Warhol rocking some killer shades

Andy Warhol will always be remembered as the pioneer of the Pop Art movement and for being one of the preeminent artists of the 20^th century. He practically defined it. In a career that only spanned 58 years, Warhol was not only active in the arts scene but also dabbled in the film and music scenes. Warhol is also know for being a major figure in the counterculture

Early Life

Crude depiction about the involuntary muscle spasm caused by Chorea

Andy Warhol was born on August 26, 1928 as Andrew Warhola in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  His parents were Slovakian immigrants. His father Andrew Warhola sr. was a construction worker while his mom, Julia, was a seamstress. At the age of 8, Warhol had Chorea, which is a potentially fatal disease that causes involuntary muscular twitching. Warhol was bedridden for several months and became an outcast at school. He grew very close to his mother and his mother gave Warhol his first drawing lessons. Warhol would later attend Carnegie Technical College, (now Carnegie Mellon,) graduating with a B.A. in pictorial design.

After college, in 1949, Warhol moved to New York.

Warhol’s ink drawings of shoes

Career

He was first recognized for his quirky ink drawings for shoe ads. Critics praised Warhol for the humor and wit of his drawings. My favorite is the “Checkmate,” where he inventively integrates the checkboard design and the Rook as the heel. Warhol’s approach to art was even evident in his early ink drawings. Unlike many others, Warhol accepts imperfection. Every stray mark, every unintended blemish, Warhol doesn’t erase them. He lets chance play a role in his art.  As Warhol put it: “When you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up with something.”

Cambell’s Soup

In 1961 he coined the term “pop art,” which are paintings that feature common commercial goods. In 1962, he presented his famous paintings of the Campbell Soup Can. These works depicting everyday, ordinary objects greatly contrasted with the previous notion of art being something to capture the magnificent, capture the great. This created great unrest in the art scene. Some of Warhol’s other popular pop art paintings include his depiction of Coca-Cola bottles, vacuum cleaners, and hamburgers. These common items were also a great equalizer. Warhol had this to say about Coca Cola:

Warhol’s 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.”

-Andy Warhol

Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe

At the same time, Warhol was also obsessed with Hollywood and its celebrities. He painted Marilyn Monroe, Mick Jagger, and Elvis Presley in vivid color.

Mick Jagger

Eight Elvises

Perhaps because of his obsession with celebrities, Warhol became active a major player in the counterculture. In 1963, he opened an art studio that it gained the title of “the Factory” because it was like an assembly line of high-quality art. The factory attracted  n eclectic band of artists, drug users, and socialites and around the same time, Warhol began to make films of them. His films were unusual for his conservative time because they almost always included nudity, drug use, same-sex relations, and transgender people. He wanted to show sexuality in its entirety. He wanted to shock the nation into sexual radicalism. He wanted to give voice and give light to a part of our society so long ignored and rejected, for Warhol was one of them. Though never confirmed, many biographers suspect that Warhol might have been homosexual and living in the years just before Stonewall Inn, Warhol’s films brought sexual deviation out from the shadows and into center stage and perhaps played an instrumental role in the fight for same-sex equality.

Warhol intersects many of the themes for this course, fulfilling the notion of Social Justice with his art and the notions of Morals and Norms and NYC characters in all their Diversity.

He fought for social justice in the way he portrayed his Coca Cola bottles or can of Cambell’s soup. One of the reasons why Warhol painted “pop art” was to show the idea that these items, Coca-Cola or soup is common to everyone: not just the poor drink Coca-Cola but the president does too and Marylin Monroe because materials transcend wealth. Materials also transcend sexuality and  all people regardless of sexuality enjoy soup and Coke.

Furthermore, in terms of morals and norms and tackling the diversity of this nation, Warhol criticizes the social conservatism of his age. He questions the nationally accepted notion that marriage is only correct if its between a man and a woman, offering no room for deviation. Warhol tried and succeeded throwing all of this out the window. He presented the public with the ugly truth that they refused to acknowledge and with that he challenged the morals and norms of his society.

Bibliography

“Andy Warhol: Biography.” Biography.com, 6 June 2016. Web. Accessed 21 Nov. 2016.

“Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film.” PBS, 20 Sept. 2006. Web. Accessed 21 Nov. 2016.

Evans, C.T.  and Schilling, K. “Andy Warhol.” Nova, 27 Nov. 2011. Web. Accessed 21 Nov. 2016.

Leong, Henry. “Chorea and Huntington’s Disease.” International Parkinson’s and Movement Disorder Society, n.d. Web. Accessed 21 Nov. 2016

“Warhol Timeline.” Tate Museum, n.d. Web. Accessed 21 Nov 2016.

Will Zeng

15 October 2016

Professor Hoffman

IDC 1001H

Synopsis

George Gershwin is one of the preeminent composers of the 20^th century. He is known both for his popular musical and theatrical compositions.

Brief History

Gershwin was born as Jacob Gershowitz on September 26^th, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. He was one of four siblings.

Gershwin was given a piano at the age of 11 and was a natural prodigy. He dropped out of school at the age of 15 to pursue his talents. Gershwin began his career as a song plugger in NYC’s Tin Pan Alley. The Tin Pan Alley was a nickname given to 28^th street between sixth and Broadway where many songwriters and music publishers were located in the late 19^th century all up to the mid 20^th. A song plugger was a singer or pianist who played pieces of music in areas like department stores back before quality recorded music was developed. It was a very demanding and high-stress job. He spent three years doing this, playing a variety of music to demanding customers, Gershwin became very experienced and dexterous with the piano.

Gershwin soon began writing his own music. His first song was titled “When you want ‘em, you can’t get ‘em.” The piece was innovative for its time but only earned Gershwin $5. Over the next four years, from 1920 to 1924, Gershwin went on to produce music for notable Broadway musicals such as “La, La Lucile.” In these four years, Gershwin wrote 45 songs and produced one 25-minute opera called “Blue Monday.” In 1923, when Gershwin was just 25, his jazz-inspired “Rhapsody in Blue” premiered in the Aeolian concert hall during a concert called “An Experiment in Music.” Rhapsody in Blue was a risky experiment. Gershwin followed up with hits like “Piano Concerto in F” and “An American in Paris.” Some critics of that time were unsure where to place Gershwin’s novel compositions. After all, he pioneered the fusion of the up and coming genre of jazz with the established genre of classical music. Those critics hated Gershwin’s work yet the people loved it.

Later in 1930, Gershwin produced many opera and theatre productions, many of which dealt with the social issues of the time. His most remembered opera, “Porgy and Bess,” opened in 1935 only to mild success. It’s now one of the classic operas.

Gershwin died after a failed surgery to remove a brain tumor. He was 38 years old.

Gershwin: An Analysis with a Focus On Rhapsody in Blue

So why was Gershwin such a pioneer or more precisely why did let himself be associated with jazz, at a time when it was derogatively referred to as “sex music.” Upper-class men and women sneered at Jazz music because it was commonly associated with African American and Jazz flouted all established rules of classical music.

Through my research, I could not find an article that answered my question. However, I wish to propose my own theory based on my research. Gershwin’s career as a song plugger introduced him to a diverse set of music. And because of this, he saw the beauty of Jazz and saw what it represented, but also Gershwin had a foot in classical music and understood what that also represented. He realized that though classical music and Jazz have their differences, they also have their similarities and fit together like puzzle pieces to create a beautiful work of art. And that was what Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is.

A discussion on Gershwin, of course, isn’t complete without a full breakdown of his most well-known composition “Rhapsody in Blue.” As a child, my most fond memory of this song was in Disney’s Fantasia 2000. In this, “Rhapsody in Blue plays in the background of the Great Depression. It’s amazing how well it jives with this era even though Gershwin composed it in 1925. Perhaps because Gershwin came from humble origins. He was raised in Brooklyn New York and build himself up with his own hard work and talent. “Rhapsody in Blue almost speaks about the trials a trepidation of trying not only to survive in 20^th century New York but also to thrive in it. The characters in Fantasia’s Rhapsody in Blue live a hard life but strive and truly believe that they can achieve happiness and that is the American dream.

Gershwin primarily focuses on portraying New York in its entirety. But how, you might ask, how does someone portray character with music? It is difficult but it can be done through the emotion poured into the music score and this is a testament to how much of a genius Gershwin was. First, as I said previously, Gershwin embraced Jazz in all its form, even though it was looked down upon because it was seen as “Black” and vulgar music. Gershwin, however, understood the cosmopolitan and global nature of New York, how she accepted all peoples into her arms. Fantasia also did this justice. It showed the lives of an African-American construction worker striving to become a Jazz musician, a businessman down on his luck without even enough money to pay for coffee, and the life of an endearing upper class girl, almost as if to exclaim that both these people, the poor Black worker, the poor businessman, and the wealthy little girl all contributed to what New York is. Not just one of them but all, he suggests that all lives are important and perhaps equal. Gershwin’s sentiment was lightyears before his time.

Bibliography

“George Gershwin: American Composer.” Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d., https://www.britannica .com/biography/George-Gershwin. Accessed 15 Oct 2016.

“George Gershwin Biography.” Biography,14 May 2014, http://www.biography.com/people/ george-gershwin-9309643#untimely-death. Accessed 15 Oct. 2016.

“GEORGE GERSHWIN, COMPOSER, IS DEAD; Master of Jazz Succumbs in Hollywood at 38 After Operation for Brain Tumor.” NYTimes, 12 July 1937, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ abstract.html?res=9805E6D61F3AE23ABC4A52DFB166838C629EDE&legacy=true. Accessed 15 Oct. 2016.

“George Gershwin Remembered: About the Composer.” PBS, 2 June 2006, http://www.pbs.org/ wnet/americanmasters/george-gershwin-about-the-composer/65/. Accessed 15 Oct. 2016.

“Tin Pan Alley: 1880-1953.” Songwriters Hall of Fame, n.d., http://www.songwritershalloffame. org/exhibits/eras/C1002. Accessed 15 Oct 2016.

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