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.
yes
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,
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?
So Andy Warhol was the precursor to the bored ape yacht club?
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)
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.
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.