillard in his book "the conspiracy of art" . Highly recommended
i will read this thanks
Or in 'Simulacra & simulation'.
Omg I’m still on the first paragraph & he is SAVAGE, SCATHING. 🤣
Thanks for the recommendation!
Watch it till the 27:48 and you’ll see this guy did his homework before releasing this video. Just a very compelling argument and referenced video. Hard to disagree with or prove otherwise.
"Medieval artists didn't understand forced perspective, therefore Warhol was really deep for making his art flat and two-dimensional."
Medieval artists did understand perspective. A lot of aesthetic choices were made for a variety of reasons but lack of skill or talent isn’t one of them.
They sometimes used perspective, sometimes didn't. It's hard to talk about such a long part of history with two words. In different ages they needed different ways to get the message across. They actually used a lot of reversed one point perspective, I think there was a psychological reason for that. It makes you feel small compared to what is on the painting.
Medieval artists did not unlearn to draw after the fall of Rome only to learn to draw again during the Renaissance (of Rome) - this did not interest them for a few centuries
They didn't value perspective in 2 dimensional iconography and techniques were forgotten since it was a repeated chore not a creative job (because God works though you and you create for him), a job like being a blacksmith. They were doing wonders in architecture, statues, etc btw
I've been to the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh. He had a weird fascination with newspaper articles of gruesome automobile deaths.
Those Warhol fans remind me of certain strains of economists who obfuscate what is happening with absurd narratives to justify economic policies, when something outrageous but fairly simple and concrete is covered in complex terms and tales of austerity and scapegoats.
Art auctions and galleries are money laundering spaces, not much else
I think you mean Marxists who try to explain how earning a dollar in profit is actually "exploitative" lol
Andy Warhol didn't kill art, he just put it on life support and charged admission to the hospital.
This is a great analogy. He found a way to sell art to people who usually couldn't afford art. By calling old fashioned merchandising "pop art" he turned consumerism into fart sniffing.
He is the reason we have "collector figurines" like funko pops now.
He's the reason putting the word "Supreme" on a coke bottle is some kind of profound genius now.
@@DicePunk Marcel Duchamp
this
Well put 👍
No he didnt
Andy Warhol was a genius because he saw a way to use his artistic skill to live the way he wanted to live, in one of the most expensive places on Earth to live, and all on someone else’s dime, and without having to really do much in the way of real work.
He created the world around him, by being an enigmatic weirdo - hence the iconic hair, and the company he kept - and he made himself the centrepiece of his own culture, knowing all the while, it was all a con.
He very likely believed that credibility bubble would be popped early on, but as the con continued, and grew with enormous amounts of random outside support, he just let the bubble carry him along wherever it would.
It’s no coincidence he started out working in the ad world. Imagine how easy it would be for a genius level conman to make the connection between the commodification in the ad world and the possible further commodification of the art world by using the image of an ordinary commodity - a soup can - as an actual example of, capital, ‘A,’ art.
Transfer an ad copy image of a commodity to a NYC hanging canvas in a legitimate art gallery show, and whamo - deeper meaning, revolutionary art, nothing but the best parties, and money, money, money.
I don’t know anything about you, and your channel, or how passionate you are about your own art, but I assume you’re making videos, instead of painting all the time, because you need the money. If this is the case, it’s exactly what Warhol did in the sense that he wanted to survive in the world solely through his artwork while being his own boss, but unlike you Warhol got super lucky, like some guy who’s homeless, and decides to go out, and live in the foothills, stumbles across a small hole that leads into a cave filled with gold nuggets.
Warhol got lucky, and gave the media, and art world just what it wanted, a commodifiable legitimacy, so yeah Warhol was a genius, but as you say, not as the art critics would have us believe.
Art is dead, History is dead, etc, etc, ...keep your head up, I’ve heard Baudrillard is dead.
How does the esoteric, and often opaque language of the philosopher compare to the esoteric, and opaque language of the art critic? Are we not all just scaffolding up our own constructed realities so we too can afford soup?
Thanks for making videos eh.
Picasso «created the world around him, by being an enigmatic weirdo - hence the iconic hair, and the company he kept - and he made himself the centrepiece of his own culture»
His sucks + i aint read all dat
so Jordan Belfort is also an art genius?
I love your commentary. It is most insightful, to say the least.
And yes, he sure found a way to turn his Art into capital 'C' capital.
There’s a popular theory going around now that capitalism is moving towards neo-feudalism (economists like Yanis Varoufakis and Michael Hudson for example). The contemporary art industry seems like a good example of this movement from traditional productive industrial capitalism to the modern unproductive financialized neoliberal rentier capitalism.
We live in an age of consumerism, capitalism doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did. Contemporary art is a good example of that though, where the act of consumption itself is all that matters(in arts case, the consumption of its image and perceived value), the value is its value. The object is irrelevant next to its symbolic value. Which yes has always been the nature of art, except now that art exists in an entirely symbolic world, where the very act of perceiving it is itself a symbolic one, of consumption. Hyper meta. Or as Buadrillard kindsa said, hyperreal.
Varoufakis mentioned, opinion discarded
Warhol's "genius" was his ability to bullshit people.
His "commentary" on society was that society was foolish enough to view Andy Warhol as an artistic genius. He demonstrated that you don't need talent to become a successful artist.
You can't argue with the message. The world undoubtedly is just as stupid as Warhol was saying it was.
But that doesn't change the fact that he was a shit artist. In fact, his lack of talent is a necessary part of the message.
Warhol knew he was a shit artist. He wanted to be a shit artist. That was the point.
Andy Warhol, the Henry Kissinger of the art world?
He was talented though... look at his older drawings. What a shallow point of view.
Autoresponder set to full on misquote, too
Every elastic is famous for at least 15 minutes of their last 15 minutes.
Mines better.
@@ak-ht2gw"what a shallow point of view" while defending Warhol's art ahhahahahahah you cant make this shit up
@@lana-jg4ho I'm not going to argue with someone replying to a 4 month old comment. The point of view expressed in this video and comment is extremely reductive and shows a lack of knowledge in art history.
Warhol is the perfect representation of how capital ownership is disconnected from labor yet dictates the demands of the entire economy. Andy Warhol is the CEO, who has never set foot in one of the factories, sending down a memo telling line workers & riveters how to do their jobs.
His legacy is found in the motivational meme poster on the wall of the office, 50 years after his death, as the "founder" with a vision.
Warhol is a mirror the proletariat holds up to the bourgeoisie & says "omg he's totally me."
Wtf is that last sentence lol
Edit: By which I mean why the fake AAVE
@@thebigcapitalism9826It's... The parlance of our time, dude.
Fake aav is the language of upper class people trying to emulate authentic culture these days. It's fake, yes. It's always been a decade or two behind actual underground culture.
@@thebigcapitalism9826you think thats AAVE? It's almost more concerning you mistook it as such.
@eleaticeyes813 it's bastardized AAVE. The theft of Black culture by white people has been a US tradition for hundreds of years, and exported globally for about 80 years.
Maybe the real art was the friends we made along the way
Hahaha
the art PIECE THE ART PIECE IS REAAALLL
Definitely. I tell my paintings and sculptures everything. We have coffee and dinner and drinks and vent about our boyfriends. Best friends.
So out of curiosity i tried looking up that documentary, _Mona Lisa Curse_ . Doesn't look like it even got a dvd release. An award-winning documentary and there is no way to watch it legally.
That documentary must have expose some crazy stuff to be banned.
Can it be watched in a legally questionable way? (Did you find any watchable version at all?)
Who cares about watching it legally?
Literally 3rd hit on google (watchdocumentaries)
Every israeli tycoon looks like they could be the antagonist of any 007 movie.
What's such a based comment doing here??? 👀
Lookup Moshe Dayan
that is anti-semitic!!!!!!! you are hamas !!!!!!!!
@@hautparlurker I hope this is satire
@@cindyl3297 does it even matter anymore?
The idea of art is dead.
Long live the idea of the idea of art.
A copy of a copy. I'm glad he ended directly quoting Baudrillard. All art was only ever symbolic, but now art exists in a purely symbolic world.
Speak for yourself.
Vive le Arte!
i agree with everything you have said here but i feel it might be a more productive discussion if we flip the subject/object here, to discuss why we as a society is so obsessed with Warhol instead of drilling into ontology/teleology of him/his art.
still good video! good piece as always.
This reminds me of the bit in family guy where Peter begins to record a plastic bag flowing in the wind and monologues about it’s profundity, while God who is witnessing this remarks “that’s just a bag!”.
He did push The Velvet Underground upwards though (money + exposure through association with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable), so I commend him for that 😄
Broken clocks etc
Another group of no talent jerks that became popular because of hype
"I'll be your your mirror" sung by Nico is one of my favorite songs of all time, thank God he put her on the band.
@@DigaDilson I get you, but rn I'm going through a phase where the abrasiveness and audacity of White Light/White Heat is very appealing to me. When the Velvets dig deep there's few other bands like them. But yeah, Nico was a very nice contrast to their wild experimentation.
Velvet underground with nico is amazing, happy he helped with that otherwise don't rlly care for him
"Am I insane, or is it everyone else?"
If you've been to enough workplaces, you've eventually seen the words, "You don't have to be crazey to work here, but it helps."
What you may not remember so clearly is that, while you were an evil gleam in your father's eye, your unborn soul was shown the words, "You don't have to be crazy to live as a human being, but it helps."
One of the main throughlines of Plastic' Pill's (I apologize, your name escapes me at the time of writing this comment) discussion of Postmodernism is the idea that once upon a time human's made images and lived in relative existential harmony with them, but then oen day the fire Nation attacked and now images call the shots an we live in a fever dream of culturally-induced hallucinations known as The Spectacle.
Though this idea fascinates me, I'm not entirely convinced by it because I don't think there was ever a time where people didn't live entrenched in images. It's just that we've never had the productivity avalible to externalize them on the scale made possible by modernity. (Man has always felt fallen and at odds with his own nature. The story of the Garden of Eden shows very clear signs of predating not only Christianity but Judaism as a monotheistic religion. It could very easily be 10,000 or more years old.)
The point I'm getting at is people don't necessarily believe things because they are true or even because they are desirable. The believe them because in beleiving they adapt themselves to the environment they live in. If you are born into a society where people worship the God known as the Forge of Days and you makea big scene out of being an apostate, they'll throw you out beyond the pail and you'll die. But if you swallow the myth, then you cooperate with everyone else and live even though this god only exists in people's heads.
Anothe way of phrasing the above insight of Postmodernism is to say that the spectacle has made it so that people survive on sufferance to a pretence. All I'm saying is that pretences are the means by which human beings have always survived, the way birdslive on sufferance to the wind. Image is the medium we move through as conscious beings.
The situation we find with Warhol, where the object of divine reverance and supplication is so transparently undeserving of such lurid exhaltation, is almost to be expected by the nature of social myths: If a socially sustaining myth were true, it would not need to function as a myth. If it were too flagrantly untrue, it woud be too incredible to bind individuals into a group identity. faith always fastens onto a situation where a kernal of truth is in precise tension with the unrealized needs of the population.
Nothing would kill the myth of Warhol's genius than actally proving that his art has merit because then there would be nothing to engage with; no suspense. No divine drama demanding faith. If you could prove scientifically that Jesus rose from the dead, Christians would be ecastatic for a while and the grow bored and move on to another myth.
So the answer to the question is, you're not insane, but there's nothing morbid about people believing that Andy Warhol is an artistic genius anymore than it is for children believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. As a rule, people don't grow out of myths. That's a misconception. They grow into them. You have far fewer illusions as a child than you do as an adult in this respect. So, really, the fact that children adopt Santas as a kind of practice myth shows that they're growing up.
CULTIST SIMULATOR MENTIONED 🗣️🗣️🗣️NUCLEAR APOTHEOSIS🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥RRRAAAAHHH
The minimal facts argument for the resurrection convinces enough people as a pretty reasonable proof/explanation of what happened in Easter Sunday and those convinced by it do not simply move on but generally work on themselves and their communities...
@@LosOdium141In other words, their myth teeters so they accept the smallest possible evidence that matches with their predispositions and then quite literally move onto other things.
@@gavinyoung-philosophy if we're being reductive, sure as that's a very human tendency common to all points of view. I fail to see your point.
I'm attempting to argue away from the above idea that "they'd move on" once something is proven. I fail to see that in action, as the specific example given happens to directly contradict my experiences and observations. For some, that is as close to rigorous proof as can exist for such a claim, and once it convinces them (or aligns with their confirmation bias, if I go along with your cynicism) it is not treated as some background fact to be discarded a la Sherlock Holmes learning that the Earth goes around the sun; rather, it empowers them to move on, yes, but then do something with their lives based on the evidence and arguments that have convinced them.
What is the alternative? That once something is proven (if anything can be truly proven under materialistic presuppositions) we mull it over and never sway from the act of pondering it?
To quote that Donald Duck meme, all knowledge is ultimately based on that which we cannot prove. Will you fight, or will you perish like a dog?
To hold to ideals such as mercy, justice, and love is as big a fight as I and many others can muster in a cold uncaring universe. Forgive me if it seems foolish to believe in such things and that they ultimately have some greater source, one that happened to meet us on our level, then died and resurrected to prove it as we remember this week.
@@LosOdium141 I would like to think of the 4 historical stages of Nihilism: First would be organized religion that NoReputation kind of envisions. One could actually even read Dostoevsky's Great Inquisitor as yet another nod to Nietzsche who afaik really liked the one ( terribly translated) copy of "Underground" he read. Second stage, Modernity, the "enlightened" version of it, including "God is Dead, We killed Him" , culminating in the emptiness of Capitalist Cultist Consumerism. Third, the cult of Postmodernism, Anything Goes , including figureheads like Warhol: We do not believe in Modernity or anything anymore anyways. Let's have some fun and reproduce it, as a simulation.
And then, fourth could well be called the Rust Cohle stage, of complete disillusionment: We are individuals in a completely atomized society. And, Warhol just made a cult with followers like any other. - Nietzsche's Zarathustra otoh was at least a book written for Everybody and Nobody. 😉 Finally I agree with NoReputation: No child starts off as nihilist of any stage: "Growing up" , potentially including all the foul compromises with the society one lives in, is making you one.
The more I know about Warhol the more the book "American Psycho" seems to partially be about him. Or maybe not, but he seems to be kind of a recurring theme in it in a subtle way.
Or maybe not
Mary Harron, the director of the movie adaptation also directed I Shot Andy Warhol.
@@canti7951 interesting!
@@canti7951holy crap. Well idk anything about Warhol but I remember reading about American Psycho and vaguely recall the author of the book had some feminist views. And that Patrick Bateman was basically a caricature of psychopathic men. So glean what you will
warhol seemed to ME to be the beginning of the socialite. quite mysterious and having a 'funky' personality, but most likely they just have clinically diagnosed anxiety. confident but self aware enough to not get too cocky. not really good at anything. has 'a' talent but if you think long about it, you start to wonder what the talent is ... (most of the time it's a talent of marketing ... e.g. the kardashians)
The classic and provocative account of how art changed irrevocably with pop art and why traditional aesthetics can’t make sense of contemporary art is probably one of the most thrilling and fascinating notions in the philosophy of art.
Art changed irrevocably with DADA and Marcel Duchamp
I knew warhol couldnt be trusted after seeing how he eats a burger
I actually love that video lmao
Gag - Warholl eat Campbell Soup - he was an autistic and eat always the same thing
24:32 love this breakdown, leaving a timestamp for mysef for future reference. great video dude, love your channel
Bro is backkkkkk🔥🔥🔥🔥
Great video. You put in words what I always felt but didn't have the tools to express.
Warhol's Purple Jumping Man is one of the first pieces of art to give me a feeling like I was being hit by a truck when I first saw it. I believe Andy Warhol liked to mess with people and for the most part, there was nothing beneath the surface and the circus around him was far more interesting than the man himself. But with some of his work, the surface was enough to call it art, imo.
There were definitely more interesting things going on in art around the time of Warhol, though, like Gysin, or the collaboration between Ulay and Abramovic. I like performance art, especially when it cannot be captured by any medium. 90% of it is crap, though, but that's the case for everything.
Abramovich is biggest grifter ever. She disgusts me.
@@MM-my9zr I like her early work about consent, endurance and pain, and the collaboration between her and Ulay is one of the best examinations of love in art, imo. But when they split up, they definitely went down two separate paths in the art world.
I remember one trip to the Warhol museum (where they change the items several times a year because Warhol was nothing if not prolific) and standing in a room of rainbow colored prints of Mao Zedong. You could find one to match your sofa!
Yeap, I studied fine arts, painting. And this guy is a BIG part in my total lack of respect for the art world.
It's 99.999% bullshit.
And yes, Rothko is the .0001% that is not bullshit. I literally cried in the Rothko Chapel, like a baby, no explanation.
Did you cry on Malevich's black square too? They sell them in Home Depot.
@@MM-my9zrLMAO
Warhol was the art himself. Him gaining the success and recognition that he did for his art is the art.
You are correct. Roasting mediocre, over-hyped or shit art is justified. Any love for art I had was devastated in my 4 years in art school. Graduated saying: "if you are not a designer, you are worthless".
AW is decorativist. Decorativisms may or may not have have meaning and they, depending on artistry, may or may not qualify as art.
In reality, graphic designers are worthless. If you're an artist, you can sell your art. You sell art, you make money, you do it for a living, as simple as that. Designers however, everything they do has to come out from the mouths of capitalists. They cannot work for themselves. Use a certain color, make the logo bigger, use a Sans Serif font, for what? To generate more revenue. Graphic design is an inherently soulless and dishonest field that should be abolished so that artists can get paid again.
@@KalitayySorry but I don't think that you are 100% correct. I studied graphic design, but i also studied and love art. So i can Say that yes design Is pretty much dipendent tò capitalsm ecc... But i don't really think that Is completely useless. I think that It can be important for information system and things likes books (i mean a well organized book Is Better). And at the same time i don't think that with the death of the designers the artists Will be free, in the society of the Capital. The art became the slave of the market (yes Is aldready the slave of the market, but for a more exclusive consumer) , and the artist Is not free tò make arts, if the artist Need to make art that become and object tò sell. We can see this things Also in the recent art history with the end of the abstract expressionist (AE) that was endend also for the "choice" of the market to be interested in a new genre of art (pop-art), so a lot of this AE artist endend miserly. I don't want to make a book with this message, but i Just don't want to start a war to Say that art useless or GD Is useless, but Just too Say that the two, under capitalism, are under the subject of the market, so are not free. I would likes to Say that in this context art Is the most destroyed by capitalism, also because there is the false myth that artists are free to make what they want when they are not (look Pollock and his dripping painting). So the two are not free under capitalism. Sorry for the long message and also for my shitty english
Nothing is the ultimate potential.
As a boomer in the 70's I studied art history that included the architecture of each time ... with a professor who had a great passion for it all ... as he used prance excitedly between 2 slides illuminated sharing the richness of each story behind them. So his classes always meant the most to me. I ended loving the Impressionist era the most. But when it got to the so called modern art, I was bored out of my mind ..... but did not know then why and what the hell it was for. And I certainly never knew that was simply Warhol's message, so thank you for making sense of his "art". In my lifetime I have been watching all creative artistic forms that include music & movies slowly slide into the toilet ... and as a conspiracy nutter ... seems more or less on purpose ... happening so slowly each new generation is conditioned to believe that they have the best music. Surreal times.
I connect Warhol's 'revelations' with Huxley (The Doors of Perception, thanks Jim Morrison), the transportive experience, borne of ordinary visual stimuli (curtains and drapes) that resonate with innate, possibly Platonic forms.
Warhol is telling us that what we are seeing is also what transports us.
I, too, perceived him as the death of art, I've been saying it since the 70s.
I'm glad you're back. And I'm glad I finished this video eventually :D It feels like you posted this a long time ago, and it probably just goes to show you I've been thinking about this far too long.
I just wish more people saw it, watched it till the end and subscribed...
So about my experience - at first I was pissed, had to stop, get back, eventually finish it and got soothed.
I think what you're doing here is super sneaky, and it's probably the second video like this - same thing happened with the objectification video. Using controversy, getting people mad to ultimately arrive at something interesting.
Still, I guess it's kind of your presonal beef with Warhol (he was just there for the ride), but never mind at this point. I just want to take a moment and appreciate your ability to construct an argument and put your message across - the structure of it it's really enjoyable.
Btw, just fiinshed watching Zizek promoting his new book on Times Radio, and he's repeating your point about Trump being the ultimate postmodernist. I wonder if he's watching your stuff :D
what about art as anthropological context? like the fact that those paintings by that man are what our society venerates says a lot about what it values aesthetically and morally, and so is imbued by its popularity with meaning. even if those values are ultimately anti-art. ok maybe that's what you're saying ultimately, that the paintings are the product of a society that places no value in art. right that makes sense i got there just had to talk myself through it lol. good video thanks!
it is distinctively a murican thing. everything gets mistified and capitalized: human rights, war, peace, everything pop-culture...
Nice!
An excellent take on the idea of Warhol and its legacy. I do find his throw away comments about the surface useful as a starting point for messing around with the sublime and some of Lacan's and Baudrillard's ideas. Another, thing I find interesting is that he was/is often misattributed where the interviewer often put words into his mouth, born out of frustration from trying to get something from him other than sound bites. This was perhaps because he was such a bad speaker, bordering on the immature when under pressure, and to the point where it eventually became a part of his act. I think it was actually the case with the famous G.Berg interview you mentioned. It ties in with what you were saying about everyone trying to create meaning from his work and the idea of Warhol itself, when in fact as you correctly pointed out he states himself that there was none. Although, I still find him fascinating and I do find the images A Woman's Suicide and Race Riot interesting if not for their artistic value but for their observations of a voyeuristic society. I also find the series Ladies and Gentlemen very intriguing for one obvious painting. PS, loved the R. Hughes clip, and the shock of the [true]!
Your commentary is fresh and honest. I'll try to write as short as possible (thus not be so much more boring)
1- as you mentioned, we must analyze and understand Warhol as a part of [late] Capitalism as a whole. In this sense, it will be fruitful to look at him and his art as capitalist "phenomenon". the word "art" or "artist" should be defined under the circumstances of this age.
2- I think it is impossible to separate the "idea" or better to say "concept" of the art from its actual state. You yourself very well quoted Jean Baudrillard's commentary of Warhol and arts in general. We can say that one of the functions of philosophy in our age is to consolidate the vapor-like nature of affairs and things into more solid, coherent entities, naming them and thus enable us to pinpoint, grasp, nurture of even destroy them. in this sense one might look at the " art in the age of technological reproducibility" by Walter Benjamin, in which he cleverly points the condition of art in capitalism. He shows that what happens to "aura" ( what you called the secret) of Artworks, when it can be reproduced indefinitely. (take a look at Susan Buck-morss's great articles about it.)
3- As you've said, the process was started much earlier, at the dawn of 20th century. Beside what Duchamp and Dadaists were famous for, selling white empty canvases with just the artist's signature by Salvador Dali can be a better starting point. But the vigorous attempt of the American artistic space to invent an "American art tradition" by obfuscating its European precedents (thus making a new tradition without history which is consonant with the American dream) has complicated out path toward understanding the current situation of art.
4-You are completely wright about the banality of the quest for meaning in art of our time. this desperate attempt also gives the "lords" more power and money. From this point i want to pass to a better way tho understand the Warhol phenomenon: instead of focusing on its meaning, we must ask "what are its functions?";" what does it do?". you very well pointed out a couple of its functions (including constant production of meaning) for capitalists, powers, etc.
To add one, we can look at the way in which his works shows us that makes something "art" in our age is just the stage, the setting, the space, not the piece itself. it is the museum/gallery that produces the Aura, not the piece itself. Warhol was the critique of late capitalism. He was its total embodiment, its ideal type of the "artist". He was the caricature that revealed the true nature of art in the age of technological reproducibility: He just merged the museum with supermarket by his constant media publicity. nothing more.
he was not a good artist per se. but his works are symptoms through which we can understand our situation: the capitalist space is an all encompassing one, trying to conquer and integrate each and every time-space into its [ir]rationality.
5- Last but not least: what about the death of Arts?
Yes. something is dead. An autonomous Space of Art disintegrated. But through its explosion, various [much more local, smaller] spaces of art emerged: take a look at outsider art, graffiti, or even what you've drawn so beautifully. The age of invention has begun and i see your commentary as way to pinpoint the "old" and its attempt to stay dominant, thus enable us to move forward.
P.S: it was going to be short. 😅Excuse me for this lengthy comment.
I'd love to cite this in my notes. How should I cite you?
Art in the age of mechanical reproduction is a *fantastic* essay. I’m so glad someone else brought it up!
@@JMoore-vo7ii sorry for delay. it is public. it is now yours.✌
@@Name-ql7jf a seminal work. the gimmick is in "technischen" or technical, which for some reason is translated as "mechanical". Benjamin was trying to refine the Marxist conception of "modes and means of production" by adding a layer which he calls "the technical". Marx carefully exempted art from his analysis of capitalist mode of production; but Benjamin folds it back to political economy and enriches it so that one can see the The essay has much more to offer than just "the art". It is a tool to detect "metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" of commodities.
The commentators of Art often don’t make Art. Those who do and have seen the process have a more realistic idea of what’s involved in the making or manufacturing of Art. Andy Warhol was a manufacturer of Art, he made designs and often had others mass produce these images and often just put his signature on them. The genius at work was that he made a lucrative trade of Art. His life is reflected in the images of course and as an American his images speak to “Consumerism”; did Andy really find happiness in this? He didn’t seem very happy but I’m sure he enjoyed making people smile seeing that they could recognize the image he made and it helped them become more nostalgic even if it were just some soup cans. I will say Andy was adept at what he did to produce on that scale “Pop Art” and maintain a consistent style that anyone can recognize as being his. By seeing his work up close in a museum builds credibility that he didn’t just make screen prints; there was a production and perfection to a degree that’s undeniably above and beyond what others could’ve ever done. Andy started out as a window decorator for some high end fashion retailer; perhaps his genius was that he was secretly bringing Art into the world as a consumerist item to be admired by the masses; often people overlook that he took things most take for granted and gave those ideas attention. Was he sued for his work replicating other things like Coke bottles or Campbell Soup cans? I think he was by Coca Cola but not too many talk about that. Also, Andy knew color and design better than anyone of his time and he pushed the boundaries of what printing could do. The little imperfections are what is the proof that Andy Warhol was human. And we all know he really didn’t like himself so why are people so quick to attack his work? Andy was like a rockstar in that he just did his thing and he was successful as if it was always meant to be.
People dont think about that it takes a lifetime of work doing what he did, there is a resillence in his work, he was living between and for art. To critize the work of another artis, u need to know about everything in its context, history, society, economy, politics, etc
Even more mental gymnastics
No one and nothing, will ever kill art. But the prices / market for representational art was killed by photography, especially color photography, not Andy. But fear not people will always add style and creativity to everything that we make. It is built into our brains, and we will always pay extra to have creativity around us.
Brilliant, what a great watch , it reminds of last weekend at the Tate Modern, someone saw me staring at Marcel Duchamp’s “piss pot”and inwardly chucked, she asked me “what does it mean? I asked, “objectively for subjectively? 😋
Great video! What do you mean when you say "there are no secrets left?"
Andy Warhol IS a genius: he convinced the entire world that his shit means something. But that makes him the most brilliant thief of all time, not artist
By that logic Donald Trump is a genius, and following from that he too is a thief of sorts.
Art generally has no intrinsic meaning. Meaning arises in the confrontation with art. Warhol was definitely naïve enough to understand this and make it the subject of his art.
Alright I'm here for some good old-fashioned _hating_
Plastic Pills does a Warhol video, i wonder if Jameson is going to come up?? Time to watch!
do Banksy next!
Excellent commentary. The emperor's new clothes was exactly what was going through my mind listening to this.
It appears Warhol has unintentionally become a symbol: on one hand - of desperation to salvage art, on the other - of its death. To me this paradox is rather beautiful as it accentuates the very opposite of what the man himself preached: art is in fact essential, even if we have to continually figure out its purpose and rediscover new definitions of geniuses, art - the absolute - remains, just as truth does (even if it's assassinated) or as does love. Misattribution of it onto something less than art/truth/love merely exposes our collective confusion and a deep craving for the real thing.
But this comment might also place me in the same category where all the Warhol fans belong. Funny..
I’m a practicing Artist, professional “officially” since 1992.
Warhol is a conceptual artist on the 1960s when that was rife across the world, E.g. Peter Blake’s paintings of the 1960s.
Warhol bridges Fine Art and graphic design. He made Coca Cola even more popular via his redesign of the curve to the Coca Cola logo. He was primarily commercial. He translates icons from film, television and music and the mundane every day objects around us into simplified iconography. He was obsessed about recording everything around him which fed his final works. This is why he is not a solely traditional artist.
He and his cult entourage moved to make work that was more memorable via it’s “graphics” ideal for advertising.
I'm at the stage of my life where, instead of saying something is bad (art), I'll simply say, "I don't understand it as yet" (Thanks Bliss Foster for opening my mind to this).
One thing I've learned, it's very hard to understand pieces from a different decade, let alone one 30 years, if you never lived through it.
You ask for meaning in his art. At 18:13 you literally placed it on the screen and didn't even realize it (assuming you didn't mention this later in the video. I haven't finished it yet). Your quote reads "During the hippie era people put down the idea of business - they'd say 'money is bad', and 'working is bad', but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art".
That quote itself sums up where his inspiration came from. Hence why all the cooperate arts works. Coca Cola, Campbells, Monroe...yes.. Marilyn was a product of Hollywood. One of the biggest businesses in the world.
Saying bad art doesn't exist is just pretentiousness, worshipping capital is not high art. It's just empty
Do you have a video on Benjamin's Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction? I read Berger's "Ways of Seeing" and he seems to make many of the same points that Baudrillard does
Thank you for that video, you helped society to discard overpriced garbage so we can breath and create new art.
You are the hero we needed
Before judging Warhol, please do check out Warhol's early freehand drawings! They're of exeptional beauty. Not just the Illustrations he did for magazines, but also his very intimate drawings of couples, portraits, nudes etc he did. You will find that he was an extremely gifted Illustrator. This early body of work is often overlooked, but very rewarding to look at, and for me much more intersting than his later works.
This is my first time seeing one of your videos. Really enjoyed listening to what you had to say.
art as object isn't important at all, people will find profundity in anything you put in front of them, our imaginations were the real artists all along.
Truth. It’s all subjective.
Yes, his art is meh…but the context and audience reaction synthesises something unique. He seemed to understand this without perhaps authoring this meaning. But that doesn’t mean seeing his work in countless galleries evokes emotion. When I see “good” art I’m moved. When I see his it’s like seeing a commercialised object that cites some sense of meaning but that is ultimately empty itself. It is an excellent emblem of the decline of culture and art under American capitalism in the 20thc. Maybe AW is art’s tombstone.
I'm no Andy Warhol fan either but imo, this makes him the most honest artist ever. Perhaps the only honest artist. Nothing more nothing less. The secret is exactly that there is no secret and he seems to knows it full well. I find it kinda similar to Adorno's poetry after Auschwitz. What is art after our disillusionment with society? Isn't art just a high class form of barbarism? I think the thing to do here is not to stop making art but to make art that blatantly acknowledges this. Of course there's the irony of his work being praised by these high class "cultured" people and taken seriously but I personally appreciate this irony as this completes the premise of his work to begin with. Imo, he did not kill art but showed it for what it really is.
And this is not me desperately trying to cling on giving any sublime meaning towards his work. I think it's the exact opposite. Imo, to understand Warhol you have to be a skeptic of the "sublime". The idea that great art is profound. I find that reading to be purely sentimental and at times, nostalgic.
Overall, I don't think it's like Warhol and so called modern artists did some crime to art. The crime was already committed, the only thing to do left is depict it.
i literally just had the craziest 25+ minute conversation (with myself) the other day on andy warhol .... but (un¿)fortunately i was high so i literally don't remember what i had said ... i guess i just find it funny that this is in my recommended now.
EDIT: I MADE A VOICE MEMO ABOUT IT OMG i am so smart for being high and aware that my sober self's memory is S-H-O-T
😂
Care to share with the class?
15:16 in my opinion I never looked up to Warhol nore really saw anything special but there was respect for the man anyway. And that’s what I think, there’s a lot of respect for Warhol and his art
Art can't be dead if it never came into existence in the first place... My favorite depiction of Warhol was when David Bowie played him in the movie Basquiat.
Relax peeps. No one killed Art. Art isn't dead. If you believe that then you don't understand what art is. Or more accurately; what it isn't; and Art is definitely not a picture or an object, although it may be found there at times. Which is the glaring problem with this video; assuming that the Great Art of Warhol lies in the quality/labour in the objects he created. Instead of worrying about Warhol, go out and realise your "ideas" into actions or objects and have fun doing it. Inevitably some of your shenanigans will contain Art. Enjoy!
I need to look more into how basquiat became friends with warhol. In my opinion basquiat was a artist who made art from his hart and soul.
My friend who went to art school told me the only reason Basquiat got famous in the first place is because Warhol wanted to smash so he was always gassing him and his work up
basquiat paintings are very cool tho
Basquiat knew people well, and he got access to Warhol. He got a toe in the door, then the rest is history.
The problem I have with art appraisal is the idea that it must amount to some profundity. Art is not dead. People just get agitated when it does things they think is beneath it or outside of it's scope. Art can simply tell a story without being transcendent. Our need for art to liberate every fiber of our being is childish. That would be like suggesting that all clothing must comport with regal of even divine significance. A hoodie is clothing. It's not necessarily cultural, spiritual, or imaginative. Clothing CAN be those things, or it can be more practical and personal.
Furthermore, meaning has ALWAYS been a foreign import. No art is intrinsically meaningful. It has always been bridges to other perceptions.
Art is the idealization of the real world according to human standards of beauty and perfection. With her art, the artist is saying, "This is how life can be and ought to be."
great video,but i don't think the "idea of art" is dead but instead it just changed,just like how R.mutt changed the idea of art,the people of his time would say again and again,art is dead,literally every event that challenged the idea of art would lead to this line of thinking,i don't really like andy warhol,but i don't really think he killed art,he did make it full of bullshit with those incredible prices,but it would eventually happen anyway with nfts
art still matters,it is still valuable to society,if it did not,it would not be made anymore,a bunch of artist still make very meaningfull art,and people still feel the need for it to be made,be it for teaching lessons,expressing and evoking deep emotions,or just making the human experience something more bearable
and i don't think a guy with a funny hair and a cult following composed of a few very rich guys trying to turn art into a product can change that
sry for bad english btw
no offense to your podcast cohosts pills but I wish you'd do more of this kind of thing and less with them 🤫
Finally, a straightforward perspective on the man who utilized art to access and construct a persona as demanded by Western 'culture.' I appreciate craftsmanship and experimentation, and perhaps I could overlook works where the printing machine ran out of ink or mistakes occurred. However, overall, his 'art' lacks any enduring value that I would attribute to it.
aint gonna lie the campbells curvise typography and skewed angle with clean strokes was pretty technical for a painting. That itself is not easy.
I watched "The Mona Lisa Curse" a couple of months before this video, so this was a perfect continuation of that. Great video! You could have talked more about art as commodity but that may be a bit too obvious. Just one thing: Emile de Antonio, who was labeled an "art critic" here, was actually a great anti-imperialist documentary filmmaker. He shouldn't be reduced to a friend and defender of Warhol. He made "In the Year of the Pig" about the Vietnam War and "Mr. Hoover and I" about the FBI and much more. Warhol actually filmed him getting drunk, that "film" exists, but no one's allowed to watch it.
This makes me think about the hype around the Dune movies and the hype around mediocre cultural products in general.
After originally getting hype for part 1, I couldn't bring myself to even care about part 2. I grabbed a torrent of it pretty quick in case I change my mind or someone gets me drunk enough, but after how hollow the first part is, I've found myself really appreciating the Lynch adaptation way more.
It's definitely flawed, but it has so much more personality shining through it (Lynch has extreme difficulty restraining himself, praise be to God) while also possessing the same mystical and religious themes that are vital to what makes the books unique. Even if they are one-to-one copies of the events described in the book, these new dune movies hardly possess any of that same vitality and just feel like a mish-mash of Hollywood-who's-who and redditor-approved (the book says this! My movie must be like this!) aesthetic design. At least they gave the audience a cool worm flashlight
I've never had any appreciation for visual art beyond esthetics, it's just never had an impact on me. Auditory art is the only form that can have an impact on me emotionally
A lot of people misinterpret Warhol. You're right to say that there was very little in the aesthetic portion. His works are not beautiful in the sense that a Vermeer is beautiful. His works were closer to Duchamp's in the rejection of conventional ideas of beauty.
The way I see it, he was intent on speaking the truth, and the truth was pretty ugly. There's a reason for the focus on business and the art industry as a focus. There's a reason that he spoke so plainly. He was making a statement about the way things were well before they became that way completely. He was taking aim at the superficial and absence of meaning because he saw through a lot of the bullshit.
This has an effect that we should not ignore. By saying through your work that art is dead and reducing art to a mere object, you call upon those who are true artists to prove you wrong. It is like the person who is about to do something drastic with their lives saying "If God exists, he will show himself to me now!" It's a challenge. Then, when God doesn't respond, the challenger says "See? I told you!" But God does not respond to commands from his creation. I should be clear here. I'm agnostic. I'm using God as a metaphor for art.
Art is supposed to be powerful and transformative, but the transformation to which it is currently primarily applied is in the sale of products. To the extent the audience is ok with that, Warhol is relevant and poignant.
When the audience turns away from "art as a means to sell product" and turns towards the mystery of being, art as it was formerly conceived becomes relevant once more.
What we find ourselves doing right now is waiting for art to lead us out from meaninglessness.
If the transformative power of art is real, then the inspiration that a true artist has and follows to completion for the sake of the transmission of a message that is not yet completely understood (even perhaps by the artist themselves) can have a profound impact on us once we are arrested by the ideas that emerge in physical form.
When you say "Art is dead", you call forth that artist and their ideas. You dare them to come forward and prove you wrong, just as Warhol did. My hope is that when such an artist emerges, we will be open to the work and allow it to transform you. If the work is good enough, you may not have a choice.
I say this as though the art I'm talking about is out there in the world, not yet discovered. They are just as likely to be you or me. All it takes is to pay attention to that small voice that directs us to create the thing that we know we ought to create, but not because it will grant fame, money, status, or access to decadent pleasures. When we create because it honors that voice and allows it to speak as it wishes to be heard, art is reborn.
Try it.
Or don't.
I certainly will.
I think you're giving Warhol to much credit. I haven't seen evidence that he thought all that deeply about it. He made what sold at the time and continued to generate fame and attention. I think it's a stretch that he was attempting to challenge artists to prove him wrong.
I think he's still worth investigating as a symptom of a crass consumer society but I wouldn't say he offered any real social critique. He was just emblematic of the hollowness of the new art establishment of the 60s.
Dope vid man, always appreciate you
I wonder why people see the ruse of NFTs but not the art market. Integration? You can’t display it so socialites get little value outside of the internet. Basing this off value and buzz of things things falling flat, from what I can tell.
Robert Hughes pointed out that art is a form of financial instrument, a medium of investment. That you have people capable of using art that way does not always denigrate the significance of the actual work (if Modern Art actually has any significance). You can be a brilliant artist, but if you are not in a location with an important stock market and serious investors you will probably never get anywhere. Most of those behind Picasso, Warhol, Braque etc. were influential Jewish individuals with links to financial centers. If Van Gogh's brother, Theo, had not been an art dealer then all of his works may have been simply destroyed. Art is an ideological instrument too, to promote empathy for the mentally ill, new aesthetic standards or to encourage and aggrandize the decline of standards in Western culture and society. I personally think that Art has made a great contribution to the decline of Western nations in the last 70 years. Art is the acid test. If you will believe that Picasso or Jackson Pollock were genii and not just opportunistic attention seekers, then you will probably believe anything. People will be pensively affected by even the most trite puerile sentiment like, "All You Need Is Love". I personally think that if Leonardo was a genius he would not have painted Virgin Marys and Last Suppers because he would have known better than to foster the ignorance of the Church. Picasso was the product of marketing, the sucess de scandale. Picasso is basically kitsch. Nothing more - Like all Modern Art. The genius of Warhol was his honesty. Art is marketing like anything else, except it is for the wealthy seeking blue chip investments, and that is its principle agenda. Picasso pointed out that the only thing most people know about art is its cost, and for a reason. The art product does not matter if it makes you look more slender, or if it tastes good. It is pure substanceless marketing, moreso than any other product because if you are marketing to common people then they have common sense and you have to make the product itself to suit them because the profit itself can not be the sole pretext for future profit. You can not say that Warhol is nonsense and Picasso was true art. That suggests to me that you are a straight man politically offended by Warhol. You use the ungrammatical intensifier "butthurt" which is very telling. Art is either all rubbish or all a gnostic transport. I think that it is all aesthetic garbage. Art is a dictatorship, not a democracy and they say that this is great art because it was inevitable that it would be so and we say so. So, if you question them you are an outlier. If you question art you are questioning the right of the British monarchy to reign, or the established narrative of WWII, or that America was predestined to lead the world. There are many things premised on fictions, and to question them at first - it is to become a philistine... But, of course, the human primate has hierarchies that are instinctual, and those who have attained privilege in that hierarchy, have power, and it is not whether something is objectively right or wrong, but the capacity for ruling elite to punish you for having contrary opinions. Michel Foucault was right when he said that all human relations are relations of power. They pollute the minds of young people by implying that there is an intrinsic value to art and that is what defines the value of art, but in reality art is a financial instrument dependent on the proximity of the artist to financial centers; the art object must be like money (unique, difficult to counterfeit and of a unquestioned provenance); and subject to influential marketing. Young people will often go into art, and if they are not mentally ill when they start, they may very well soon be. Finding meaning in art, or having ambitions to become a seemingly sincerely unambitious aesthete (like arch phony "Bank"sy) is like roller skating in a room full of ball bearings because there are no objective standards to hold onto. The only one that has any long term significance is what sells, and to pursue that line for a lucrative career, while you are still alive. That they take the works of dead people and make massive profits from the suffering of the deceased artist is the worst moral indictment of the Art World. Art is The Emperors New Clothes syndrome. You must see what is not there, for the advantage of those you do not see, or who you fear.
just checked your channel yesterday, and thought "huh, seems dead but it would revive if he talks about art nowadays" and here it is lol.
He uploads like 5-6 times a year, but it is always top quality content
Los devotos de Warhol creen que su trabajo tiene un sentido ontológico, pero se equivocan. No porque Warhol no logre desarrollar tal sentido, sino porque lo ontología misma es un mito. Por esa razón es que no creo que el arte este en estado de "descomposición", la transformación campeada por el dadaísmo permite al concepto de arte trascender sus contradicciones y proyectarse a nuevos devenires. Warhol no es contracultural, más bien lo contrario en este sentido.
Theres like a hundred ways i want to interpret "emperor that wears no pants" can someone tell me what its actually supposed to communicate? In my mind its like Ceasar didnt wear pants, im sure it was a toga or whatever
Look up ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ by Hans Christian Andersen
He’s referencing that
Yes, it's a very specific reference to an extremely relevant children's story.
man I'm so glad i found this video
Andy Warhol gave birth to graphic design. Companies then found out it's much more profitable to hire some untalented guy who can put letters and images on a paper than hiring an actual artist. Graphic design is a tumor in the art world, and it has grown malignant in a form of AI art.
Agreed, AW Killed it , so lit on god , that man slid
awesome vid pills!
Never forget: In Hitler-Germany there was a infamous exihibition "Entartete Kunst" (among them Picassos), and one of the prime arguments wree: "What you see here, a child can do."
This is the greatest video of all time
The masturbation in the art analysis is ridiculous. Miss you brother. Great vid.
I worked in printing. Ink accidents happen in print shops too, lol.
I'm an artsy person, I've always hated Warhol's art, thinking it seems both boring & shallow.
I'm so sick of people assuming I like Warhol.
Thank you for making this video.
The artwork went beyond that of duchamp. In duchamp's time consumerism was not as powerful a force as in the time of Warhol. Warhol's work was about the elevation of popular items or pop culture to that of "high culture." It was about the blurring of the lines between high and low culture. Culture is now self referential and the ubiquitous imagery of consumerism has replaced the old high art. By putting soup cans in frames the artwork is saying that this imagery has replaced the "good" paintings of the past.
All thru this video all i could think was the movie Maestro and all those oscar bait films that come out every year. You often don't hear much about the intrinsic quality of those films, analysis, interpretations and such, but you do hear incessantly thru the media how x actor transformed in the main character after spending 3 years locked in a closet or about how the director has already been nominated 3 times for an academy award or the universal acclaim the "specialized critics" have bestowed upon the film (even tho we are never told why those specialized critic are authorities of film quality). And then you watch the film, and if you didn't pay attention to all the hype around it, you'll leave the theater the same as you entered, wondering if you even watched something. All the validation for this films ultimately comes from the circlejerk the media plays around the critics, the critics who criclejerk around the academy and the academy that circlejerk on itself.
If we remove all the media, all the critics and all the cinema priests, will there be any cinema art left? Are they the only thing that keeps us thinking all the mass produced Marvel garbage, endless reboots and such is still something worth watching?
I'm boomer age... so I was a young adult hearing the praise of Warhol in college art major...
Professors really went along and valued "social commentary" instead of beauty.
It was a terrible time to be in "art school".
If we produced anything of beauty we would get a "C" or "D" at most because they wanted to discourage that kind of "art'
i know its not exactly your field, and especially not what you seem to be trying to work on with this channel, but will there ever be something on spinoza? maybe even deleuze on spinoza, idk. or maybe is there something on your patreon?
Thanks for the video. Been reading fred Jameson's postmodernism and trying to think through the idea of what is called postmodern culture being at the same time a kind of realist response to living in the age of what jameson calls multinational capitalism as well as being kind of a part of the fetishism of this age.
My favorite thing to come from andy wathol's world is the paul morrissey films flesh, trash, and women in revolt, with candy darling, jackie curtis, holly woodlawn, and little joe.
If i could quote Willy Wonka
"YOU'RE WRONG, SIR YOU'RE WRONG!"
/insincere
No, I will not back myself up. I am automatically right; therefore, I win
I do agree that he was definitely super cynical, but who isn't this day in the art market these days
Banksy art is anti-capitalist art, and it makes a profit. The world is overall hail to the overlords of capital!
I always knew I hated Warhol when I was younger and I never got into the “art world” to be able to accurately or effectively explain why. So thank you for this. I’ve pissed soooo many artists off by expressing my disdain but it feels like I’m living in a bizzaro world that my opinion is the odd one out.
It's not the odd one out though. Look at all the comments, hell, look at most people saying contemporary art is trash nowadays. I think it's overly simplistic to resume Andy to that criticism.
Ooh, yeah baby. Confirm my biases for me just like that.
Being the work of art himself doesn't make him not an asshole.
Dude, your assessment is spot-on. Artists' statements about themselves never seem to be taken at face value. If he says there's nothing behind the surface, I believe him. I think he just did what he wanted to do, and people built a myth around him. If there's any genius to him, it's in the revelation that what we value now is emptiness.
Andy Warhol is parent of Tiktok as video art 🎉
I don't particularly like the Campbell's Soup cans or Brillo boxes. When I was younger I thought he had actually designed the packaging and wanted to memorialise it as art. Not into the flower paintings, electric chairs or disasters. But I do really like Warhol's commissioned portraits of rich people and celebrities. That's how he made most of his money when he was alive and that was his main business. When people talk about the Andy Warhol style it's usually the portraits they usually have in mind.
We were the commentary the whole time 😵
I agree, 😂 the art world is incredibly pretentious in many cases. Btw there’s much better modern painters who reproduced images, the likes of Sigmar Polke. He made incredible paintings
It’s so funny, his pencil marks aren’t a statement about a catholic doctrine they’re about the solipsism of twentieth century existence, everybody knows that