And I cannot stress this enough: bury their bones in an unmarked ditch.
Those are original Warhol boxes. Two Brillos, a Motts and a Campbells tomato soup. Multiple millions worth of original art, set on the floor by the front door.
Theres a regular customer whom i do plumbing work for, for the last 3 or 4 years. These belong to her. She also has Cherub Riding a Stag, and a couple other Warhols that i cannot identify, along with other originals by other artists that i also cannot identify. I have to go back to her house this coming Monday, i might get photos of the rest of her art, just so i can figure out what it is.
Even though i dont have an artistic bone in my entire body, i can appreciate art. I have negative feelings on private art like this that im too dumb to elucidate on.
eat the fucking rich. they are good for nothing.
oh so when they have boxes strewn about it's 'art' but when I do it
You see, art is an ambiguous thing. Just because you make some art, it doesn't mean that you're an artist... but also it does mean you're an artist. But does it mean that art is good art ? Is art good just because the right people say it's good ? Yes. Yes, that's how it works.
If you make anything that isn't what you're told to.make you're an artist. Posting is writing. Writing is art etc. Art that asks those questions isn't a bad thing and Warhol, although being an absolute trash person did mainstream that idea and you wouldn't have the youtube media analysis that brought half of this site over without it.
Warhol's fed-subsidized works are bleak-yet-pretentious trash that have had a negative impact on the art world ever since and I'm tired of pretending otherwise.
In academia, just saying that out loud is likely to make the tenure-track art teachers lose their shit. So much for "subversion" when Warhol's old cynical money printers have been the norm for decades.
Post modernism wad funded by feds but that doesn't make it wrong or bad it just made it a less dangerous outlet for left leaning people during the time. Warhol was a crap person but his art was essential in mainstreaming ideas about art. He was like a Wes Anderson level guy so you get what you get. I'm not like..a fan but also have to admit he's a huge inspiration to my own artwork through others. Like post modernism in general I've got a weird relationship that I'm working on adequately explaining but that's like, a whole project.
My problem is that even the vestiges of the subversive/rebellious roots of it are the establishment now. They're the big money in the art world and have been for generations. The tenured professors of art are almost universally on board and in agreement about the seemingly inexhaustible (yet exhausting) novelty of Warhol's work roughly a half century ago.
I do agree with that but well, it was half a century ago and I can for sure say as a long time diy punk guy the style with being fast and ready with the screnprints and stencils and being easy to adopt by people without traditional artistic skill by doing mixed media of collafes stencils, screenprints etc ofnpre existing images to create a new context is very downline from Warhol and has been pretty big in genuine subversive art
but well, it was half a century ago
Exactly my point. Warhol's "subversions" are so entrenched and established now that it seems absurd to me that they get to keep wearing the "subversion" tag while also commanding the status quo and the gold standard of what is considered to be art for much of the contemporary establishment.
the style with being fast and ready with the screnprints and stencils and being easy to adopt by people without traditional artistic skill by doing mixed media of collafes stencils, screenprints etc ofnpre existing images to create a new context is very downline from Warhol and has been pretty big in genuine subversive art
From what I read about Warhol as a person, I suspect he'd be downright condescending to you if you showed him your work. The good things he did for you weren't for those that came after him and were less than accidents; I think he'd have outright contempt for anything like a working class art movement unless he could directly make a buck off of it.
I don't like the guy. Let me be clear there. I like the effect he had. Net gain.
I halfway agree with you but I can't be sure if it's a net gain considering the entire point of Warhol getting subsidized by the feds was to culturally derail Soviet-inspired art and cultural movements among college age kids in the west. I don't know what might have come of that without the reactionary culture jamming; maybe not much at all, but who knows?
I don't think they needed much help. My pro with post modernism is holy fuck does it describe the current condition but the con and it's a big one is thst it ignores changing it. Post modern problems require modern solutions so to speak, by which I mean Marxism. So art coming from the imperial core is going to reflect the condition of the imperial core, Soviet realism wasn't gonna evolve in America in the 60s anyway, I wanna place an honestly held opinion here and don't wanna get removed for sectarianism so mods, this reflects my suspicions and not necessarily the opinions of GalaxyBrain or theye affiliates but the CIA's goal in all this culture jamming regarding post modernism and Orwell etc was to push the American left towards anarchism. I can't expand on thst without getting into trouble which makes this conversation maybe a bit tougher, but I'll say.that post modernism isn't wrong, it just really accurately describes this hellscspe and offers nothing Marxism doesn't while sometimes pretending to be better.
Also Soviet art at the time did kinda suck.
There's an old saying about irony being the song of a bird that's come to love its cage.
Ideologically, I feel similarly about postmodernism's core messaging. I'm not sermonizing against either as a concept on its own as much as saying they really do effectively cage people ideologically when they become and end as well as a means. "Everything is ambigious and vague, interpretation can not be decisively pinned down, therefore knowledge and ignorance are one and the same, dae to each their own" seems like a contraceptive against revolutionary momentum to me.
I think it's true right now and that's a bad thing. Accurate analysis, but doesn't solve shit
I completely agree with you. I got restless in such art and literature courses (I had quite a few) and deep down, I wanted to say "all right, fine. It's vague and ambiguous. Now what?"
That is the point it's ambiguity and pointlessness all the way down. It's not like the Frankfurt school thought this was a good condition to be under either. The now what hasn't changed cause we haven't done that yet. Post modernism is a shitty name and that I do blame on the cia cause it's too convenient and doesn't sound great in French. Post modernism is the inherently temporary place we occupy right now, and that's worth having a good look at, but it's located at the end of the rubber band that is real material modernism. Post modern should just be called late capital, it's more accurate.
That is the point it's ambiguity and pointlessness all the way down.
I'd like to eventually leave that pit and see what else is possible but the pit instead of sitting in the pit or digging the pit deeper while saying "pit, pit, the pit is the point." Yes, the pit is the point. Sometimes I'd like to not be in the pit and see what else is out there without it being dismissed as "just a painting" or "poems that rhyme aren't serious poetry."
Even the people in this thread that you've dunked on for seeing Warhol's work on a subjective face-value level (and seeing it as, understandably, bleak and ugly) are saying they want to get off of Mr. Bones' Wild Ride, so to speak. A half century (more than a century to be exact if you go back to the roots of the art movement) of saying "gotcha, expectations subverted" is ossifying more and more and maybe something new and different will actually seize the next century's art experience. I can only hope, because reflecting the bleakness of the present status quo, to me, is as ponderous and tiresome as the present status quo itself.
Also, have you ever in your whole history of posting here ever given up on an argument?
What is there to give up? I have a subjective position about art and I'm not going to pledge allegiance to you or what you stand for.
Also, have you ever in your whole history of posting here ever given up on an argument?
Between this and your above post, I think you're getting far too hostile toward not only me but also people in this thread that subjectively don't appreciate (or even see) what you think is so important that you're apparently looking down on them for not "getting it."
There isn't much good that can come of this exchange at this point.
I'm not interested in your gotcha game, be it "SEE? SEE? THIS IS A WARHOL INFLUENCE" or "HAH! LOOK AT HOW LOWBROW AND LOWLY YOUR TASTE IS."
If I wanted more of that I'd sign up for some postgrad humanities courses with the same professors that did that the first time around.
You're so arrogant and hostile to the unwashed masses in this thread, myself included, that I'm truly getting vivid memories of some of those college courses again.
Yes, I liked poetry that rhymed. I even liked genre art, such as Stephen Gammel's charcoal pencil drawings of children's ghost stories. It's inferior to your superior (yet totally punk and subversive) sensibilities, probably.
Oh, that takes me back. That rhyme-hating professor threw such a tantrum in his own class that he made one of the women in it cry because she liked Robert Frost and had the audacity to share one of his poems after being asked to do so because it did indeed speak to her.
That professor wanted to be punk and anti-establishment to the point of bullying people for not being sophisticated enough. His attitude changed over the weekend because I think the department head had a chat with him.
You've already called people in this thread blue curtained ignorant consumers because they're not seeing the evergreenly profound (and subversive, and punk(tm)) importance and eminence you want them to see in Warhol's work.
I didn't do that here. At all. The thing with projection accusations is that they look false when the image being projected does not match yours whatsover.
Can you find a new vector for your reactive rage?
I already mentioned Coleridge and Gammel in two very different sections of the humanities and you had nothing to say about them so far. What's the point of answering there too if you're just going to huff and puff at me anyway?
Naw, fuck a Warhol, I don't even care about that. This is personal. Right now I want you to name a film, a TV show, a piece of still art, a song and a fictional book you enjoy. Just for the record. Won't even reply. I just want to know that there are things in media that you are capable of finding any joy in beyond criticism.
I don't even care about that
This is personal.
No shit.
Right now I want you to name a film, a TV show, a piece of still art, a song and a fictional book you enjoy. Just for the record. Won't even reply. I just want to know that there are things in media that you are capable of finding any joy in beyond criticism.
Your tantrum rings laughably hollow because I already did mention both a poet and a visual artist I liked very much and you didn't even acknowledge that while doubling down on your phantasmagoric illusory version of me to scream at.
I loved Dune, both the novel and the Lynch film, changes and weirdness and all. Hotel California is one of my problematic favorite songs. The Lady and the Unicorn series of tapestries has something new for me every time I look at them.
Is that enough for you to stop raging at me for not pledging due allegiance to the aging pretenses of punk and subversion started (and endlessly perpetuated by art snobs and rich assholes buying it) by a rich asshole fed asset?
Won't even reply.
Dawg, all of that was literally made by Andy Warhol.
You couldn't even resist your "not a fan" toxic fan bullshit for Andy Warhol so you immediately made yourself a liar.
You're claiming, apparently, that everything in the entire world is made by Andy Warhol after Andy Warhol blessed us with his presence. I was expecting that tiresome and trite Great Man Theory nonsense from you. It's laughably false, because even if he contributed and certainly made bank by his contributions, the belief that he singlehandedly created all art that followed by way of some Great Man theoretical determinism is pure liberal bullshit.
Even if it were true, and it's not, it's like expecting endless pledges of allegiance, awe, and praise (while not liking him as a person, right?) for William the Conqueror for establishing the roots of what we call modern English after 1066.
That's what happens when a "not a fan" of Andy Warhol goes all out in defense of Andy Warhol's godlike and unique contributions to the art world that no one else could have matched, surpassed, or replaced in his absence.
Emojis? Andy Warhol did it.
This site? Andy Warhol did it.
Your posts and mine? Andy Warhold did it.
We can only dream of aspiring to the awe-inspiring greatness and high level thinking of taking an undergrad art course
Performatively praising Great Men is a big part of the "in group" in humanities departments.
In the overlap between literature and performance arts, "bardology" is like a malignant tumor that chokes the resources out of anything not Shakespeare, for example. And God help you if you mention anything negative about Shakespeare (such as
) or his Tudor patrons (that were definitely pleased by the character assassination of Richard III) for any reason.Funny how every creep eventually turns to “anti-intellectualism” as their weapon of defense. The French are experts at this today.
Was everyone who criticized “Cuties” anti-intellectual?
It doesn’t really speak to the strength of someone’s position when they have to just depart from the critiques themselves to brandish buzzwords. If your position is strong you should be able to defend it while sticking to the art in question.
If I criticize you it’s because I’m a shrewd critic. If you criticize me it’s because you’re anti-intellectual.
No, my pedophillic fantasy novel isn’t gross, and by criticizing it you’re being the same as literal Nazis (who doesn’t love a little Nazi trivialization?)
"You can't criticize or even dislike the rich connected fed-funded very smartists or their treats or else you are not very smartist."
“Yeah well conservatives also said rap was bad. Care to reconsider your ‘graphic sex scenes between a 12 year old and a 50 year old are bad’ position?”
"Also your criticism is itself a vindicating performance art piece! Dance, unwashed barbarian puppets! Dance for the glory of the abusive sex pest auteurs!"
Dawg, all of that was literally made by Andy Warhol.
The Lady and the Unicorn medieval tapestries were "literally made by Andy Warhol?"
Your not-a-fan toxic fandom for Andy Warhol may be making you see red right now, dawg.
Summary, especially because "literally" a set of medieval tapestries were also credited to Andy Warhol:
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I was hoping for some vague connection between Linda Ronstadt and Warhol to explain the Eagles thing
It's just Great Man Theory shit taken to its most extreme conclusions: you must directly credit the subversive genius of Andy Warhold for everything that came after him (and apparently, everything that came before him) or else you're an unwashed barbarian.
And also he did do art for the Velvet Undeground. Yknow, squatting junkies.
Starbucks provided venues for beat poetry groups, especially early on. Also unsure about whether the Starbucks empire was a net gain there.
More directly to the point, Wal-Mart has had a long tradition of letting people park and sleep in their parking lots. Squatters of a similar feather.
I picked some glaringly distinct ones on purpose, showing the outer margins of bad movements nonetheless providing some benefit in a "trickle down" fashion in their wake.
My problem is that even the vestiges of the subversive/rebellious roots of it are the establishment now.
conservatism is the new punk rock imho.
Me being told over and over again how wholesomely working class and glass roots and punk an art movement was while also calling me a tasteless unwashed consumer drone because I don't endlessly praise the subversive value of a roughly 50 year old picture of a can of soup is definitely me experiencing an unintentional act of performance art in this thread.
Marx, Paine, Christ, the writings are old, older than fifty years. are they not radical, not subversive? what does fifty years mean? Cervantes did metafiction 500 years ago. tragedy is dead, representational art is dead, plato is dead, they've been dead as long as any one can remember, and the modern condition extends generations.
if a disposition towards socialism is a disposition to ameliorate unjust hierarchy and order, then a concomitant and helpful social practice would be one which illuminates how the social order, which comes to us ready made and carved at the joints, and speaks to its own essentialism, is actually unset and contingent. (such works or practices might do so, even just locally, by calling into question and blurring the borders of their own existence/categorization.)
but who cares. a work of art cannot simply be reduced to a series of propositions; an essay or dozens of posts do not encompass an ecstatic truth. if one can't see the playfulness or wryness, if one isn't touched with reflection or curiosity, in watching a dude get sucked off and watching a chick eat a hamburger, or seeing the mass products of mid century, re-oriented and re-produced in mass, re-commodified, finding an aesthetic form in mass production, reducing art (democratizing art?) as products of a factory, then there is simply something wrong with either warhol or the viewer.
but who cares
Clearly quite a few in this thread do.
Marx, Paine, Christ, the writings are old, older than fifty years. are they not radical, not subversive? what does fifty years mean? Cervantes did metafiction 500 years ago. tragedy is dead, representational art is dead, plato is dead, they've been dead as long as any one can remember, and the modern condition extends generations.
Yeah not arguing there, except to ask why the singular absolutist "you are a barbarian if you don't give continual respect and reverence to Andy Warhol" take that I've been replying to?
Crediting all art that followed after Andy Warhol to Andy Warhol with the implication that he had some unique and profound contribution is serious Great Man Theory nonsense, especially because when extrapolated on widely enough, pretty much every person that ever lived contributed something to the present moment whether or not they got rich or famous from it or not. Claims about how all of it would be drastically different without that one rich asshole, that so much art and culture simply would not exist at all in any comparable or similar or even recognizable form even if absolutely nothing else was changed except the absence of Andy Warhol, don't sound leftist and all and are an unprovable hypothesis in favor of belief in the Great Man's unique and special presence.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
He was like a Wes Anderson level guy so you get what you get.
I was so confused, maybe I'm too peasant brained and didn't read the post properly, but for some reason I thought paintings were inside the boxes
After my giant argument, thst was the thing I needed to see most.
ITT people who will analyze the fuck out of a TV show or movie going full the curtains are blue mode on fucking Andy Warhol of all people.
Okay, but for real, the photo you've just posted, being what it is, is a pretty provocative art piece itself. As @macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net said, his art was some meta bullshit regarding the artwork used for advertising and other disposable things, made in a disposable way and sold as high art and it was high art cause he was a high artist. Having a photo of the originals strewn carelessly in some rich guy's house is fucking perfect. I'd buy a print.
This should be the photo image on Wikipedia for post modern art. It literally is
Summary of your takes in this thread: "I am not a fan of Andy Warhol but all art that came after him directly owes him for its existence because he is the Great Man in History. Also he was a genius that would chuckle smugly at all you unwashed barbarians doing performance art simply by disliking his art."
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But idea: Indiana Jones but it's stealing from rich people instead of the indigenous peeps. "it belongs in a museum!"
Andy Warhol would be so fucking happy to see this if he was alive. This would be nirvana style vindication
"Not a fan of the abusive fed asset, BUUUUUUUUUUUT everything that happened after he showed up is part of his master plan and vindicates his Great Man in History greatness!"
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I'd watch that. They could be artsy and dapper instead of shaggy leather jacket man, and have to fight through the Bond rejects a rich dude would hire as security instead of weirdly othered brown people (but not instead of nazis, no need to replace those, any excuse to have the hero beat up some nazis is a good one).
Breaking into Stephen Spielberg's home only to find that his most prized collection of art is protected by a life size replica of the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Arc.
being a plumber is more artistic than those stupid fucking boxes.
rich people are morons.
That's the point of the boxes in the first place. It'd actually even funnier because of that. Andy Warhol would legit be fucking stoked to see this.
That's the point of the boxes in the first place. It'd actually even funnier because of that. Andy Warhol would legit be fucking stoked to see this.
Totally not a fan
the Great Man in History is in totally-punk art heaven chuckling smugly at the unwashed barbarians who just don't get it!Show
At risk of sounding like a peasant, wtf makes those boxes art? Is me asking that the point, so that rich people and art snobs can look down on the people asking if it is art to reproduce a consumer item? I feel like I'm being involved in someone else's masturbation
Is me asking that the point
yes
so that rich people and art snobs can look down on the people asking
not really
Warhol's stuff was "controversial" (and eventually famous and stuff) because of this sort of thumbing-your-nose aspect. I mean the original Brillo box is art - an artist designed it to look appealing to consumers, tell you what's in it, make you feel a certain way, etc etc. The Warhol Brillo box is a silkscreened wooden crate. Is that art? Is it Art? Warhol is the champion of pop art, which (if you're being charitable) is one angle to look at lowbrow functional art that's everywhere in our society. To approach from a different angle: I like socialist realism, it's good for schmucks like me who like a simple story: Lenin or the People or whatever are great because they're 9 heads tall and depicted in a cool dynamic pose, and it's pretty, but it is usually not "great" art that makes you think. I see pop art as trying to make us think about whatever intrinsic, lowbrow appeal might be found in consumer art.
Of course Warhol was super good at the art market. Part of the thumbing-your-nose part is that he was making a whole run of these things, they didn't take that much effort. Everything is silkscreened. Critic and buyer alike were aware that these were not that much more special than the version in stores, and yet somehow rich people were (and still are) paying through the nose for a Brillo box. I have a kind of grudging respect for that at least. I think that at some point, the art market is rich buyers paying to be let into the club - by becoming the butt of the joke they are let in on the joke.
Or as Roger Ebert put it,
Andy Warhol comes along with a genuinely new way of looking at things: pop art. He also has a sense of humor and a certain feel for the mood of our times. He was right. We were ready for pop art.
Then a lot of people, mostly from New York, invest large sums of money in Warhol. Once they've done that, they have a vested interest in keeping his stock up. Their interest is all the more frantic since most of them, I suspect, secretly believe Warhol's soup cans are worthless. They lack the wit to see that Warhol's art really is amusing and pertinent.
So they overpromote Andy, who overextends himself
Pretty much. I think the bored apes have a less interesting artistic merit at the core - I think they're just designed to be intentionally ugly/tacky, which is less interesting to me than a new emphasis on existing commodity art - but both are historically interesting primarily because of the way they socially manipulate rich people.
(Also bored apes have the cryptofascist stuff going on)
Also Jesus christ thank you for apparently being the only other person here who's taken an art class.
God I haven't taken an art class since since high school Art I, I've just been on a few dates with a girl who went to fashion school. C'mon guys, when we were bullying the conservatives who get mad about "modern art" and Rothko that was for real right?
Which makes this even funnier. Seriously, I know some art people that would buy OP's photo. There's some pretentious ass irony here.
It's not ironic if that was the artist's intended use (as you seem to claim). Perhaps it is metaphorical, but seeing as you think Warhol would find this amusing, and based on what other people have been saying, being placed randomly in a rich person's house is the intended use, so it cannot be ironic.
What would be ironic is the Warhol, being made to be sold to rich people, being used to sell cheap cans of soup, then placed in a landfill. Because then it is fulfilling something other than it's original intention, and that's irony.
It's like how Warhol's use of the Campbell's soup logo is ironic because it was made to sell soup, but the art piece itself is not, because it was made to be sold to the wealthy.
being placed randomly in a rich person's house is the intended use
I think Warhol expected these to end up in galleries, where the contrast between commodity art object and fine art surroundings would be intense. He was playing a "trick" on the establishment (one that the establishment was somehow also in on). Finding them incredibly valuable but no longer treated like fine art would probably amuse him; the establishment has responded to his "trick" with their own.
I'm not much of a Warhol guy, but from what little I do know (edit: of his films), I would expect you to be correct. That said, I think if that was the intended use then he was ultimately short-sighted as an artist, which is of the many bad things we can say of Warhol, is not one of those things. Art usually becomes a commodity object after the artist has passed, particularly art that defines a 'period'.
That said, I generally dispute the idea that art in a gallery isn't a commodity object. Unless it has been donated and never changes hands again, it cannot escape the commodity cycle. Additionally, I personally hold that an art piece actually being 'ironic' is nearly impossible, as irony requires a subversion of intention. Things are often used in a piece ironically, but the piece itself is rarely ironic.
Essentially, if the intent was to only exist in a gallery, then perhaps it is ironic, but I think that by placing your art into the gallery space, you are intentionally placing it into the commodity space, which is something I think Warhol, given how generally intentional he was in what he was trying to do, probably expected to happen. And if he wasn't intentional, or simply didn't care where they ended up, then that is not ironic. Irony requires tragedy for there to be comedy.
By "commodity art object" I mean e.g. a Brillo box from the store, not anything that's being treated as a commodity in the Marxist sense. Guess I picked an unclear phrase. I am trying to refer to everyday, functional, commercial art which is subsumed into commodities; the type of art that pop art was referring to.
Fair point. Again though, the rich have always treated art, even 'fine art' in a haphazard, commodified way just like a soup label. I personally always saw the Warhol stills as a commentary on how the establishment treats fine art, and this would just be the natural conclusion of that life cycle, a perfect prediction on his part. Basically, it answers the question 'How do you get a rich person to buy a Campbell's soup label?'. Which fits in with most of Warhol's message which is 'Well really it's just because I'm smarter and understand this whole art thing that's going on better than you.'
Perhaps I am ascribing too much intentionality to Warhol, but given how generally aware he was of the scene he was in and what ended up to other famous artists works, I don't think I'm off the mark.
Yeah I'm confused, how are they art? What is the message or feeling or whatever they're trying to convey? I don't really feel anything when I look at a box of cleaning supplies. If I were in this house I would walk past them, maybe accidentally kick the "millions of dollars worth of art" because they would register to me as less than even worth noticing.
Casual reading on the internet suggests that it is art scene jerk off shit. I'm sure it's just hilarious and thought provoking if you're part of that world, but frankly I find the idea that someone is paying or getting paid millions of dollars for a pretend corporate art box just as offensive as the idea of the corporate art box not being displayed in a place of prominence
We have over a hundred comments threads about the cultural impact of Star wars every month and it gets wrung out dry with the most obsessive analysis no one hear can interpret anything from still art. No one here is allowed to complain about media illiteracy again. This is junior high curtain is blue shit. I can see why this is a debate about treats all the time, it's all people hee understand. I'm not even really into Warhol but this is like art school 101 shit.
I get that you are hyped up on all this stuff, but people are allowed to complain about media illiteracy.
'Getting Warhol' or 'understanding Art 101' is not the bar for media literacy, because, much like Econ 101 or Poli-Sci 101 or any 101 class, the point of doing the 101 class is to understand the basic arguments and terms which a constant academic (and non-academic) discourse is taking place. It is to get people familiar with the terms everyone is using, yeah? It is from there that you can then explore those terms and definitions presented by the discourse, and figure out if you agree or disagree with them and explain why you do or do not, thus participating in and potentially furthering the discourse along. Disagreement with 101 theory (whatever that theory happens to be at the time) is not only expected, it is encouraged. This isn't math.
That's the theory anyways. In reality, 101 classes are about memorizing definitions, sleeping through class, and are unloaded onto some poor grad student or adjunct who would rather be doing research.
Just because they disagree with your analysis and beliefs on still art doesn't mean that they shouldn't happen. After-all, by your own definition, it is art that they are creating.
Good comparison with star wars as another example of corporate schlock, thank you. the offensive thing to me is not some curtains are blue straw man bullshit like you are saying, it's that a staggering amount of money gets wasted by the bourgeoisie on bourgeoisie art which is then financialized and used for more bourgeoisie enrichment when those resources could be used to actually help people.
There’s grift money to be made if you understand that the emperor has no clothes and are willing to perpetuate the kayfabe that he does.
I feel quite a bit when I look at cleaning supplies. Have you ever seen an aisle full of them or a cleaning supply closet? Both situations do have an evocative imagery. Either fluorescent lit rows of bright labels and unnaturally brightly colored chemicals or a dim janitors closet filled with jugs of less appealingly colored and labeled versions of the same, meant for wholesale so no need to have shelf appeal. There's a lot that can come from the mundane. Art is cool.
Both situations do have an evocative imagery. Either fluorescent lit rows of bright labels and unnaturally brightly colored chemicals or a dim janitors closet filled with jugs of less appealingly colored and labeled versions of the same, meant for wholesale so no need to have shelf appeal. There's a lot that can come from the mundane.
You described two scenes (and in so doing went much further than the "artist" here), but nothing "came from" it. I still didn't really feel anything. Those are completely mundane situations and being reminded of them brings no emotions or insights to my mind at all.
I don't feel anything when I look at most paintings on the walls of galleries. I only don't accidentally kick them because they're safely on the wall. I think people, as in specifically our species, have largely deluded ourselves in terms of the impact of static 2D images. You look like once, feel something maybe, shell out a few million to bring it home and then the human/pretty-much-every-organism-with-eyes reaction sets in where if nothing's moving, it isn't important. After a while, you've seen enough examples of every style of 2D images that it becomes a chore to do the mandatory slow walk with reading-of-the-cards past the paintings in the galleries. The ridiculousness comes into sharp relief when you find that the museum through which you've been slow-walking has 24 more wings than you thought, at which point it suddenly becomes acceptable to walk at a reasonable pace and skip entire rooms if nothing immediately catches your eye.
No need to jump from personal distaste of 2-D art to making claims about the entire human race...
Are we not open minded here? Do we not understand the huge spectrum of different ways people move about and view the world?
I'll grant you there will always be people pretending in order to be part of in-groups or whatever but dang let me enjoy a painting.
I like museums and I like art and I can get understand a lot of feelings conveyed by paintings. I just don't see those same things here.
Your comment feels a bit like I criticized Rupi Kaur and got a reply like "yeah poetry is bullshit, people who think there's any meaning in poetry are silly"
I went a little far with it, but my point is that finding something devoid of meaning or emotional impact doesn't downgrade it to not-art. Repeated exposure to anything can sap it of its impact. If somebody were to donate the original Starry Night to my building and they hung it in the lobby, and if that happened without my knowing that it's the original, I'd probably never stop to look at and appreciate it, as I've been exposed to the image so many times and would assume it's just another print. It took Warhol saying "hey, look at this" to make people appreciate the soup can and it would take somebody saying "hey, that's the actual original" to make me actually stop and look at Starry Night.
To be sure, I'm not equating the artistic merits of the works. The Warhol is nice design combined with an art world stunt where he forced people to look at it with new eyes and nowhere near a Van Gogh. The people who own the pictured Warhols have basically reversed the stunt by stacking them as if they had just moved and haven't unpacked, essentially saying "don't look at these."
I went a little far with it, but my point is that finding something devoid of meaning or emotional impact doesn't downgrade it to not-art.
I disagree. I don't think something that lacks any intended meaning or intended evocation of emotion can be art. I know this is an eternal and tired debate, but I don't see the point of the term "art" if you can just say anything and everything is art.
The basis of art is the intent to say something.
this is how I feel when people say "I just don't really like music".
I also think that, like music, experiencing art is something you get better at with practice. I get almost nothing out of metal music or like, classical Indian, because I haven't listened to much. As a culture, we do not spend a lot of time looking at paintings.
What if it's a video game made by Hideo Kojima or Mr Disco Elysium? Still visual art is also allowed to be a commentary on the greater world.
Disco Elysium is rarely 'meta' though. It doesn't really have much to say on the nature of it being a game, or even itself as a product of the capitalist market system. Occasionally there is a joke like 'why is your character running around all the time.' or 'why is the character so inept half time' but that is an in-game joke, not a 'meta' joke that is a commentary of the nature of games as a medium. You're not doing any actual analysis here, you're just throwing shit at the wall. Which is fine and valid if you are fine with making their throwing shit at the wall fine and valid.
You are correct that Kojima does that quite often, generally to an irritating degree in his newer games without an above editor, and he is both beloved and hated for it, in the same way Warhol is.
it's hard to compare works that are so differing in complexity but there are a lot of moments where kojima can go fuck himself too. At least i'm pretty sure he's not being funded by the CIA to crowd out revolutionary sentiment.
The point is that by making you question what can and can't be art, the art has made an intentional statement ("this cardboard box is art") that you're responding to. By many definitions that alone makes it art. Even the people who think it's crap have a vivid emotional response to it, a response directly engaging with the statement made by the piece.
It's like the guy who hung a urinal in an art gallery, if an artist put it in a gallery on purpose, is it art? Explaining why or why not forces you to define art which I think is a somewhat interesting question.
Actually real art is only hyper realistic drawings of naked women thank you
That sounds an awful lot like bullshit.
So if I drop a piece of paper on the floor, point at it and say "that's art" I'm a highly talented artist.
I've never seen a better argument for art being useless.
oh come on this is a dumb argument. Art depends on prior work. Even science does. If you run a study that says "phenylephrine is no better than placebo" the response can be
a) why would you even think it helps
b) holy shit you're right
c) everybody already knows thatdepending on prior investigation of phenylephrine. For a few years we've known that phenylephrine doesn't work, so a study released today would be unremarkable. It might have been a bombshell when people thought it worked, or unremarkable before phenylephrine was used as cold medicine at all. In various years, the same study would have meant different things to a reader. If you are an Art Knower maybe your piece of paper is a rebuttal to some famous similar prior work. Maybe you're a Redditor who snuck into the hexbear art gallery and you're just littering.
This is EXACTLY the same line of reasoning that made 4chan doxx the "Interior Semiotics" girl because they didn't know what semiotics are and hadn't even heard of Interior Scroll. It's the same impulse that makes conservatives ridicule funny-looking scientific studies that actually do have scientific merit once you know the context. You can criticize stuff, some things can only be understood in context but they still suck, but you have to know what you're talking about.
Because in scientific studies you can't have two identical studies that are indistinguishable in every way but ones super valuable because it was done by a famous scientist and the other is worthless because it was done by some guy nobody's ever heard of.
The fact that Warhol painted boxes are worth more than one of the actual boxes filled with a product is the exact opposite of science.
Because in scientific studies you can't have two identical studies that are indistinguishable in every way but ones super valuable because it was done by a famous scientist and the other is worthless because it was done by some guy nobody's ever heard of.
You absolutely can, haven't you heard of impact factor? It's how Avi Loeb keeps publishing garbage papers because he's a big well-cited name. There's a whole mess of problems caused by the fact that journals, researchers, and universities are trying to optimize their work output to be cited by many others instead of being useful on its own merits. Anyway I never talked about the artist themselves. Your piece of paper can't be evaluated without knowing if it's referring to anything. Fame has little to do with it; if Doodle On The Floor was already well-known even an accidental piece of paper on a gallery floor could be interpreted as a brutal "that doodle sucks" response. (These simple examples are the shit done by art school kids who are there to waste money. Usually good art has something more complicated to say.)
Also you have not rebutted my point that you cannot meaningfully judge high-level work in a field without basic knowledge of the field. If you didn't have to know anything about science to read a paper then it wouldn't be science, it would be a New York Times editorial. If you didn't have to have any context to understand a painting (even populist styles!) then it would be housepaint. Philistine argument, plugging your ears and insisting that no legitimate human achievement will ever take a little thinking to wrap your head around.
Again your arguing against these boxes of corporate logos being art.
What is the understanding that I'm missing that makes these carbon copies of boxes of cleaning supplies different from when my daughter traces a cartoon character.
Also with the whole scientific thing you're arguing that the problem is that people give better known researchers more legitimacy which is the exact problem I was sprinting out with the art. It shouldn't be "more artistic" because of who painted it just like those papers aren't more accurate because of who published them.
You're highlighting the exact thing I said made it bullshit.
What is the understanding that I'm missing that makes these carbon copies of boxes of cleaning supplies different from when my daughter traces a cartoon character.
Idk dude, read my earlier comment about it or like the wikipedia page on pop art or something. When you say "So if I drop a piece of paper on the floor, point at it and say 'that's art' I'm a highly talented artist," you are doing some ridiculous nihilist thing where you attempt to say that context could make anything into art, and therefore we shouldn't take context into account. You're arguing against understanding art in general.
It shouldn't be "more artistic" because of who painted it just like those papers aren't more accurate because of who published them.
You are badly misreading what I wrote, so this will be my last reply. I never said it matters who painted it. It matters when it was painted, what it was referencing, what the world was like at the time: what does the work mean? If you drop a piece of paper on the floor, there's no famous Doodle On The Floor to reference, it's just a meaningless piece of paper. When Warhol made those crates, the point was for people to stop and wonder that fine art in a gallery (for instance, a limited run of some woodblock prints) can share almost exactly the same intent and production method as ubiquitous, unpraised commodity art (for instance, postcards in a gift shop). If your daughter was killed in Gaza maybe we'd put her last sketches in a museum. If she showed up in ancient Egypt when nobody knew how to do perspective they'd be a big deal.
No investigation, no right to speak. You will need to learn a little about art if you want to say anything meaningful about it on either level. You can't persuasively argue that a particular pop art piece is "not art" without knowing a little bit about pop art. You can't effectively argue that "art" is contextless and inherent without knowing how these arguments have been already developed and rebutted by different schools of art. This is genuinely intro level stuff.
Is art supposed to be useful? You can't feed your family with the Sistine Chapel or hammer in a nail with the Mona Lisa, are they useless? Just expensive wallpaper?
If you really think like this all I can say is please try appreciating art, not just as pretty pictures but all it's facets. I'm sure you'll find it so much more rewarding than you think. It doesn't take much time or money or education, just find a way to really immerse yourself in some form of art.
I understand the concept of art what I do t understand is why a box of brilliant pads is art if it's done by some asshole and worth millions of dollars when it's undistinguishable from a literal box of cleaning products.
I can appreciate art especially of things that are actually pleasant to look at, somebody getting flustered because there's a couple boxes of paper towels stacked on top of each other is the opposite of that.
At risk of sounding like a peasant, wtf makes those boxes art?
People consider it so, that's literally it.
But according to some very hot takes from a not-a-fan in this thread, literally every piece of art ever made after Andy Warhol's day directly owes him for existing.
Umm this is Art 101 sweaty, come back to me once you get your certificate that allows you to form opinions on artwork. Everyone knows that the goal of art analysis is to find the objective meaning behind it that proves you wrong. If you don’t have the same reaction I do you’re just too dumb to get it. It’s only a coincidence that the objectively correct interpretations of art perfectly coincide with mine! Everyone is stupid but me
You know when a person listens to metal or rap and they say "that's not music, it's just noise, a baby could do that"? You all are putting forth the exact same naive anti-intellectualism that they were skewering on MTV fifty years ago. You can quite justifiably call Warhol a talentless hack who had one good idea, beat it to death in the classic capitalist way, and kept making terrible movies long after he should have packed up. But people here aren't doing any analysis.
What happened? Suddenly the site is heaving with mirror-image conservatives knee-jerk rejecting stuff as "not art", except instead of advancing postmodernist d*generacy the rejects were advancing bourgeois d*generacy. Maybe it's dialectics.
Suddenly the site is heaving with mirror-image conservatives knee-jerk rejecting stuff as "not art"
Good thing I’m not saying that then. Just because you take “I don’t like this art” to mean “I don’t think it’s art” doesn’t mean that’s what I said.
I don’t even know what to say, since you’re responding to a point I didn’t make, but: it’s anti-intellectual to deny that it’s art, not to dislike it.
It’s pretty amazing how you managed to twist that into “freaking out about d*generacy”. Reading my comment again I fail to see any way you could interpret it that way other than in bad faith. But for what it’s worth, I hate most of the realistic traditional oil paintings too, does that balance it out?
Literally all I’m saying is you can’t say that there is an objective meaning of an artwork or that it’s objectively good or bad, and you don’t need to go to art school to form an opinion on any one artwork.
I have never claimed that Warhol wasn’t an artist or that what he made wasn’t art. I don’t like it when people go “you just don’t get it, it’s art 101”. Yes, if I took an art class I would probably better understand the artwork, but I don’t think it’s going to change my base reaction to it.
It’s incredibly insulting to try and equate this with what is essentially a tenet of Nazism. It also trivializes the very real persecution suffered by modern artists throughout the 20th century. I’ve had plenty of IRL disagreements on art and not one person had ever turned around to go “you know who else didn’t like this painting?” because we’re adults and we can disagree on things and they could distinguish between normal critiques and conservative moral panics.
As an extreme example, and I’m not equating Warhol to this at all: Nazi propaganda posters are also art. When I criticize these posters it is implicitly understood that it is because I find the message objectionable and the medium trite, not because I don’t think it’s really art.
Feel free to say my criticisms of Warhol are dumb and stupid, it’s not like I haven’t said that about others’ artistic opinions, but please don’t equate them with conservative panics. People have managed to do this IRL without deviating from the artwork itself to accuse me of anti-intellectualism in order to justify their own position.
For most people art criticism never goes beyond “I like this” and “I don’t like this”. And I think that’s perfectly fine. Most of the time it doesn’t actually stem from deep-seated anti-intellectualism. And this is just my opinion, but I think good art doesn’t need you to go to art school to be able to understand it.
Back to the example of the propaganda poster: I can critique in terms of art or in terms of its intended function. In this case I dislike it in both aspects but with artists like Warhol it’s more common to run into people who criticize one but praise another. I think it’s the exact opposite of anti-intellectualism to investigate and research an artists’ financial backing and how that influenced their output.
Sorry for the gruffness, but as someone who’s been a target of conservative moral panics I don’t react very well to being compared with its instigators.
Dialectics and analysis are about shitting on people for not sufficiently kissing Andy Warhol's ass.
I never said Andy Warhol's art is not art. And you're not doing "analysis" either by shitting on people that aren't giving what you think is due praise, awe, and respect for a fed asset that was paid to derail Soviet modernist trends in western colleges.
Use all the leftist buzzwords you like, you're not doing anything better than the people that simply don't like art they find unpleasant (or tedious and repetitive and pretentious).
you're not doing "analysis" either by shitting on people that aren't giving what you think is due praise, awe, and respect for a fed asset that was paid to derail Soviet modernist trends in western colleges.
I don't care what you said, I wasn't replying to you. I did not say Warhol deserves any awe, praise or respect, but I am shitting on the people blindly reacting that it isn't art and the commenters like you who smear better-informed opinions as Warhol fanboys. I think he was a talentless hack who had one good idea, beat it to death in the classic capitalist way, and kept making terrible movies long after he should have packed up. There's my analysis. It's better than these:
How is that art, AOCapitulator +8
It's just stacked boxes though how is it art to put a box on top of another, usernamesaredifficul +13 (another one who doesn't even understand what the object in question is
Then literally everything is art. [...] This position makes discussing art pointless and arbitrary., SchillMenaker +4
Costco sized boxes of normal ass products are art now? ComradeChairmanKGB@lemmygrad.ml +8
being a plumber is more artistic than those stupid fucking boxes., HexbearGPT +38
wtf makes those boxes art?, carpoftruth +37
how are they art? What is the message or feeling or whatever they're trying to convey?, booty +22
These are the ideas you two are defending.
Pinging @VILenin since I don't feel like writing two comments and yours is what I was responding to. It's totally cool to think that Warhol is bad art, but this comment goes way beyond that:
Umm this is Art 101 sweaty, come back to me once you get your certificate that allows you to form opinions on artwork. Everyone knows that the goal of art analysis is to find the objective meaning behind it that proves you wrong. If you don’t have the same reaction I do you’re just too dumb to get it. It’s only a coincidence that the objectively correct interpretations of art perfectly coincide with mine! Everyone is stupid but me
It's not a coincidence that people familiar with pop art are able to identify one or more possible meanings for these boxes, and people with 0 context are unable to identify any meaning at all. Art 101 is not brainwashing them to have an objectively correct interpretation, it is giving them the basic conceptual tools to draw their own conclusions.
In this thread I have argued against these knee-jerk "not art"s. I'm not asking them to get a special Art 101 certificate that licenses them to share their opinion, I'm asking them to go learn what the hell they're talking about so that they can even begin to form coherent opinions. These people don't even know what the art in question is, multiple commenters think the Warhol piece art is real boxes stacked in a certain way. They have questions that can be answered by a Wikipedia page. They are pitching half-formed ideas that art has to be pretty, or make you feel a certain way, or involve great technical skill, completely unaware of existing conversation about it. It's like if somebody on the street decided to invent utilitarianism from first principles. Discussing "what is art" is primarily a pursuit of non-artists and non-critics, just as much as discussion of "what if a computer could feel" is a pastime of non-programmers and non-philosophers. The most asinine rehashing of undeveloped and contradictory ideas, forever. This is what you are defending.
but I am shitting on the people blindly reacting
You're shitting on them by blindly reacting on them shitting.
Lots of people that don't like a specific piece of art may call it "not art" as a subjective take.
Shitting on them because they don't like it and went far enough to say that it wasn't art to them is tiresome self serving snobbery to me, even if I disagree with them and do think something can be art even if one doesn't like it.
This is what you are defending.
I'd rather defend well meaning comrades that happen to not like the pretentious and bleak "the artist is better than you, everything that comes after him owes him for its existence and even your dislike of his work is part of his master plan, dance puppets dance" messaging of the rich fed-subsidized asshole even if they aren't academically correct in how they say they dislike it, rather than knee-jerk defend the pompous hypocritical elitism of Andy Warhol and his now-establishment status quo fandom.
Nothing is more punk than stepping into a thread with a lot of leftists in it and calling all those leftists unwashed barbarians because they aren't respectful enough of some fed-funded rich asshole.
If you're in this thread arguing about how everything is art, I'm stealing shit off your porch
If you're in this thread arguing about how everything is art, I'm stealing shit off your porch
If you do that, that is art and Saint Andy Warhol the Subversive would smile down from heaven while knowing you are doing his will and continuing his epic legacy. And that's punk!
Any negative reaction you have to those soup cans is just you being a performance art piece yourself.
And you must directly credit Saint Andy Warhol the Subversive each and every time you use it, or you're an unwashed barbarian! Leftist buzzwords here! Rich status quo establishment art snobs are punk!
i hate warhol for what he did to Basquiat. Basquiat should be bigger than warhol. warhol wished he had his talent.
There are a bunch of artists who were doing amazing things, got involved with Warhol and then shit just went bad. Basqiuat is the most egregious though.
he was an artist who made work about racism class struggle and colonialism and daily black life. ill keep it short, he met andy when he was 22 and warhol was 30 years older and super controlling of his carrer and personal life and romantic relationships. now he was bi but theres no proof of their romatic relationship but it was widly speculated because of how they behaved in public. andy got Basquiat mixed up in drugs and parting and then did nothing to help his "protgie" and would make him get back to work. it was a super toxic relationship and Basquiat overdosed a year after andy died. i think any warhol ruined his life personally.
https://www.jean-michel-basquiat.org/paintings/
check out his work yall. thats an order.
I genuinely love his work now that I've seen more of it and I dislike Andy Warhol even more now that you educated me.
This deserves its own thread. In fact I'm going to make it now.
https://www.jean-michel-basquiat.org/obnoxious-liberals/
This is why I let people play with my toy collection
They're supposed to be fun, that's their designated purpose
Art's purpose is to be shared and provoke emotion
This is just a Funko pop wall for the bougie set
Even though i dont have an artistic bone in my entire body, i can appreciate art. I have negative feelings on private art like this that im too dumb to elucidate on.
Same. These rich fucks treat art like million dollar funko pops and it sucks ass.
Jean Baudrillard has some thoughts about private art
It may seem strange to be analyzing the ideological process somewhere other than in the traditional, political or cultural sanctuaries. But the point is precisely that the market for paintings and the auction sale of the work of art permit us to decipher the articulation, and thus the process, of ideological labor because they are situated in the contexts of economic power and the cultural field. The auction, this crucible of the interchange of values, where economic value, sign value and symbolic value transfuse according to the rules of the game, can be considered as an ideological matrix — one of the shrines of the political economy of the sign.
It is a question of decoding the birth of the sign form in the same way that Marx was able to uncover the birth of the commodity form in the Critique of Political Economy. In consumption generally, economic exchange value (money) is converted into sign exchange value (prestige, etc.); but this operation is still sustained by the alibi of use value. By contrast, the auction of the work of art has this notable characteristic: that economic exchange value, in the pure form of its general equivalent, money, is exchanged there for a pure sign, the painting. So it is an experimental terrain, simultaneously collective and institutional, for separating out the operation of this sign value.
The decisive action is one of a simultaneous double reduction — that of exchange value (money) and of symbolic value (the painting as an oeuvre) — and of their transmutation into sign value (the signed, appraised painting as a luxury value and rare object) by expenditure and agonistic competition.
In expenditure, money changes meaning. This fact, established in the auction, can be transferred as a hypothesis to the whole sphere of consumption. The act of consumption is never simply a purchase (reconversion of exchange value into use value); it is also an expenditure (an aspect as radically neglected by political economy as by Marx); that is to say, it is wealth manifested, and a manifest destruction of wealth. It is that value, deployed beyond exchange value and founded upon the latter’s destruction, that invests the object purchased, acquired, appropriated, with its differential sign value. It is not the quantity of money that takes on value, as in the economic logic of equivalence, but rather money spent, sacrificed, eaten up according to a logic of difference and challenge. Every act of purchase is thus simultaneously an economic act and a transeconomic act of the production of differential sign value.
Certainly in everyday consumption the specific (and fundamental) aspects of the auction are largely effaced: the direct experience of competition, the challenge, the agonistic community of peers, etc., which make it such a fascinating moment, the equivalent of poker or the fête. But behind the purchase (or individual reappropriation of use value) there always remains the moment of expenditure, which even in its banality presupposes something of a competition, a wager, a challenge, a sacrifice and thus a potential community of peers and an aristocratic measure of value. Let us not be mistaken: it is this, and not the satisfaction of needs, that occasionally turns consumption into a passion, a fascinating game, something other than functional economic behavior: it becomes the competitive field of the destruction of economic value for the sake of another type of value.
the rich are also why that pile of shit is "worth" so much money, so fuck them for that too.
