Subject | Matter : Warhol Double Take

Self Portrait, 1986, The Modern Museum of Fort Worth

Looking back at my post from the Warhol exhibit opening last year at the Rose Art Museum, I was surprised to see how little of the show I captured. Although due in part to my unfamiliarity with the artist, I think the real reason I refused to delve into Warhol's work was because I couldn't see anything more than surface matter. I never liked Warhol, no matter how much I was faced with his work. I found it garish, popular, over-priced, and steeped in luxury and extravagance--the kind of art that I avoid.

It wasn't until I took on a Warhol project that I began to see more than the silver fright wig and the gauzy celebrity portraits. To discover meaning in his work, it took more for me than simply looking, and that's exactly what he didn't want anyone to do. It's been said before that Warhol is someone who hid in the limelight, and it's true. Warhol made sure to construct a facade as distracting and captivating as could be, something that reflected a flattering mirror onto a society, a sort of Dorian Gray reversal. 

"It's been said before that Warhol is someone who hid in the limelight, and it's true."

I recently read a discussion dialogue between several Warhol scholars and came upon a section where they were talking about Warhol's Interview magazine. Started by Warhol in 1969, the magazine is at once a tribute and exploitation of the time's most glamorous celebrities. As Benjamin Buchloh argues, Interview cannot be read like reportorial magazines. It doesn't discuss current politics, or social issues, or other news. The people who appeared on the cover appeared as an "affirmation of the rich, the powerful, and the glorious, which says that the picture has no meaning, the personality doesn't stand for anything. The personalities are just another type of subject matter." [1]

What has always bothered me the most about Warhol's work is that it makes me painfully aware of the fact that I am participating in something superficial. Warhol used repetition and beauty, and it lured viewers in. It lures me in too, even if I try to deny it. Last year at the opening of Image Machine: Andy Warhol And Photography, I reveled in the aura that Warhol's world creates. I soaked in the the bright colors, museum mood lighting, and the images of famous people I didn't really know. I drank the Kool Aid, and liked it. Then I walked away none the wiser. Is it possible to disassociate with the subject matter? Not really. If I'm not feeling uncomfortable, I kind of feel like I'm missing something crucial about it.  

I hesitate to make this deeper than Warhol ever intended, because I think, in part, Warhol subscribed to the surface world. But I think it would also be a loss to ignore what lies beneath.  


[1] Discussion with Gary Garrels, Benjamin Buchloh, Trevor Fairbrother, Rainer Crone, and Nan Rosenthal, in The Work of Andy Warhol, (Seattle: Bay Press, 1989), pp. 125-139.

Categories: Andy Warhol

The Problem of Being Original

As I have continued my work in research and writing post-graduation, it has become more and more apparent to me just how difficult it is to be original. All it takes to research a topic is one Google search, and one had likely yielded hundreds of thousands, if not millions of materials with which to work.

In the museum field, I find myself asking why the research I yield has to be penned by me, when I can just cite my sources. Even worse, I wonder whether it is not futile to write something when it has already been written more thoughtfully or succinctly.

This problem is certainly not isolated to writing. Artists, too, stumble upon the problem of being unique in a world that has seen endless visual repetitions. Many artists are preoccupied by this problem, and it has catered into their artistic practices (see Charline von Heyl's manipulation of visual imagery or read about such problems in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus).

I remember in one of my high school art classes learning about the importance of using visual references to assist in building compositions. For one particular project, where we had to make a large-scale pastel drawing using extreme one-point perspective, I went searching for an image of a person reaching out their hand towards the camera. I envisioned a beautiful woman, trying to escape the attention of the camera. In my mind, one hand was reaching out and the other was covering her face. Such an image was nearly replicated in a matter of seconds with an image-search of a few descriptive words. I know that this doesn't sound surprising, but it is an intensely eerie feeling to discover that someone has already had the thought that you believed was your own. I couldn't find the reference image that I found, but I included here my final product. In an attempt to make it my own, I made her shirt blue and her hair red and curly (not an incredibly innovative interpretation). The lesson was: all it takes is an image search to find similar photographic reproductions.

This is the lesson I took with me ever since. I could find anything I wanted--about anything, anyone, anywhere--so long as it existed. And everything exists.

Occasionally, I will stumble upon research that yields little results. It is a joy, not a disappointment. Suddenly, I have an opportunity to contribute, to do some real detective work, which involves synthesizing information, travel, physical investigation, and talking to people. I long to get away from my computer and immerse myself in this kind of work.

When speaking with others in the academic sphere about this, they tend to reply that the solution is to get a doctoral degree, become an expert in something. Because that's where the digging happens. While I recognize this, I worry that a PhD's area of expertise has become so specific, that the success of the research is minimized. It is one thing to spend a life time studying Cézanne, but another to study the repetition of the color blue in Cézanne's still lives between 1866-9. As art scholars add to our history, I wonder, is there anything left to say?

Categories: Art, Education, Personal, Spontaneous