Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol = Brilliant.

I’ve always heard about Andy Warhol and I knew bits and pieces about some of his paintings, but I never actually delved deep to understand the reasons behind his choices.  To be honest, every time I go to an art exhibit it’s because I’m usually forced to be there and I don’t really interact with the art and study it.  However about a week ago, I visited the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and my attention was captured from the start to the finish.  I read every caption, looked at every piece of artwork, watched every movie, and skimmed through every book.  His paintings were all gorgeous, even the ones that were urinated on.  I mean, come on, there’s a painting that was made because someone peed on it, that’s gotta be something amazing.

I really enjoyed looking at Warhol’s pieces because not only were they nice to the eye, but there was deeper meaning behind it.  As I stood there, it was sometimes hard to understand why Andy Warhol chose to do what he did, like the repetition of Jesus, but when you think of him as a social critic, it becomes easier to understand.

Recently in Anthropology  101 we have been discussing  what an anthropologist does for a living.  The only way the anthropologist can really study humans and different cultures is to actually live in it and experience it first hand.  I can immediately relate this to Andy Warhol because in essence, he is studying the American culture, and living it all at the same time.  It’s hard for someone who is sitting on the outside of all the commotion to comment on what is going on.  Like the old saying, “to understand a man, you’ve got to walk a mile in his shoes,” Andy Warhol was doing just that.

Although he criticized consumerism, sensationalism, the spectacle of media and celebrities, he was himself all of the above.  After starting his talk show with celebrities, he became one himself.  He was also a consumer at the time and was questioned and influenced by the media.  I don’t think that Warhol was being a hypocrite in doing so because he was being honest.  I found that honesty in every one of his pieces.  I feel as though his works weren’t a call of action or anything, he was basically just stating the obvious.  I’m sure everyone in that time agreed with Warhol’s views even though they were all consumers themselves.

One aspect of his artwork that I really liked is the repetition.  For me, if I look at something over and over and over again, the first few times I’d get something different out of it but after a while, I’d just get tired of looking at it.  In this case, when these images are repeated and they all look exactly the same, it gives it more meaning.  It’s like I’m forced to look at it over and over again because there are just so many of the same images, but it feels like he’s trying to tell you something by doing so.  The repetition almost feels like a scream that can’t really be heard unless we’re actually analyzing the art work.  For example, in the last work of the exhibit, The Detail of the Last Supper, where the face of Jesus is repeated tons of times, Warhol is screaming out to us that he is actually Catholic.  The church was a part of his everyday life and I think that is what he was trying to show by repeating the image, but everyone didn’t find out for sure that he was religious until his death.

Warhol also criticized consumerism, ever since the beginning of his career as an artist.  Warhol’s most famous painting of the Campbell’s soup cans show how society is pulled in by the media.  These “pretty” pictures were all the people needed to just go out and buy a few cans of soup.  For Campbell’s, it wasn’t about the soup, it was about the money and about getting people to purchase their product.  Another artwork that stood out to me was a part of the Last Supper Series.  In this painting, there were pictures of Jesus from the Last Supper as well as motorcycles and a price tag of $6.99.  At the time, motorcycles were “in” and everyone was rushing to get one–the essence of consumerism.  Warhol criticized consumerism by putting a price on things that should be priceless like Jesus.  I’m sure that this must have stirred up controversy during his lifetime from Christians, like himself.

The fact that Andy Warhol was indeed a part of the society that he was criticizing made it all the more believable, honest, sincere, moving, and controversial.  The purpose of an artist should be to stir up conversation and that is exactly what he does in his pieces from The Last Decade.  In order to judge, he should have walked a mile in that person’s shoes–the person being the celebrity and the consumer.

Andy Warhol said, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am.  There’s nothing behind it.”  Warhol believed that when you think about something for too long, especially one of his paintings, it loses its meaning, if he intended for there to be a meaning or not.  He admits to wanting to be “plastic” and says that anyone can get famous in fifteen minutes.  He wanted to prove how easy it was to become famous, even if he considered himself a loser who like “boring things.”  Andy Warhol was just one of us.