zacheichelberger

 

 

Introduction

          What do we think of when considering the artistic movement known as Pop Art? The dramatic portrayals of comic books in the work of Roy Lichtenstein? The flags, numbers, and target encaustic works of Jasper Johns, or David Hockney’s paintings depicting the beauty and vacuity of the California aesthetic? All of these perhaps, but we’d certainly consider the work of Andy Warhol, whose silkscreened paintings placed him at the forefront of artistic innovation within the Pop Art movement.

          Is Warhol, the person, the work, still relevant and open to investigation? Isabelle Graw begins her essay, “When Life Goes to Work: Andy Warhol,” by stating “Warhol seems more alive, more present, closer to us than ever” (Graw 2010, 99). David Galenson, in his essay, “Analyzing Artistic Innovation: The Greatest Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century,” ranks Andy Warhol as the second most influential artist of the last century behind Picasso. Galenson states, “Andy Warhol made his most celebrated works [in 1962] that were to become the most famous images of the pop art movement” (Galenson 2008, 7). Yet the artist has eluded robust critical discussion in that there remains “no full-scale, serious historical treatment of his work” (Mattick 1998, 978). Given his acknowledged contributions, an understanding of Andy Warhol is important to the history of art and American culture – the latter a subject which he is often credited for first understanding and contextualizing within the Pop Art framework.

          In the work of other Pop artists such as Lichtenstein, Hockney, and Johns, there is the essential element of Pop Art’s accessibility in the colorful, expressive arrangements that appealed to many audiences confounded by preceding artistic movements dominated by complete abstraction. “Pop artists…believed that art could (and should) be made with recognizable, mass-produced, ‘popular’ items that surround us (Patenaude 2010, 32-33).” If we don’t quite understand the intent of, for example, a Johns target painting, there remains a comfort in the recognition factor: “This is a target,” as well as the aesthetic satisfaction of the encaustic palette he employs. The work of Andy Warhol similarly contains a rich and varied palette full of accessible imagery, however, within all facets of Warhol’s pictorial reference points there is a consistent engagement to the subject of human mortality. This overarching subject matter is either seen as a mere additive to other thematic concerns or is completely excluded from art historical discussions.

          Portraits of Marylyn Monroe, Mao and other celebrities; Coke bottles and Campbell’s soup cans; signage from detergent manufacturers to gas stations; and even flowers all find their way into the opus of Warhol, which may not readily prepare us for a distinct thematic separation from the concerns of other Pop artists. And yet, Warhol’s images–and most importantly their treatment–have less to do with a “popular” aesthetic, but retain a greater similarity to other elements of his production, as in the Death and Disaster series, which contains red and black depictions of car accidents, electric chairs, and skulls. How does a Coke bottle, a soup can, or that most delicate and ubiquitous still-life subject of all, a flower, parallel a fascination with violence in the Death and Disaster series? It is this macabre element that runs throughout the work of Andy Warhol which, despite its richly colored palette, celebrity obsession and consumer reference, distinguishes Warhol’s production from other Pop artists in its singularly pessimistic view of the human condition.

          This paper will determine the main threads of critical discourse on the thematic nature of Andy Warhol’s work with greater emphasis given to his paintings–his most frequent and recognizable medium. Furthermore, this paper will argue against the prevailing critical dialogue in favor of an alternative view that Andy Warhol’s art engages, over and above all subjective arguments, the long-standing, art historical grappling with the subject of death.

Review of Literature

          For a person so committed to an artificial persona, particularly one as banal and dry as Andy Warhol’s, it is interesting that the artist has posthumously commanded the discourse that surrounds his work in what may be considered a tactic of reverse-psychology. It’s as though the monotone, nasally voice of Warhol speaks to his writers and critics from beyond the grave. Often this is via his heavily cited literary work, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, the subtext of his influence being, “I don’t care what you have to say about me, but here are my thoughts on the subject. Write whatever.” And in this impassivity and detachment there is the subtle force of personality that comes through and makes one want to understand him. Is there something to his words, vacillating between banal and observant, which melds into a particular form of cryptography? Is there anything there in Andy Warhol?

          Many believe there is and this belief harbors various divergent and occasionally overlapping theories. These include Warhol’s use of a repeated image, discussions on the social implications of celebrity and consumerism, critiques via the presence of homoeroticism and his films. Critical discourse often sides with either a “referential” or “simulacrum” argument. The referential argument meaning that the work refers specifically to its subject and is chosen for its symbolic import and does not merely represent a superficial depiction, as is the case with the simulacrum argument.

For example, a referential argument would hold that Warhol’s choice of Marilyn Monroe as a subject for his art was not accidental, but that the image, the person, was chosen because she represented something important. The simulacrum argument, by contrast, holds that the art of Andy Warhol was only a mirror to the world and the subject of his work was inconsequential.  In support of this view, Warhol’s famous quote is almost ubiquitous: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it. (Duve, Krauss 1989, 11)”

Traumatic Duality

          In his essay “Death in America,” a title taken from a series of Warhol images, Hal Foster begins with a reference to the artist’s book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, in which “the great idiot savant of our time chats about many big subjects – love, beauty, fame, work” (Foster 1996, 36). Foster notes that on the subject of death, Warhol is oddly reticent: “I don’t believe in it because you’re not around to know that it has happened. I can’t say anything about it because I’m not prepared for it” (Foster 1996, 36). In the context of his art, Warhol’s language on the subject of death–“not around to know…can’t say anything…not prepared”–represent for Foster a discrepancy between competing dualities of experience even, as he says, “a disorientation of time and space” (Foster 1996, 36).

          This discrepancy has broad implications for understanding the work of Warhol that for Foster results in “an experience of shock or trauma” (Foster 1996, 36). He thus orients his discussion on the duality of competing viewpoints: “Can we read the Death in America images as referential and simulacra, connected and disconnected, affective and affectless, critical and complacent” (Foster 1996, 39). Foster’s conclusion is that these conflicting points can be read “in terms of traumatic realism” (Foster 1996, 39).

“The Mass Subject”

          How is traumatic realism manifested? For Foster it concerns both Warhol and the viewer who, when encountering an image from the Death in America series, experiences a dual emotional pressure. The viewer is “connected” to the humanity of the image of the car wreck and its passengers, and simultaneously “disconnected” as the image’s visual impact is lessened by routine periodical reproduction. Death is not the foremost concern here, but a populist view of humankind, “the mass subject,” as Foster calls it, comprised of those who toil and die without ceremony; the “anonymous victims of history” (Foster 1996, 53).

          Interestingly, Foster quotes what is perhaps Warhol’s most plain and direct account of his thematic concerns, “I realized that everything I was doing must have been Death” (Foster 1996, 51-53). Foster, however, prefers another account from the artist that he believes emphasizes the thematic consideration of the “mass subject” over death, “It wasn’t the idea of accidents and things like that…I thought of all the people who worked on the pyramids…I just sort of wondered what happened to them” (Foster 1996, 53). He writes that “disaster and death were necessary to evoke [the mass] subject,” the subject of humankind (Foster 1996, 53).           That this alone would signal a “mass subject” over the broader thematic consideration of death for Foster is curious. Why would disaster and death be the sole means for evoking such an examination? Rather the subject of this issue of humanity for Warhol, the mass subject, is at its core the subject of life’s brevity, humankind’s inevitable mortality that is ageless in its capacity to produce a traumatic reaction.

“The Homoerotic Vision”

          Foster repeats his argument for the “traumatic realism” expressed through repetition in, “The Return of the Real,” an essay critiqued by Douglas Crimp in “Getting the Warhol We Deserve.” If only by way of originality, it is interesting that Crimp does not begin with a Warhol quote as many others do, but indicates the general disillusionment that surrounds the broad critical engagement, “How do we interpret the meaning of Warhol’s paintings” (Crimp 1999, 50)?

          Crimp identifies Foster’s argument as being a referential perspective (Crimp 1999, 50). He finds Foster’s account “appealing,” but prefers “tying Warhol’s work to gay culture” in a way that seems both personal (though he denies this) and political (Crimp 1999, 59):

I want to make of it the art I need and the art I deserve — not because it reflects or refers to a historical gay identity and thus serves to confirm my own now, but because it disdains and defies the coherence and stability of all sexual identity (Crimp 1999, 64).

 

Crimp notes Warhol’s use of repetition as well as its referential treatment of gay culture by Richard Meyer in “Warhol’s Clones.” Whereas Foster discusses the repetition’s resultant effect as a “trauma,” Meyer’s suggests that the repeated use of an image in Warhol contains homoerotic undertones (Crimp 1999, 60). Meyer even finds such an element in one of the more sinister pieces executed by Warhol, Thirteen Most Wanted Men, which depicts the mug shots of the thirteen most violent, and thus most “wanted,” offenders of the day. Despite the title’s tongue-in-cheek comment to sexuality, Meyer sees the piece as plainly, exclusively homoerotic:

To put it another way, Thirteen Most Wanted Men crosswires

the codes of criminality, looking, and homoerotic desire. The gritty appeal of the mug shots and the pleasures of repetition embedded within the mural’s composition (the format of the grid, the deployment of men inside it, the exchange of gazes passing among those men) figure the force of Warhol’s homoerotic vision (Crimp 1999, 60).

However, a unique point is made to this end:

Thirteen Most Wanted Men…turns on a double entendre: it is not only that these men are wanted by the FBI, but that the very act of “wanting men” constitutes a form of criminality if the wanter is also male, if, say, the wanter is Warhol (Crimp 1999, 60).

 Yet nothing about the grizzly mug shots of Thirteen Most Wanted Men is erotic. Despite a title that plays on the repressive sexual mores of the time, the work is first and foremost a violent one in its depiction of murderous criminals. Meyer, like Foster and Crimp, does not account for the overarching thematic concern of Andy Warhol. Instead he chooses to ignore the theme of death in Thirteen Most Wanted Men favoring an admittedly unique and personal critical stance that bypasses the obvious.

The Consumerist-Simulacrum Contextualization

          Indicative of this common approach to re-contextualize Warhol is Jonathan Schroeder’s “Andy Warhol: Consumer Researcher.” In it the author presents the popular notion that the artist’s work primarily concerns consumerism. Warhol’s use of various product signage has fueled this belief, and Schroeder capitalizes on this tangent in an argument representative of a simulacrum contextualization. The paper asserts that Warhol’s career as artist, filmmaker, writer and celebrity “offers insights into consumer culture that reinforces, expands, and illuminates aspects of traditional consumer research” (Schroeder 1997, 476).

          Like Foster, Schroeder begins with the words of Warhol though a reference to a specific work of art is absent:

I love America and these are some comments on it. The image is a statement of the symbols of the harsh impersonal products and brash materialistic objects on which America is built today. It is a projection of everything that can be bought and sold, the practical but important symbols that sustain us (Schroeder 1997, 476).

          Schroeder uses Warhol’s statement to build a sympathetic argument for the artist and how he “changed the way we look at products, especially Campbell’s soup” (Schroeder 1997, 478). In Schroeder’s view, Warhol imbues the product with meaning from his own celebrity, his “ensuing fame” (Schroeder 1997, 478). That there is something beyond Warhol’s fame and the soup cans that lend them aesthetic power is not addressed.

          Schroeder reasserts this point in another essay, “Materialism and Modern Art,” where he explains that only within its own social and cultural value system “can Pop art be understood” and that this is why “the works of Warhol, especially his Campbell’s and Coke pieces, have been so notorious and successful…[they] evoke extremely strong feelings in people” (Schroeder 1992, 12). Again, what specifically evokes these feelings is not mentioned.

         Paul Mattick echoes the consumerist simulacrum argument, stating, “Warhol embraced the commercial aspect of high art and celebrated the sign system of popular culture” (Mattick 1998, 985). His article, “The Andy Warhol of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Andy Warhol,” opens with that ubiquitous Warhol quote so representative of simulacrum critiques that instructs, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface…” (Mattick 1998, 965). In a break from the usual critical engagement the author takes Warhol at his word, ultimately concluding that Warhol’s “power lies on the surface, not in philosophic depths” (Mattick 1998, 987). To negate the conceptual or “philosophical” meaning in Warhol’s work is to say that the imagery was used in ignorance–unaware of its symbolic import. That Andy Warhol would choose his diverse subject matter at random without any conceptual intent is most improbable and contradicts the majority of scholarly literature.

The Films and an Unlikely, Enlightened Source

          While the silkscreened paintings are discussed for their various merits, the films of Andy Warhol, Sleep, Eat, Haircut, and others, have received critical attention as well, the most widely recognized exponent of which is Stephen Koch’s Stargazer: The Life, World and Films of Andy Warhol. In it Koch discusses the above mentioned films, famous less for their viewership and more for their infamous banality; Sleep is eight hours of man sleeping, Eat is a close up of a man eating a mushroom, and, yes, a haircut is given in the film Haircut. If the book could be found lacking it would be in its absence of a critique of Warhol’s more dominant mode of expression–painting–the work for which he is most known and celebrated. Surprisingly, however, Koch gives one of the best accounts of death as a conceptual element in the very medium his book leaves unaddressed.

          In an interview for, Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, Koch expresses what many writers do not and offers a possibility as to why:

Most a Warhol’s work has a very grim and terrible side. He never hid it.  He never claimed anything other than that, but he himself seemed touched with magic. He had found a way to overcome these tremendous, obvious liabilities and flourish in this culture, and be someone who seemed like he had put himself into the realm of the blessed. And, yes, I think because that was connected to him the grim message of a lot of his art was ignored in favor of the sort of “with it,” perfect, on top of it all look (Burns, 2006).

 

          Koch recognizes a “terrible element” in Warhol’s work that he says is ignored in favor of other considerations. This terrible element is not Foster’s “mass subject” or Crimp’s “homoerotic vision” or Schroeder and Mattick’s consumerism. This element, the “grim message” of Warhol’s art, is a simple and direct acknowledgement of death–the inescapable other side of life’s coin.

The Lifelessness of Consumerism

It is not the products themselves as suggested by Schroeder, or the surface of Warhol’s paintings as suggested by Mattick that lend the work its significance. It is in the treatment of the images: the lifeless nature of their rendered materiality in paint that triggers a reaction.

In Warhol’s portrayal of Campbell’s soup cans or Coca-Cola bottles there lies the emptiness at the bottom of consumerism that fails to satisfy a replacement for the divine, or furnish us with a significantly greater and sustained degree of happiness. As Warhol himself states in Schroeder’s opening, the “brash materialistic objects” are “harsh” and “impersonal.” In fact, the soup cans and Coke bottles blankly stare at the viewer as much as the viewer does at them. Arranged in geometric, frontal grids, they resemble that of their human counter parts in Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, and Jackie Kennedy, all of whom Warhol painted, and like the way Campbell’s enters our consciousness through marketing, these personalities enter our consciousness through the media from which they are similarly consumed.

The long-running and productive series of Marilyn Monroe portraits were begun August 6, 1962, the day of her death, as the front page headline of the Daily News announced in a four-inch font, “Marilyn Dead.” The stacked images of the Marilyns also stare out at us from a geometric pattern, and, like the soups and the sodas, their repetition seems to whisper that our discomfort at her death can be assuaged by the knowledge that there is always another star, another “Marilyn” waiting to be bought, sold, consumed, and then replaced. By Warhol’s hand, the lifeless starlet is a lifeless soup can is a lifeless soda bottle, ad infinitum.

The “Treatment” of Celebrity, Flowers, and Death

          The silk screening technique by which Warhol captured Marilyn and many others is an additive process. The first color that is printed comprises the largest area of the picture. The color printing process is then repeated for every subsequent color as each color field becomes increasingly smaller. The flesh color for a closely cropped Marilyn portrait, for example, may well have been the first to be silkscreened to the canvas, whereas the proportionally smaller lips may have been the last.

          Through this process there is often the issue of “registration.” Does one object and its attending color correctly line-up with another? If it does not the registration is said to be “off.” For Warhol this sometimes tedious issue of registration was dismissed to great conceptual effect. In A Shot of Marilyn Monroe, for example, where her image is repeated 45 times, the actress’s features register differently with every print so that the facial expressions convey a slightly different emotion each time. In one, the eyes appear droopy; in another the mouth is sinister, then sad in another. Commenting on this, David Bourdon said to Warhol in an interview “Marilyn was given expressions that were never caught on film” (Goldsmith 2004, 10). Finally, as if to emphasize her passing, Warhol drains the color from 20 of the 45 repetitions of Marilyn on the right side of the canvas to a ghostly black and white.

          This off registration is a defilement of beauty; an intelligent and subtly aggressive conceit that was repeated throughout the celebrity portrait series. Jackie Kennedy was painted after the president’s assignation. Liz Taylor was painted after the actress nearly succumbed to a deadly disease and Marilyn was painted after her suicide. The red lips of these portraits gleam artificially against their pale skin as if painted on by a
mortician. Other deathly references in the portraits include blue skin or the painting’s subject itself. This was the case in the portraits of Chairman Mao whose policies resulted in the deaths of an estimated 40 to 70 million people. Mao is then seen as a symbolic specter of death.

          In 1964 Warhol embarked on a series titled Flowers. Throughout art’s history a depiction of flowers has been typically associated with life. Like his portraits, however, the treatment of Warhol’s Flowers is a perverse contrary to the norm. Are the colors bright and lively? Yes, bright, but also acidic, arranged in groups of four in correlation with the geometry of the portraits. The flowers are rendered lifelessly flat, devoid of a living object’s textural shadows and variations. Though a traditional subject for painting, the flowers are not seen from a side angle as is often the case in a still-life, but from above, the more customary perspective for someone visiting a gravesite. The common expression in reference to the deceased, “pushing up daisies,” comes readily to mind.

          Finally, the Death and Disaster and Death in America series display Warhol’s chosen theme of death in its most obvious presentation. Similar to the titles of his films, the titles of the images contained in the series confirm Warhol’s artistic aim. Ambulance Disaster depicts a wrecked ambulance with a victim hanging from out its window. Skull depicts a skull resting on the table with jaw slightly agape. Green Car Crash is a repeated green and black image of nine overlapping, upturned cars on fire. White, Burning Car is another plain description of the picture’s image that omits one detail: to the left, a male figure literally hangs from a telephone pole after having been thrown from the car in a horrible collision. Other images include more car accidents, suicides, and shootings.

          Both these series were commercially and critically unsuccessful. They contain no visual pun, unlike The Thirteen Most Wanted Men, nor do they allow the viewer a place for any preconceived notions of celebrity or consumerism to take root. They are simple and direct depictions of the subject of death, which is repeated throughout the work and which is ignored by critics and writers.

A Summation of the Discourse

          Critical discussions of Andy Warhol’s work include theories on his use of a repeated image, critiques via the presence of homoeroticism and politics, discussions on the social implications of celebrity and consumerism, and his films. These are often categorized as either referential or simulacrum critiques and all point to the difficulty in defining this artist’s work for which there is “no full-scale, serious historical treatment” (Mattick 1998, 978).

Death and Andy Warhol

          On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas, an impoverished and paranoid writer who had been rebuffed by the artist and his studio clique, entered Warhol’s offices, drew a .32 caliber pistol and fired 3 shots into the artist’s chest and abdomen. Shortly thereafter, Warhol was rushed to a hospital and treated for the wounds during emergency surgery. At a certain point, Warhol’s heart stopped. He was literally dead for several minutes, and would have remained so had the attending doctor not massaged his heart back to a pulse.

          Andy Warhol was 39 years old at the time of this shooting. He was 13 when his father, a coalminer and construction worker, died in an accident. In his early childhood Warhol remained home from school, sick with chorea–a disease of the nervous system. During the 1960’s Warhol’s studio, the Silver Factory, saw many untimely deaths. In his biography of the artist, Victor Bockris, blithely ticks off their names: “Andrea Feldman (suicide), Eric Emerson(‘hit by a car’), Tinkerbelle (suicide), Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, Tom Baker…to mention the recognizable” (Bockris 2003).

          Loss was ever-present for Andy Warhol. These experiences gave him an intimate view of mortality at an early age, and they form the bedrock of his artistic production that supersedes all conceptual notions of consumerism, celebrity, homosexuality, or politics.

“The Silver Angel of Death”

          Somewhere between scholarly texts and the numerous, sensationalized accounts of the artist are periodical writings on Warhol’s life and art. One such article is given by former Time magazine critic, Robert Hughes. In, “The Rise of Andy Warhol,” Hughes discusses the convergence of art and celebrity and gives a rare acknowledgement to the issue of death in the work of Andy Warhol after the 1968 shooting:

It is as though…Warhol’s lines of feeling were finally cut…his shooting reflected back on his earlier paintings—the prole death in the car crashes, the electric chair with the sign enjoining SILENCE on the nearby door, the taxidermic portraits of the dead Marilyn—lending them a fictive glamour as emblems of fate. Much breathless prose was therefore expended on Andy, the Silver Angel of Death, and similar conceits (Hughes 1982, 7).

 

          For Hughes, this brush with death took something from the creative energy of the artist that would not be replaced. The visual bite was lessened as Warhol moved from car crashes and electric chairs to portraits of Michael Jackson and cow-printed wallpaper. Throughout the work and even after the shooting, however, an aspect of life’s inevitable conclusion remains that no amount of consumerism (Campbell’s soup cans) or celebrity (Marilyn Monroe) or homosexual politicizing (The Thirteen Most Wanted Men) can supersede or dilute. It is interesting that so many writers prefer these topical critiques to the real thing: once the death in a Warhol image is seen, it can’t be reduced in favor of other thematic considerations.

Research Approach

          The goal of this paper is to argue against the prevailing critical discussions on the thematic nature of Andy Warhol’s art in favor of an alternative critical stance that is often neglected or excluded entirely. This paper contends that the present discourse is insufficient and limited to minor, topical critiques compared to the vast, discernable engagement with the subject of death the work of Andy Warhol presents.

Prevailing Critical Discussions

          Critical discussions of Warhol usually ascend in order of complexity beginning with popular notions and continuing to more obtuse engagements. Celebrity and consumerism are the first here as they are the most obvious elements in the most widely recognized work of the artist. For most, to think, “Andy Warhol” is to imagine smiling Marilyns and stacked Campbell’s soup cans. Such visual motifs serve to ground Warhol’s thematic imagination in the public’s view. That there is more to Warhol’s selection of these images is largely overlooked.

          The next phase begins the more scholarly literature on the artist wherein his use of repetition fractures into arguments for or against the symbolic impact of his work and how these shaped his notions and artistic commentary. Embodied here are several distinct and, at times, overlapping discussions: his commentary on consumerism and celebrity, the use of a repeated image, whether the chosen source material for the images was made for symbolic import or by random selection (the referential versus simulacra arguments) and his sexual orientation in relation to politics.

Data Collection

          By a qualitative research approach, data collection was restricted to scholarly, art historical essays, with the exception of one documentary film on the artist. The literature was reviewed in the interest of learning the primary theoretical concerns on what the art of Andy Warhol represents. These were then compared to find both paralleling and divergent points of view.

          Many of the authors whose work comprises the literature review referenced that of their peers. Occasionally such references made favorable remarks on behalf of the work, but most often the reviews made critical claims against one another, further highlighting the discrepancy of a dominant opinion.

Further Research

          While there have been several biographical accounts that have attempted to investigate the life of this most inscrutable artist, few have done so in the context of discerning his aesthetic sensibilities. Further research in this area would involve a more robust investigation that attempts to draw parallels between early childhood experience, the Silver Factory years, and the productive time after the 1968 shooting. This would entail a research approach that would attempt to distinguish the artist’s misrepresentations of himself and his work in interviews from his true artistic intentions.

Conclusion

          Few would refute Warhol’s place at the zenith of Pop art. His name is synonymous with the movement itself. Yet despite the attending hallmarks of Pop in the work of Andy Warhol there is a fundamental difference that separates him from other artists of the movement. Principally, it is the overarching subject and consistent engagement with death that separates him. It is a theme that is readily apparent throughout his production.

          The importance of understanding the work of Andy Warhol (or the work of any great artist) is the importance of culture. Art, in its varied forms, is culture’s primary exponent. Industrial and ideational advances are not espoused to a public based on their merits alone. They are eulogized, sang, and consecrated into works of art. They make a collective declaration of the society’s culture, “This is who we are. This is happening now. Here, in this place.” A society that no longer makes basic declarations asks questions: “Who are we? What is happening now?  Where are we?” To live in a society that lacks an understanding of its art is to live in a fractured society. For such a society the notion of culture is suspect. This society is a fractured house that lacks cohesion, a unifying principal, or sense of self. It is a “divided house.”

          Warhol wasn’t largely understood during his time and this remains true today as well. Mostly, Warhol is fought over and misunderstood as the eulogies of his work sing only of superficial concerns. A repeated misinterpretation of Andy Warhol, however, becomes alarming. Understanding, the work of this artist might not be of great importance to American culture by itself, but it could very well be an added brick to the structure of a house in need of repair

REFERENCES

American Masters Series: Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film. DVD. Directed by Ric Burns. 2006; Los Angeles, CA: PBS Paramount, 2006.

 

Bockris, Victor. 2003. Warhol: The biography. Cambridge: Da Capo Press

 

Crimp, Douglas. 1999. Getting the Warhol we deserve. Social Text 59 (summer): 49-66.

 

Duve, Thierry de and Rosalind Krauss. Andy Warhol, or the machine           perfected. The MIT Press 48 (spring. 1989): 3-14.

 

Foster, Hal. 1996. Death in America. October 75 (winter): 36-59.

 

Galenson, David. 2008. Analyzing artistic innovation: The greatest breakthroughs of the twentieth century. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History: 111-120.

 

Goldsmith, Kenneth, editor. 2004. I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy           Warhol Interviews. New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers.

 

Graw, Isabelle. 2010. When life goes to work: Andy Warhol. October 132 (spring): 99-113.

 

Hughes, Robert. 1982. The rise of Andy Warhol. The New York Reveiw of Books 29, no. 2 (February 18). http://www.schau.co.at/aduploads/ andy_warhol.pdf (accessed July 9, 2011).

 

Kimmelman, Michael. 2003. The dia generation. The New York Times Magazine. (April 6). http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem /visualarts/museums/Dia/NYT-Kimmelman-TheDiaGeneration-4-6-03.html (accessed July 7, 2011).

 

Mattick, Paul. 1998. The Andy Warhol of philosophy and the philosophy of Andy Warhol. Chicago Journals 24, no. 4 (summer): 965-987

 

Patenaude, Jason. 2010. Andy Warhol. Cobblestone 31: 32-33.

 

Schroeder, Jonathan E. 1992. Materialism and modern art. Meaning, Measure, and Morality of Materialism: 10-13.

 

—-. 1997. Andy Warhol: Consumer researcher. Advances in Consumer Research 24: 476-482.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

          Among the many tangents of discourse in the art world, the steps by which an artist attains success are rarely acknowledged. More often the focus is on producing a successful work of art, while the career aspects of becoming a successful artist are often put aside, perhaps in a rather naïve assumption that an artistically significant production will alone result in a successful career. For artists, career success is then regarded as an elusive, intangible element based primarily on luck. The purpose of this paper will be to highlight those areas that have been determined to yield the best results thereby rendering a “portrait” of the elements most often attending the career of a successful artist.

          Three areas will be considered: the social networks and the specific ways in which successful artists construct them, educational factors as determined by the careers of successful artists, and, finally, the need for critical recognition from a historical account that will provide support for the elements under scrutiny.

A Clarification of Terms

          “Artist” will here be defined as a person engaged in a creative endeavor of a visual nature whereby a product is generated–a work of art. Broader definitions of “artist” for various creative occupations, such as actors, writers, or musicians, will not be applied.

          “Success” will here be defined from a variety of factors including consistent and stable production, gallery representation and sales. A final factor will include the necessity of critical recognition.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The Sandy Ground of the Artist’s Social Network

In her article, “Sandpiles of Opportunity: Success in the Art World,” Katherine Giuffre likens the ever-shifting professional landscape of an artistic career to that of a sandpile rather than a ladder, upon which “each actor’s attempts to reach the top change the shape of the climb” (Guiffre 1999, 815). The social network of an artist resides on the sandpile where all actors are linked like a chain; the movement of one in ascent or descent results in a new dispersal of all (Guiffre 1999, 819).

Three Career Paths

The study profiled 159 contemporary fine art photographers from which three general career paths were identified, or what Guiffre terms “clusters.” The first, cluster 1, is described as the “invisible collegians” (Guiffre 1999, 827). This cluster forms a strong, tightly knit, dense social group. They are reliable and consistent both in terms of production and gallery sales. Similar to their social behavior in forming long-term, close professional relationships, is their relationship to the gallery. The galleries representing this cluster tend to be “long lived, mainly owing to the consistent income that the photographers provide and to their great loyalty to their galleries” (Guiffre 1999, 827). However by maintaining these strong ties to a specific subculture, the artists limit their access to greater success due to a lack of mobility (Guiffre 1999, 829-830). These artists garner little critical attention, yet still received three times the number of reviews as the photographers in cluster2, “the strugglers” (Guiffre 1999, 827).

Cluster 2 would be considered the bottom of the social networking food chain. “The strugglers” are mainly characterized as being unwilling or unable to find sustainable career ascension (Guiffre 1999, 826). Their production, gallery representation, and likewise their sales are inconsistent and unstable. They appear to drop in and out of the art world (Guiffre 1999, 826).

        Cluster 3 is comprised of the art world luminaries, the “stars” as Guiffre terms them. Like Cluster 1 they are consistent and reliable in terms of output and marketability, the important difference here being that their social network is much more fluid. They make and break connections frequently. If cluster 1’s social network is an island, cluster 3’s is the revolving door of a hotel lobby. They receive by far the most critical attention of any group; four times that of the artists in cluster 1, and twelve times that of the artists in cluster 2 (Guiffre 1999, 827). These artists are characterized by unbroken careers and shape their contacts via weak ties and structural holes within large, sparse networks (Guiffre 1999, 826).

Weak Ties and Structural Holes

          Guiffre explains the cluster 3 artists’ success in the context of two unique characteristics of their social network, namely structural holes and weak ties (Guiffre 1999, 828). The structural holes are seen as “the absence of ties between actors in a network,” allowing each actor to function as a “middleman” between potential lines of communication (Guiffre 1999, 828). Due to these structural holes, and despite both the breadth and sparseness in the cluster’s organization, information is more easily extended and received (Guiffre 1999, 828).

          The weak ties argument holds that this relationship enables an artist to sever and form relationships without the accrual of disadvantageous social effects (Guiffre 1999, 828). This diversification, Guiffre argues, buffers the artist from career setbacks beyond their control, such as gallery closings, loss of gallery representation, or harsh critical reviews (Guiffre 1999, 828).

Weak ties allow for greater mobility as compared to that of cluster 1. The close knit ties of the cluster 1 group, the “invisible collegians,” do not allow for this kind of social networking. An artist that breaks ties to this network is then without a network and therefore may descend to cluster 2.

Information Exchange

          The composition of these social networks would be inconsequential were it not for the networks’ ability to dictate the way information is passed. In this sense, information is the primary concern for this analysis, the receipt of which, Guiffre argues, is then used to the individual’s advantage as artists “bargain for goods within the network” (Guiffre 1999, 828). Exactly how this “bargaining” works is never made clear. Critical attention in the form of a review is the only example Guiffre gives as to what goods are being bargained for, however, in terms of information exchange, cluster 2 is the least likely to extend or receive it. Cluster 3 is two times as likely to exchange information within its social network than cluster 1, and more than five times as likely to do so over cluster 2 (Guiffre 1999, 828).

Thus, the most success artists, in Guiffre’s view, maintain a social network where weak ties and structural holes enable mobility and network restructuring, where the larger and more sparse the group, the greater the ability to receive information exists, and where these combined effects of mobility and information exchange ensure protection from unforeseen threats.

The Broader Implications

In Guiffre’s study, these clusters were comprised exclusively of photographers. Cluster 1, the author suggests, is best represented by Jim Dow, cluster 2 by Shelby Lee Adams, and cluster 3 by both Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman (Guiffre 1999, 828). While photography is only one form of artistic production, Guiffre believes that this study’s results are applicable to all fields of art and indeed to any “area where individuals move among different organizations and can affect the status of an organization by their membership…Lawyers moving between firms, professors moving between universities, even pro athletes moving between teams can all be seen in this way” (Guiffre 1999, 830).

In conclusion, Guiffre’s cluster 1, the “invisible collegians,” and cluster 3, the “stars,” both meet the standards of success as defined by this paper. Both are consistent producers, exhibiters, and sellers of artistic product. They are distinguished by the structure of their respective social networks. Cluster 1 is a tightly-knit group where entry is difficult and exiting is risky. Cluster 3’s social network is large, sparse, ever-moving, and changeable, which allows for beneficial connections to be made and limiting connections to be broken. Yet despite their obvious differences a commonality remains which highlights some important facts: a successful artist, first, has a social network comprised of peer artists or colleagues, the network is maintained and the artist uses it to beneficial advancement, often via the receipt of information.

The Importance of Education

Identity Construction via Education

          In her article, “Constructing an Artistic Identity,” Alain Bain suggests that artists pursuing a successful career must claim and defend their status as a professional via the construction of an artistic identity (Bain 2005, 34).

The first criteria for the successful construction of an artistic identity echoes Guiffre’s argument in the importance it places on social connections. Bain describes this as an acceptance from the artist’s peer group to the artist’s claim to the profession (Bain 2005, 35). This claim is supported primarily by the tangible factor of a high level of arts education (Bain 2005, 35). Other, intangible factors include the peer group’s perception that the artist has made a certain degree of sacrifice for and commitment to their work.

Education as Gateway

A popular endorsement for the idea of a positive correlation between career success and education is that the art world contains its own general customs and idiosyncratic discourse (Bhandari, Nelber 2009, 4). On the language of this discourse and the periodicals that report it, BBC presenter, artist, and critic, Matthew Collings calls it “an intricate, complicated closed-off system of values and ideas, which no outsider could possibly get. Art is separate” (Collings 1998, 95). Going to art school, and possibly attaining advanced education in the field would presumably open the gates to this “closed-off” world, endowing the student with the knowledge to unlock the system. Collings states his position on the matter bluntly: “You’ve got to go” (Collings 2001).

Anecdotal Evidence

          Given a lack of empirical data surrounding the issue of education and its relation to artistic success, a consideration of the educational backgrounds of today’s top artists can provide some benefit. According to Art Encyclopedia: 2011, the top five artists from 2007 to 2008 as determined by cumulative auction house sales in the secondary market are, respectively, Jeff Koons , Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, and Zhang Xiaogang (Top 20 Contemporary Artists, 2011).

          All the five artists are currently living and productive save for Basquiat. His untimely death, a resurgence of interest in his work, and a lack of newly generated product serving to drive prices, combined with the unknowable aspect of where his career would have lead were he still alive, will exclude Basquiat from consideration for the purposes of this paper.

          Also, with his September 2008 direct-to-auction sales of a single exhibition totaling 111 million, Damien Hirst would be more appropriately placed in the first position ahead of Koons. For reasons not mentioned, Art Encyclopedia: 2011 chose to omit this auction sale, most likely as this total could be considered a primary market sale rather than a secondary market sale as is the common auction house practice. Thus the artists in consideration here are Hirst, Koons, Prince, and Zhang.

          Finally, secondary market sales of an artist’s work do not have a direct effect on the artist. The effect is only indirect as high or low secondary sale prices determine how an artist’s work may accrue in value, thus affecting primary market sale prices, and an artist’s popularity with collectors. This information may then be seen as representative of the career success these artists have attained. Therefore a consideration of some of the most successful artists today proves beneficial in the context of the importance of education.

Education of the Artists

          A relatively satisfying degree of uniformity is present: 3 of the 4 artists not only attended college with a focus in art, but attended an arts specialty college. The exception being Richard Prince, who, after his application to the San Francisco Art Institute was rejected, moved to New York City in 1973 (Richard Prince, 2011). That these 4 artists represent 3 different nationalities (English, American, and Chinese) further emphasizes the significance of their relatively consistent educational backgrounds. The following list pairs artist with alma mater.

Damien Hirst: Leeds College of Art and Design; Goldsmiths, University of London

 Jeff Koons: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Maryland Institute College of Art

 Zhang Xiaogang: Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts

The top two artists, Hirst and Koons, began at art school and continued, earning advanced degrees at Goldsmiths and Maryland Institute College of Art respectively, while Zhang completed a four year degree in art at Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Chongqing in Sichuan province, China. Therefore, three of the top four artists today studied art at an arts college, while two pursued advanced degrees (Hirst and Koons). Notably the artist who did not complete a higher education in the arts tried but was rejected. Their present day success, combined with the opinions of Bain and Collings, supports the claim that education is an important factor in a successful art career.

The Historical Context

          Laura Braden embarked on a study of the contributing factors of historical significance that highlight the need for ambitious artists to attain critical recognition. Absent a modern day equation for an artistically successful career, the results of the historic Amory Show provide some insight. From a sociological perspective, Braden’s study examined how many of the artists included in the 1913 Amory Show are still featured in the textbooks for college-level art history courses, and therefore, it is assumed, still relevant. She identifies several historically contributing factors based on previous research: the championing of the artist by “legitimating organizations” (museums, etc.), gender, nationality, and posthumous support for the artists (Braden 2009, 443-445).

          The process by which artists rise above their peers comes via critical attention and is two-fold involving “valorization” and “consecration” (Braden 2009, 440). This results in a seat within the enduring history of art. This final step is absent of critical attention and is called “canonization.” Valorization involves a process by which a system distinguishes the work of one artist as being of greater merit than others. From this initial delineation, the valorized work is then consecrated whereby it is seen as particularly deserving of praise and attention. Valorization is “general and pervasive,” separating the good from the mediocre, while consecration derives “discontinuity out of continuity,” and the great is separated from the good. From this final group, the canon of art history is formed (Braden 2009, 440). This canonization is then “reinforced, maintained, and formalized by institutions such as universities, museums, and textbooks” (DiMaggio 1982, 33-51).

          It is not important in the context of valorization that critical attention speaks as a unified voice –- praise and criticism are seen as equally viable options. Such is the case with the 4 artists referenced for a perspective on education (Hirst, Koons, Prince, and Zhang) as well as the canonized artists (Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Cezanne, Duchamp, Delacroix, Goya, Manet, Courbet, and van Gogh) who similarly provoked both reactions to varying degrees.

Results

          The show featured 1 to 6 works from 308 artists spanning 20 countries, 49% of which were Americans, while 43% were European-born. 52 of the artists were women. From this group 58 of the 308 artists are recognized by at least one of the three textbooks with a mere 10 artists (Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Cezanne, Duchamp, Delacroix, Goya, Manet, Courbet, and van Gogh) comprising 46.6% of the total number of pages devoted to the Amory artists among all three textbooks: Stokstad’s Art History, Janson’s History of Art, and Hartt’s Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Braden 2009, 449).

Deterministic Factors for Canonization

Early European success is the first factor. Though the American artists outnumbered that of all other representative countries in the show, Braden maintains that “European nationality may have carried some cultural cache with US audiences,” while “US artists…were less likely to be established professionals, not enjoying the support and advocacy that such establishment had afforded European artists [thus] European artists in general would seem to have a head start on contemporary valorization and eventual consecration” (Braden 2009, 444).

Being a man is the second factor for success. Braden states that the Armory Show was “relatively open to female artists” (Braden 2009, 445). This seems accurate (with perhaps an emphasis on ‘relatively’) given that, at a total of 52, they comprised nearly 20% of the artists featured. However these artists did not display successful competitive acquisition of subsequent group or solo exhibitions, and none would be canonized in the textbooks (Braden 2009, 445).

Advocacy for posthumous artistic relevance is the final criteria for success and later canonization. The presence of this element indicates living, and effective campaigners who seek, for either personal or financial reasons, to maintain the artist’s relevancy. This is often buoyed by significant critical attention during the artist’s lifetime. Of the 308 artists featured at the Armory Show, 27 exhibited posthumously lending to a greater likelihood of subsequent consecration (Braden 2009, 440).

A Current Perspective

The Armory Show highlights the importance of critical recognition in determining success for an artist. The critical engagement of an artist’s work, either positive or negative, serves to distinguish artists from their peers.

In lieu of empirical, present-day data for the correlation between critical recognition and success, anecdotal evidence is again useful in support of this factor. The best example of this is perhaps the American artist, Matthew Barney, whose work has mystified the public as well as critics garnering the artist both accolades and derision. Michael Kimmelman, art critic for the New York Times, called Barney “the most important American artist of his generation” (Kimmelman 1999, 64). Art critic for The New Yorker magazine, Peter Schjeldahl, calls Barney’s work “numbingly hermetic and toneless” (Schjeldahl 2006). Hilton Kramer, art critic for The New York Observer, called Barney’s museum-wide installation at the Guggenheim a “freak show” (Kramer 2003). The show in question actually began at Museum Ludwig in Cologne from which it traveled to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and finally to New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Attendance of the exhibitions was high as was the critical recognition. While many other critics expressed similarly polarizing views to those mentioned here, none contest the highly successful career of this artist.

CONCLUSION

A Portrait of Success

From the literature presented above, what is the portrait of the artist who is most likely to enjoy a successful career? The successful artist maintains either a tightly knit group of social contacts or a large, sparse social network allowing for social mobility and the breaking and forming of warm connections. From either social networks, information is acquired and then applied for advantageous personal gain. The artist is well educated having at least completed a four-year degree at an arts specialty college, possibly obtaining a subsequent MFA.  The artist’s work is talked about, either favorably or unfavorably, by critics in a process of valorization leading to consecration. Finally, the artist is canonized by universities, museums, and textbooks that maintain the legacy.

A Final Word

          The attending factors of success in the above portrait cannot be taken as a complete recipe for success. While similarities have been drawn via cross referencing of the available literature, the above deterministic factors comprise a narrow margin of the overall picture. Among Braden’s canonized artists, or the contemporary artists that were briefly profiled, further investigation could potentially yield more commonalities. Also, in so much as those artists are representative, one could conclude that a successful artist would likely be either American or European. That only 58 of the 308 artists would be canonized, and that these artists were all men, one may presume that being a man would comprise another factor for the artist most likely to achieve a successful art career. However, given the social changes that have occurred nearly a century after the first Armory Show, one must exclude this factor as well. Ultimately further research is required in the creation of a complete “portrait” as there exists no statistical analysis that accounts for the intangible factors of hard work, commitment, sacrifice, or the most allusive factor of all, the intangible element of artistic talent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Art Encyclopedia: Top 20 Contemporary Artists. 2011. http://www.visual-          arts-cork.com/contemporary-artists-top-20.htm (July 16, 2011).

Bain, Alain. 2005. Constructing an artistic identity. Work Employment &           Society 19: 25-46.

Bhandari, Heather Darcy, and Jonathan Melber. 2009. Art/work:           Everything you need to know (and do) as you pursue your art           career. New York: Free Press, Simon & Schuster.

Braden, Laura. 2009. From the armory to academia: Careers and           reputations of early modern artists in the United States. Poetics           37: 439-455.

Collings, Matthew. 1998. It hurts: New york art from Warhol to now.           London: 21 Publishing.

Collings, M. 2009. The knack: How to win the Turner Prize. The           Independent, November 9.

DiMaggio, Paul. 1982. Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century           Boston. Media, Culture & Society 4: 33-50.

Guiffre, Katherine. 1999. Sandpiles of opportunity: Success in the art           world. Social Forces 77: 815-832.

Kimmelman, Michael. “The Importance of Matthew Barney.” The New York           Times Magazine, October 10, 1999, 62-69.

Kramer, Hilton. 2003. Modernism and its institutions. The New Criterion           22 (October),http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Modernism

          —its- institutions-1665 (accessed August 6, 2011).

Pollock, Jackson. Think Exist, Jackson Pollock Quotes. 1999. http:

          //thinkexist.com/quotes/jackson_pollock/2.html (accessed July

          16, 2011).

Rogallery, Richard Prince. 2011. http://rogallery.com/Prince_Richard/

          Prince_Richard-Biography.html   (July 9, 2011).

Schjeldahl, Peter. 2006. “Critic’s Notebook: Post-Barney.” The New Yorker.           http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/01/060501gore_GOA          T_recordings2 (accessed August 6, 2011).

This is the final version of a painting I posted earlier.  “Sveccha” is Sanskrit for “free will”.