Warhol’S_Art_Making_Challenged_Audiences_to_Consider_the_Connections_Between_Art_and_the_World_It_Reflected.

Founded in the late 1950’s and early 60’s and imperative to the art movement referred to as “Pop Art”, Andy Warhol pioneered the concept of bringing commercial art into fine art. He incorporates the rising influence that the media, celebrities, advertising and new technologies had on the culture of his era and allows them to become the subject matter of an artwork by using new art-making techniques and challenging the audience to consider the connections between art and the world. By understanding Warhol’s era, body of works as well as his art-making practice, the audience is able to bear witness to how Warhol stretches the definitions of the nature of art - of what it can be and how it can be made. Pop Art mostly prominent in America was a response to Abstract Expressionism and was a period of radical change. It was a social and political turbulent time of counter-culture revolution that saw the uprise of the civil rights movement, the creation of woman rights, witnessed the assignation of John F. Kennedy as well as the resistance towards the Vietnam War. America also began to prosper after the Second World War in the 1960’s being the era that saw the upsurge of consumerism as well the phenomenon of the media which became of immense influence on society. With the objective to interlink the fine arts and the everyday, pop artists, in particular Warhol began to base their techniques, style and imagery on ideas and characteristics that reflected the 1960’s to create their artworks. Advertising dominated various places such as the streets, magazines and televisions and became highly associated with the American way of living becoming a tool to stir up consumer desire. It played on the idea of materialism and the desire to acquire the beautiful and the glamorous. New technologies such as the television came of age and changed America’s experience of the world allowing media, more specifically film, fashion, music and celebrities influence the lives of Americans. Pop art took inspiration from billboards, magazines, movies, TV, celebrities and comic strips and encompassed these in the world of art ultimately making art in a sense referred to the way of life in the sixties generation. Andy Warhol seized the opportunity to attain mass-produced objects and images and give them significance as the subject of art ultimately eroding the differences between commercial art and fine art. Andy Warhol was a painter, graphic artist, filmmaker and printmaker who played the key figure in the Pop Arts movement in the 1960’s. Originally named Andrew Warhola, Warhol who born on August 6, 1928 and died on February 22, 1987 was the son of immigrants from the Slovakia and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Prior to his art career, he studied Commercial Art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and after moving to New York, Warhol began a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising. It was here that Warhol came to understand mass media marketing and the consumer’s obsession in obtaining the latest commodities which came of great impact and reflected in his body of works. Being amongst the first generation to grow up with the television he understood the way advertising worked and how it persuaded and seduced the society of his era. Andy Warhol sough to extend the definition and medium of art by producing artworks and using new techniques that heavily reflected the sixties era. As an artist he raised the significance of the everyday objects and popular culture to the subject matter in the fine arts using sources such as iconic labels, adverting images and publicity shots. These sources where used repetitiously as seen in mass production and advertising. Through utilizing the concept of production and reproduction in his body of works, Warhol also used the commercial conventions of print-making; a method using silk stencilling to create numerous accounts of the same image. He selected familiar visual representations created in mass media production that the consumerists could identify with and manipulated the image by simply cropping and controlling its scale but more importantly altering the colours and tonal variations of the subject. This is undeniably evident in Warhol’s “Marilyn Diptych” (1962), which was accomplished within the next passing weeks of Hollywood’s Star, Marilyn Monroe’s death in August 1962. It is comprised of fifty images of the same publicised image the actress Marilyn Monroe. On the left side of the diptych twenty five of the same images are produced in colour whereas the twenty five images on the right are grey. The use of a ready made publicity shot imitates the process of mass production and demonstrates how one loses their individuality and identity by reproducing the same print countlessly in various tones and densities. Yet Monroe still remains an individual becoming one of the world’s most iconic personas in the sixties. As the photos transition from coloured depictions of Monroe to grey and finally faded pictures, it is symbolic of the celebrity’s timeline of stardom. The coloured photos mirror her prime, vibrant years as a celebrity and the following of her depression and how the cause of her death led to the ceasing of her career. Warhol’s uses of commercial techniques in producing his body of work include repetition, photographic silk-screening, cropping and overlays and were incorporated to create fine art and therefore expanding the definition of art and how it can be made. His “Marilyn Diptych” (1962) is a reflection of the era in which Warhol lived in as he merged objects relevant to his day and aged commenting on the impact of mass-production and the media had on society ultimately challenging the audience to witness the connection art had on the world it reflected. Andy Warhol was considered one of the most influential artists of the second half twentieth century who sought to extend the boundaries of art and how it can be made. His innovations to bring commercial art into fine art created great response from audiences throughout. Critics, museum curators and historians highly publicised Warhol as he redefine what was considered to be high art. He exploited the relationships between art and the artists by changing the traditional conventions of making an artwork. As a response to Abstract Expressionism; art that did not replicate the everyday but instead focused on the inner genius and feelings of the artist’s life, Pop Art gave society something to identify themselves with. The audience were able to recognise the imagery of commercialism and media and therefore relate and identified themselves with it. The imagery created within Warhol’s body of art in not only “Marilyn Diptych” (1962) but in artworks such as Campbell's Soup Cans (1962), Brillo Box (1964) as well as 100 Coco Cola Bottles (1962) was celebrated and contradicted America’s obsession with consumerism and society’s obsession to attain the most beautiful and glamorous through new technologies such as the television. For artists he served as a major figure of inspiration in particular, Jeff Koon’s “Rabbit” (1986) reflecting the ideas, methods and materials imitating from Warhol’s practice. Therefore Warhol was a idolised figure in the art world, redefining art and the its limits and how it is a representation of the era in which one lives in ultimately closing the gap between fine arts and commercial arts. Overall, as the founder of the Pop Art movement, Andy Warhol played a significant role in incorporating the rising influence that the media, celebrities, advertising and new technologies had on his era creating a connection between art and the world it reflected. Warhol allowed these to become the subject matter of an artwork as well as used new conventions of art making techniques to redefine and stretch the boundaries of art and by doing so gave society the possibility to identify and relate to these body of works. Bibliography Books Marsh, M. Watts, M. Malyon C. 2005. A.R.T. 2 PRACTICE. Australia: Oxford University Press Websites The Andy Warhol Museum, a museum of Carnegie Institute. 2006-2009. Interactive Timeline Available from: http://warhol.gradientlabs.com/ (accessed 20 June 2010) ArtQuotes.net. Summary of the Life of Andy Warhol http://www.artquotes.net/masters/warhol-biography.htm (accessed 20 June 2010) Wanczura D. 2009.Andy Warhol - 1928-1987 http://www.artelino.com/articles/andy_warhol.asp (accessed 20 June 2010) Maryanne Flores