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Thursday, June 20, 2013

Will the real Wharhol stand up?

As the ur-postmodernist, Warhol’s entire artistic practice and persona stood, quite intentionally, in opposition to modernist ideas. He was the very antithesis of a Van Gogh, a Picasso, a Pollock. Where they (it was held) re-made the world visually and emotionally in the smithies of their tortured souls (to paraphrase James Joyce), Warhol blithely swiped subject matter from mass media. He presented himself as a kind of empty mirror for the images that were already all around us in advertising or entertainment or packaging. And his persona was famously cool and withdrawn, or even blank: just the opposite of the outsized, impassioned personalities of Picasso or Pollock.
But the The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board treat Warhol and his works with the traditional veneration accorded to the modernists (and their predecessors).
Yet remarkably, the entire discourse and institutional context which was developed in relation to Manet, Kandinsky or de Kooning, and explicitly attacked by Warhol and the postmodernists, is simply reproduced by the foundation, the board, and indeed by virtually all institutions that deal with postmodern art. It’s roughly analogous to scientists trying to account for the latest results in physics using the intellectual equipment of medieval theology.
If art really is over, as Warhol's practice proclaimed, then even "authentic" Warhols–whatever they are, as many of his works were executed entirely by assistants–aren't worth much.

5 comments:

  1. [here's my contribution to this very important topic]

    'the no-content Art'

    - Imagine a hole in the wall
    - ... I did
    - Well start staring!

    [ ha ha you funny guy
    no I mean it...
    in a humorous way]

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  2. the fact that it allowed such figures to gain [I don't know how much prominence they will sustain]
    points to the lighness of the 20th century

    its relative unimportance so to speak

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  3. not everyone enjoyed Picasso it starts going into abstract

    Pollock was serious abstractism very few enjoy these

    Monet and Manet are mezzo even the mothers who didnt go to high school can enjoy them

    all these other performances like abramovic etc point to dance they present the body whether in motion or frozen

    if you like watching dance (i don't) you are into your game

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