#ageofwarhol

Koons' work becomes influential when discussing the aesthetics of camp in relation to Warhol. While Koon's sculptures invite a more obvious source of reflection through residual culture and the banal, Warhol's paintings are still up for open interpretation. 

When comparing Warhol's boxes to the real brillo boxes, Danto creates an analogy of a bone fragment put in gold encasing to compare- is it the casing that calls our attention to the object, rather than the object in itself? What does it mean when we separate Andy's idea of a Brillo Box with the physical representation of it? How does this relate to the way people interact with religion- do they pay too much attention to the physical objects while losing sight of what lies beyond it?

It is interesting to analyze the concept of celebrity and adulation in the art world in relation to Warhol and Basquiat. While Warhol might have achieved his definition of success by becoming a "business artist", Basquiat was destroyed by criticism that he had become an "art world mascot". To what extent is the achievement of fame and celebrity as an artist a success, rather than a failure? Does fame come with a cost, inhibiting an artist's potential to do avant garde work? 

I can see a similar thing happen in the contemporary world of great art: more and more often, it is works of public art, or socially engaged art, that become famous as engaging pieces of work that make news in the contemporary art world. Is art through the context of a social practice reappropriation? Is it enough to see things through a different lens in order to understand and conceptualize it? When there is so much more information in our saturated world, how can reappropriation and reframing make for more interesting and relevant works of art? But also, more importantly, where does this leave the tradition of painting, as questioned in the latest Warhol interview? Is the prevalence of one medium the death of another?

HY

I'd like us to consider Warhol's attitudes towards emerging artists and his decreasing importance in the art world in the 80's as told by Patt Hackett's The Andy Warhol Diaries. Warhol seems to have a very derisive attitude towards Schnabel, but warms up to Haring and Basquiat. What is it about Schnabel that pisses off Warhol so much, and why does he not have the same attitudes towards Haring or Basquiat? But more importantly, how is Warhol himself losing ground in a post-Warhol world, so saturated of Warholian influences but that somehow, still leaves him behind?

Kenneth Goldsmith's book's approach to the mediated public events that shape American consciousness raises questions about Warhol's Death and Disaster series. Although the notion of death permeates Warhol's work, death is always a little removed from the audience: it's the death of a stranger, or the death of a public figure. Even when dealing with Kennedy's death, Warhol does it indirectly through the Jackie portraits: it seems he shies away from depicting events that traumatize the public. I wonder if Warhol would have done a series on the towers had he been alive: would Warhol's repetition be enough to erase or dilute the feelings that this tragic image brings up? Are we, as an audience in a post 9/11 world, too affected about these things to be "Warholed"?

HY