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I'm from Pittsburgh and have been to the Warhol museum twice. (Why I went the second time is another story.) I think he was extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Thy guy obviously had some talent but I doubt he would've made a living without the right circumstances. I'm amazed they get enough people at the Warhol Museum to pay to keep the lights on.
I'm from Pittsburgh and have been to the Warhol museum twice. (Why I went the second time is another story.) I think he was extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Thy guy obviously had some talent but I doubt he would've made a living without the right circumstances. I'm amazed they get enough people at the Warhol Museum to pay to keep the lights on.
I think it is because he is so accessible to the masses. You see it, and you know what it is, and you think you understand it. Many people are intimidated by art. This is understandable because so much of it is pretentious and many museums are intimidating and stodgy.
At the contemporary museum where I volunteered, they tried very hard to tour as many groups of school children as possible and make the museum welcoming and unintimidating. I think they succeeded by using docents like me who had no formal training, but a lot of enthusiasm and a friendly face.
My philosophy is, it doesn't matter what the artist was saying, it only matters what the viewer feels when he looks at it. This may, or may not be what the artist intended.
I hate to blather on, but an example of this is that Georgia O'Keefe said there was no sexual intention in any of her paintings, but everyone who views them sees vaginas in most of them.
I'm from Pittsburgh and have been to the Warhol museum twice. (Why I went the second time is another story.) I think he was extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Thy guy obviously had some talent but I doubt he would've made a living without the right circumstances. I'm amazed they get enough people at the Warhol Museum to pay to keep the lights on.
I was living a few blocks from the museum back in about 1994-ish when it opened. I still have the film pictures I took at the celebrity red carpet event they had one night at the opening.
Warhol was all about marketing. He was popular, he hung with the rich and famous, he had passion and drive, and he developed a designer brand name for himself. He was a master at self-promotion. The most talented artists in the world are, and always will be unknown unless they hire agents and promote their work.
When I see work like Warhol's, I can almost see his ghost sitting next to the canvas laughing his arse off at the fact that he was able to bring such large price tags on such simplistic works that even an untrained 8th grader could produce. His work focused on the most trashy, simplistic, pop culture, consumer driven images that even the common man with no exposure to the art world, could relate to. He really did have the last laugh. All I see in his work is irony.
I was living a few blocks from the museum back in about 1994-ish when it opened. I still have the film pictures I took at the celebrity red carpet event they had one night at the opening.
Warhol was all about marketing. He was popular, he hung with the rich and famous, he had passion and drive, and he developed a designer brand name for himself. He was a master at self-promotion. The most talented artists in the world are, and always will be unknown unless they hire agents and promote their work.
When I see work like Warhol's, I can almost see his ghost sitting next to the canvas laughing his arse off at the fact that he was able to bring such large price tags on such simplistic works that even an untrained 8th grader could produce. His work focused on the most trashy, simplistic, pop culture, consumer driven images that even the common man with no exposure to the art world, could relate to. He really did have the last laugh. All I see in his work is irony.
I'm from Pittsburgh and I always hated his work but I also can see why it works.
Pop Art is like Pop music. Pop music can be extremely simple and juvenile but it's also extremely difficult to make because you are trying to reach the average consumer who has a limited attention span and you have to dumb yourself down to create it.
I went to school for Art and one of the hardest things to do is draw like a child. It sounds easy but it's not.
You know Warhol sure shook up ' Pop Art' to the extent that he , no doubt among all artists at the time, recognized the great potential of common, 'everyday' things to make artistic statements about the world and the people in it. When he got hold of something he made people look at in a novel way,i.e. soup cans and those silk-screens.
And speaking of pop music, I think he was one of the first artists to be identified with a rock band and that was the Velvets. With that band, he pointed rock in a direction where the poisons lurking in an urbanized America get written about in song and with guitars and drums. And arguably he may have had a hand in pushing disco with those strobe lights and the mirror ball that he used down at a Lower East side hangout.
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