Andy Warhol did not just have a cool hairstyle, he had serious talent as well. When I left the Andy Warhol exhibit last week, I was surprised that viewing art could be so much fun. Warhol’s work was fun to view though, as it is some of the most colorful and eccentric that I have ever seen. The man used a mop for a paintbrush, made yarn look electrifying, and urinated on a picture to create a glittering gold color. Through doing all this work, however, Warhol still found time to live the life.
He mingled with the best of celebrities and there are tons of photographs to show that. Warhol knew/photographed the Jacksons, Farah Fawcett, Ian McKellan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Reagan, Sylvester Stallone, and many, many more famous people. Perhaps it was his social life and connections that helped him criticize society.
I think that an artist, such as Andy Warhol, can be an active member of society and criticize it as well. Otherwise, how would the artist know what to criticize? In other words, if you are living your life in a hole, how can you intelligently say something negative about a world that you are not a part of?
Warhol was able to criticize the world because he was a part of it. For example, Warhol criticized consumerism in his artwork. I remember seeing a photo in The Last Decade exhibit that showed Jesus in the background, with pictures of motorcycles, the Wise Owl symbol, and a price tag overlapping Jesus’ image. In this artwork, Warhol was criticizing superficial items, such as motorcycles, that people are so obsessed with. He was saying that in their obsession with material things, people forget more important things, like their religion and their values. Warhol was often in the public’s eye and had a wide circle of associates. I think that Warhol was able to make such a statement precisely because he knew so many people and therefore, knew what people obsess about.
One of the people that I remember that Warhol was photographed with was Nancy Reagan, President Ronald Reagan’s wife. I also remember seeing an artwork where Warhol criticized President Reagan’s spending budget. Warhol was not a politician, of course, but he knew his own share of politicians. In this way, I think that Warhol had his background information when he criticized some politicians’ choices.
Like a good student writing an essay, artists have to be able to defend whatever criticisms they make about society. They have to have their supporting details. Artists can get those supporting details by doing research, by being active in their society and thereby learning what’s wrong with society. I think that they would just be blowing smoke if they made negative or even positive statements about society without even knowing what society is like.
My teacher once told my class a story about five blind men who are all touching an elephant. The men are blind, so none of them can tell that it is actually an elephant that they are touching. They actually think they are touching a snake, or a giraffe, or some other animal. An artist is blind just like the men in this story if the artist does not do his or her research before criticizing society. Without doing research, the artist will end up making false statements about society. Doing that would just be offensive to the society and the people that the artist is commenting on.
