I do believe that an artist can be both a social critic and an active member of their community, although I think that to be both, an artist sort of becomes more of a social observer than a social critic. To be a social critic I think you have to have some feelings of hate towards the community and you probably wouldn’t live there or even be a part if it. On the other hand to be a social observer, you might see things you don’t like in your community but you know that you must still live there, so instead of criticizing you are commenting. For example, you might live in one of the worst neighborhoods in the world, where violence and injustice roam around freely, and you might stand up against that and comment on the issues your community is facing through your artwork. Nonetheless, you are still going to be inhabiting there and making a living and in essence nothing would ever really change. You would be an observer and a citizen of your community at the same time.

Now, as I did some research on Andy Warhol I came upon something very interesting. According to a website, published by The Andy Warhol Museum, Warhol himself “rejected the idea that his work functioned as social criticism and instead described himself as an American artist who was merely depicting his environment”(Diversity of Voice). Warhol commented on various aspects of American society including religion, violence and our fascination with celebrities. I truly believe that he was just commenting on his environment like he said. I don’t think  he was criticizing it since he was a celebrity himself.

My favorite artwork of his were the celebrities’ pictures on the magazine covers. I also like how the magazine was dedicated solely to celebrities and the interview he had with the young Jodie Foster was really interesting. It made me see a whole new side of her. The Interview made the audience feel closer to various celebrities which I think is great because it reminds us that they are not gods and goddesses. They are people, just like us.

I believe that Andy Warhol opened a whole new world to us. Through his artwork we got to experience a little bit of what it was like to be a celebrity. We got to live our “15 minutes of fame.”

“Diversity of Voice: Views on Guns in the United States.” The Warhol:             resources and lessons . The Andy Warhol Museum, 2009. Web. 19 Sept.     2010. <http://edu.warhol.org/aract_guns.html#about>.

If Andy Warhol is a social critic, then I have no clue what he is talking about. The Last Supper, camouflage, self-portraits, Easter eggs, paint splatter, and urine paintings fail to, for me at least, send any kind of message.

I think that the artist, or any other individual for that matter, has the right to be a social critic but I don’t think that every artist must have a political motive to his or her artwork for it to be considered art. Sometimes a painting is nothing more than a pretty painting and a film is solely meant to be entertainment. The truth is, the viewer will never be able to know the artists exact thoughts while creating a piece of work. Most of our “symbolic interpretation” is just speculation.

We add attachment and meaning to artwork to explain things we don’t understand.  This makes art very much like religion. Art connoisseurs migrate from all over the world to see exhibits. They can’t explain rationally the piece in front of them so they make up reasons why the sculpture or painter chooses to sculpt or paint a particular image. It’s the same with religion. People, Christians in particular, wonder why something bad happens and give it meaning. All of a sudden a tragedy becomes part of “God’s plan.” Just as the follower’s faith gives religion it’s power, the viewer gives the artist his or her power. Like religion, people blindly believe in art. They trust that it will reveal to them some profound truth.

Realistically, it is the viewer, not the artist who is the social critic. The viewer is the one who gives the art meaning and sometimes the viewer is wrong. In 10^th grade, my English class read The Catcher In The Rye, one of the “greatest books of all time.” I however was not impressed. My teacher ruined the novel by forcing clichéd “meanings” on arbitrary details, like turning Holden’s red hat into cry for attention. Whether or not J.D. Salinger included the stupid hat with the intention of showing the reader something about Holden (aside from his fondness of the color red) who the hell knows?

My point is, the artist can do whatever he or she pleases. They can make a statement or not. Either way, people viewing the artwork, will give it meaning. It will become for the viewer some kind of statement because if the viewer cannot identify with the artwork, they won’t see the point. In today’s society, everything is given a purpose because admitting to not understanding is terrifying.

Every member of society who dares to think is a social critic. While some might argue that you need to be an impartial third party to see a situation clearly, it is the people at the heart of the community who feel what is around them and make the truest criticisms. Great artwork is not just seen, but felt by both the artist and the viewer. It is for this reason that I think that the artist must be member of the community they are criticizing to fully understand what the hell they are talking about.

Music. We’ve listen to the beats and rhythms of songs. Sometimes they become earworms or slowly disappear from our memory. What about the lyrics? Do they stay in our heads? Yes and no. But do we really KNOW the lyrics – know what they’re trying to say, what they mean? Take Coldplay’s Politik as an example. What do you think those lyrics mean? I know that at first glance I was confused. I didn’t know what it was about. I only knew when I read album. This is how I felt when I saw some of Andy Warhol’s works. I only realized some things after being reminded of the words, “social critic,” “hypocrisy,” and “community.”

Honestly, I can’t describe Andy Warhol as a hypocrite because he was just exposing the world of the rich and famous. And, in order for him to do that, he had to live like they did. You can say that he was acting like an anthropologist by taking part in their rituals and lifestyles, understanding their morals and actions. If you want to understand a culture, you have to understand their reasons for their lifestyles. You can’t just stand and watch a society live and think you can understand their actions as an outsider. You need to become immersed albeit detached at the same time. So, rather than saying Andy Warhol’s works are hypocritical of his lifestyle, I would say that it’s paradoxical. He wanted to show the world their lifestyles and he can’t do that standing outside clubs.

As for being an active part of his community, I believe that Andy Warhol is more than that – he exposed another world to the world. He showed us how they really lived. The lifestyles of the rich and famous are no different than our own. Maybe Warhol is trying to show us the extravagantness of life and how we can live and waste life simultaneously. Or maybe Andy Warhol is trying to go even deeper than that.

Although Andy Warhol was religious, I felt differently when I saw his artwork, The Last Supper (Be Somebody With a Body). It spoke volumes. I thought, at first, that it was telling us that we should have our own values and morals that pertain to our society today instead of keeping old ones. But, in reality, Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, “God is dead,” was raging in my head. I remembered how “God is dead” because of our actions, i.e., our lifestyles. Our morals and ethics have “killed” the god. The slow decay we have fallen into is shown through Andy Warhol’s work. We need to become “somebody with a body.” We cannot live on religion alone. We have to regain our mortality and sight to see that we have to start living differently. Whatever pertains to the past, does not always relate to us – it has to change. Thus, I believe that Andy Warhol is trying to tell us that our view on any religion has to change. This, to me, is his way of criticizing the religious worlds.

But how do we find the message(s) Andy Warhol is trying to get across? Well, if you can somehow telephone the dead, then yes, you can ask him. The problem is that, if it was possible to contact the dead, he might not have the answer. We have to dig through on our own. The artist’s works make us think, see, and know the truth. They, most probably, have the answers to life’s questions. Or not. But they will have an opinion about it. Their thoughts and views do not necessarily have to be imposed on us, the viewer. We can see artwork and not be affected in any way or see them and be affected. Everything depends on how the artist portrays the truth and on the viewers and the world.

How does it happen? Well, the world affects the artists, but Andy Warhol affects the worlds of society. We may not fully see or understand his works, but there are others who will understand.

Oh! I thought this was interesting: http://blogs.artinfo.com/16miles/2010/06/18/andy-warhol-david-salle-fan/

I found it while I was researching the title for The Last Supper because I knew I was missing another part of the title.

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.

Stranger than your already eclectic artist, more abstract than even Picasso, able to urinate on a canvas and call it art…he’s a fruitcake… he’s a weirdo….he’s, he’s…well of course he’s not anything thing like that, he’s Andy Warhol.  A man for whom the word “pop” must have stood for “paint odd pictures,” because honestly, for some of his work you needed both a historian to explain the time period’s relativity to the piece, and a psychiatrist to measure my response to let me know if I’m “understanding it” correctly. The man was probably a genius, and he made his art speak volumes about everything, the problems in society, the society itself, and even about the more exclusive society of the rich and famous (of which he was an active member).

So, Andy Warhol- social critic? Big time celebrity? Or hypocrite?  The answer is all of the above (except for the “hypocrite.”  The artist’s roles in society often overlap, because in order for him to criticize and point out the flaw in society, he needed to be a part of it.  As a big time celebrity he experienced the pros and cons of that life and its seen over and over in his work.  How else can one say they are accurately criticizing?  One needs to be in the thick of it all, much like Andy Warhol was, because his opinions were able to reach a greater number of people thanks to his celebrity status.

Andy Warhol’s work can be seen as uniquely strange (I mean come on, oxidation paintings??? I never even realized urine was a medium) but his art captures images of common objects that are familiar and relatable to the public.  One example would be his Marilyn Monroe pieces; she was such a recognizable celebrity that her image, along with pieces depicting the Mona Lisa and Jesus Christ, and that of the Last Supper are works that the public understood (somewhat) and could appreciate.  They were iconic and meaningful, however somewhat daunting as well.  One of his works consisted of a silk-screening of Jesus Christ over a hundred times, (I found it a little intimidating) and the message I found within it was that he was reminding the people the God was always watching.

Andy Warhol. A name everyone knows. A person nobody can fully understand.

The role of any artist as a social critic goes hand in hand with their role as an active member in society. As a member in society, one is able to see the corruption from the inside, and experience it as anyone else would. Anyone who experiences a community from the inside and can understand why this community does what it does, can become a social critic. Social critics ask themselves why. Why do these people do what they do? Why do they say what they say? Why do they wear what they wear? Truth is, there’s no right answer. But Andy Warhol is able to uncover a few good ones.

Through his artwork, Warhol shows the way everyone in society conforms to one idea. The Detail of The Last Supper shows Christ repeated 112 times. This artwork shows Warhol’s view of Christ as a repetitive, ongoing subject in society. As said in the piece’s description, the inspiration for this piece most likely came from Warhol’s experiences in church as a child. Right there, his immersion in religious society is shown, and he can therefore pass judgment on the constant repetition and glorification of Christ.

Other pieces of his artwork also show the conformity of people to society. In one of his pieces, he muddles together motorcycles with Christ(nicknamed “The Big C”) and colors of red, white, and blue. He then puts a price on it. 6.99. That’s all it’s worth to people. 6.99. Is it even realistic to put a price on such things as Christ? Apparently, to Warhol, it is. The way he sees it, there’s no reason for anyone to glorify and worship Christ, or motorcycles just because that’s what’s “in” right now. Because that’s what it comes down to. People began to buy motorcycles and began to worship Christ because that’s what everyone else was doing. Warhol knows this because he went to Church and he was a part of the motorcycle group, Hell’s Angels, who are known to represent freedom. Once again, he is criticizing these things, this time by pricing them cheaply, and he was able to do so because he was a part of them.

Much of Warhol’s art captured moments of other celebrities. Television celebrities were a main focus of his, because he felt that he was “watching tv instead of living life….I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.” He had a very negative outlook on television, even though he personally knew celebrities like Jodie Foster, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor. He glorified their achievements, such as Jodie Foster’s going to college in his piece, The Kid Goes to College: Jodie Foster. He mocked celebrity lifestyle as he became one of them. He knew that there was no reason as to why they were glorified. They were just people. He proved this by becoming a celebrity himself, illuminating the fact that anyone could.

There were also many of Warhol’s self portraits. He turned the focus onto himself, turning himself into a celebrity. He noticed how much attention was received from television celebrities and how much influence these people had over others, and he wanted this for himself. He wanted to see what the big deal was. Why did everyone glorify these celebrities? Why did everyone want to be a celebrity? WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?! Truth is, he found out, there is none. It’s all ridiculous and implanted into people’s heads that somehow, celebrities are better than the rest of us.

Most of his self portraits show him camouflaged or moving his head in a manner that suggests he would like to escape. This is highly symbolic of his immersion in society and his desire to get out. Also, the desire to hide and escape are representative of his difficulty in outwardly expressing the fact that he was religious. Another fact that I found interestingly hidden was that he was a homosexual. I think he also tried to camouflage this because of it’s general societal rejection. Oftentimes when people found that he was gay, they were wary of accepting his artwork, so in order to feel socially accepted, Warhol tried to inconspicuously tell the world he was gay without announcing it. Personally, I think that Warhol’s role as an active member in society as well as a social critic branch off of his homosexuality. Since homosexuality was generally not accepted at this time, he was critical of society from the beginning. He wormed his way into becoming a celebrity in order to see why these people were unable to accept him. I believe that because he was able to be a celebrity, and see what was going on “behind the scenes” he was also able to realize that it was the same thing as everywhere else, and he was able to say that it was all crap. The whole idea of being a celebrity and of people worshiping celebrities. It’s all crap. There’s no reason for celebrities to be placed on a pedestal and to be worshiped by the more common and less wealthy people in society. IT’S ALL CRAP!

Who is  “Andy Warhol”?  Before this year I really thought I knew. One day in English 110h, the class was assigned to read an essay by Leonard Kriegel all about his opinion of graffiti.  In this piece were references to Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Not knowing too much about them, I Wikipedia-ed (not an actual word) their names and Andy Warhol came up on both of their pages. I thought to myself, “Might as well look at Andy Warhol also, I do have to go to his exhibit.” Thus began my journey to discover that I really did not know that much about this iconic figure. After a quick skim of his page, I found this really great quote he said about coca-cola:

“Warhol also used Coca Cola bottles as subject matter for paintings. He had this to say about Coca Cola: “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.^[14]

Who knew a picture of Coca-Cola or a can of Campbell’s soup could speak to a random guy on the street and a Hollywood actress.  Warhol was able to control society in this way. He was able to take your average box of detergent and create something that was considered art.  He was able to bring this sense of unique culture to an ordinary America.

I think for Warhol, being an active member of his community, and being a social critic were one in the same. He was friends with famous figures, and then would create art with their images. He was involved in high society yet was also able to create art works about consumerism. Warhol started Interview magazine, which also put the ideas of being a social critic and part of society in harmony with each other.

As seen in the exhibit “Andy Warhol: The Last Decade”, Warhol collaborated with many other artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was a new face and a graffiti artist in the 80’s. Warhol would usually begin with his original artwork and Basquiat would paint his own work over it. In this, Basquiat would almost create a new message or a commentary on Warhol’s original piece creating something completely critical and different.  Their collaborative efforts were just another example of Warhol’s role. By joining forces with Basquiat, Andy Warhol was able meld two seemingly different voices as well as extend his audience and community.

Andy Warhol was always pushing the boundaries of the concept of art, and the definition of an artist.  I was able to see his complete immersion in art and culture and society effectively through the exhibit. He really dabbled in everything in his last ten years of his life. From self-portraits in his classic silkscreen format, to freeing his hands and using his own urine as a centerpiece, Warhol was definitely not what many would consider a traditional artist. There were parts of the exhibit with clips from his television programs he created as well as photos of celebrity buddies.  All of this is art.

I don’t think the mesh of an artist as a social critic and active member of society reflects any hypocrisy in an artist’s role.  Who is to say what the limits of an “artist’s role” really are. As was shown in the Andy Warhol exhibit, the boundaries of art and who an artist is will forever be pushed and reshaped. The Evolution of art and the artist is still in motion.

14. Warhol, Andy (1975). The philosophy of Andy Warhol: from A to B and back again. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-189050-1. OCLC 1121125.