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Warhol Isn’t Helping
Let’s just start with an enormous question: In the processes of making, showing, and speaking about art, what might an artist hope to accomplish? In other words, what’s it for? Just for the hell of it? To contribute to the dialogue of the contemporary art world, responding to some other artwork with a yes, a no, a “how about this”? Perhaps to take a stance or even to make a point about a broader social/cultural issue? Obviously, the answer depends on what artist we’re speaking of; some think about one question, some about another, and some don’t think much about any of them. It also depends, to a great degree, on who you ask. If an artist isn’t quite clear on what the thing is for – or even if an artist is clear – the question is left to the critics. If art is an utterance in another language, critics are translators. Or so they think. The strange thing about these translators is that they in many ways invent the other language as they go along - which would be fine, if it were more acknowledged. Something in the tone or wording of the writing tends to give the idea that the translation is much more definitive. If it weren’t for the fact that different critics disagree with each other all the time, we’d never know that there was any doubt over their translations. To be more specific: What did Andy Warhol hope to accomplish with his work in the nineteen sixties? Is it actually social criticism? If so (or if not, for that matter), how, why, and who says so? For all of the cases of artists / art / these questions, this is probably the most perpetually unresolvable. One might be tempted to say that this very unresolvability is exactly what makes Warhol such an important figure in the art world and in art history. An enigma, a question-generator, is always fascinating and vibrant. It fuels the dialogue; it makes people angry, and makes people think. Artists and critics alike will come back to it over and over. Even people who are not directly a part of the art world are fascinated by Warhol and some of the questions around him. And isn’t it only fitting that ordinary folks should take an interest in artwork which purports to be about popular culture? That is what the pop in pop art refers to after all. What exactly do people think about Warhol’s work though? Warhol is one of the few artists of the past fifty years who the general public is in fact aware of. At least four times a week, some news-caster uses the phrase “fifteen minutes of fame,” which is a quote from Warhol. His repeated-silkscreened-image-with-slight-variations format is instantly recognizable by the general educated public (either college-educated, or just-happens-to-read-a-lot educated), particularly the Campbell’s soup cans, the Marilyn Monroes, and the self-portraits. Warhol has been portrayed in a number of widely-known movies. His peculiar image and persona are at least as well-known as his artwork: he’s the famous artist with the big blonde or white hair who acts like an android. The general educated public, who are not part of the art or cultural-studies world(s) will tend to listen more to an artist’s actual words than to anything else, when it comes time to wonder what the work is “saying.” Warhol’s words on this subject (or any subject) are very perplexing, and robustly counterintuitive: “Everyone knows artists are supposed to be creative and individual and emotional, but this guy says they should be like robots! And he says products and packaging and consumerism are beautiful!” People don’t know exactly what to make of this. They know it sounds somehow wrong, like it might be a joke. They also know that the work shows us images of mass-produced junk, celebrities, or photographs of car crashes. And they know that consumerism and sensationalism, which are clearly alluded to in this work, are parts of our society / culture which are often criticized. How does one add all of this together? In the case of most people, they simply don’t. It just gets filed, in its unassembled form, in the “I don’t care so much about this” section of their brains. In the case of art and cultural-studies people, it gets debated endlessly. In discussing (and contributing to) this phenomenon, Hal Foster divides the critics into two groups, based on their approach [1]. The first group is composed of those who have made a simulacral reading of Warholian Pop. The list is of the usual poststructural-esque suspects: Barthes, Baudrillard, Foucault, and Deleuze. Barthes acts as the representative for this group: “What Pop art wants is to desymbolize the object…” [2] In Foster’s words: “to release the image from deep meaning (metaphoric association or metonymic connection) into simulacral surface. In the process the author is also released.” [3] In other words, these images are meaningful in that they have no meaning anymore. The work bears no responsibility, and Warhol bears no responsibility, for what had appeared to be questions of very serious social criticism. The buck has not so much been passed as it has magically disappeared up someone’s sleeve. For Foster’s second group of critics, the buck has indeed been passed, and it’s been passed to them. They are essentially assuming the responsibility of explaining Warhol-as-social-critic, “rescuing” him from himself. Foster singles out Thomas Crow for having written the “most intelligent version” of this sort of argument [4] (one gets the feeling Foster is more sympathetic to the first group, though he’s trying to be fair…). Crow sees the celebrity pieces and sees the “tragedies of Marilyn, Liz, and Jackie,” finding “straightforward expressions of feeling” in these pieces [5]. “He was attracted to the open sores in American political life,” [6] Crow claims. He claims the electric chair images are a statement against the death penalty, and the race-riot images are a testimony for civil rights. This “referential” view of Warholian Pop is also discussed (and also from a slight distance) by Andreas Huyssen in his essay, “The Cultural Politics of Pop.” [7] In Germany, Pop art made its appearance slightly later than in New York; significantly, it coincided with the student movement and the anti-authoritarian New Left of the late 1960’s. In this context, Huyssen explains, Warhol’s work was instantly perceived as political. In the early 1960’s United States, these ideas were not so prominently “in the air” yet. The environment was entirely different, so the response was entirely different. Hal Foster addresses this strange situation we find ourselves in: This reading of Warhol as empathetic, even engage, is a projection (an essay could be written on the desire of left critics to make Warhol over into a contemporary Brecht). But it is no more a projection than the superficial, impassive Warhol, even Though this projection was his own: “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.” Both camps make the Warhol they need, or get the Warhol they deserve; no doubt we all do. [8] Let’s turn now to some of Warhol’s artworks. As mentioned above, his work does clearly use imagery which brings up cultural / social issues, and Pop art does mean “popular culture art.” Take for example the 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans of 1961-1962 (for the sake of universal familiarity). A Campbell’s soup can is not simply food, it has connotations. It is packaged food, and is non-perishable as long as the can is unopened: so it’s an object. You could stack them, or hold them, or juggle them, or set them aside and forget about them, or sell them. In fact, they sell themselves. They look “good,” there’s something nice about the label on this object. When you see it, you should want it, desire it – as food, but also as an object. You should even desire this process of seeing, wanting, and getting, and you should want to do it more, with other objects: products. So Warhol makes an image of these products. An attractive product makes an attractive image; there’s certainly nothing wrong with an artist making an image people enjoy looking at. The situation could potentially be just this simple, as Warhol himself submits that it is. The problem starts when we go just a bit further in thinking about that soup. We’ve established that it is a product as much as it is nourishment, a product for which desire is being created. So, who is creating this desire and why? A corporation is creating it because it wants to make money; making money is the idea of a corporation (making soup has nothing to do with it). It takes this form in particular because it works; it has shown itself to be more effective somehow in causing people to want to buy this thing than other or previous forms. A “good” corporation will find as many ways as possible to cause as many people as possible to buy their products, regardless of whether the people need these things or benefit from them. In fact, a goal is to concentrate on how people do not need, want, or benefit from a given product, and figure out how to convince them otherwise (an interesting quote from Warhol is, paraphrased, “ A black man passed me on the street and waved and smiled today. I should find out what it is about me that they find interesting, so I can sell it to them”). In some cases this thinking leads to absolutely unethical and/or harmful things, in other cases, merely wasteful and/or unfair. Sometimes it’s fine, in spite of itself: people do benefit from what they buy. But in all cases, the thinking is the same, and it is very questionable for its great potential for exploitation. So, by making images of products, with mass-production connotations in the visual qualities, and repeated over and over, as if they were in a store, Warhol is undeniably bringing this up. Consumerism is a much discussed issue. Some people see it in a neutral light (or don’t give it any thought), some see it as a necessary evil, and some see it as a very horrible and harmful phenomenon, against which we should be fighting for our freedom. No one besides Warhol seems to be glorifying it though. In doing what he does, Warhol’s most effective, poignant, and recognizable (as in signature-like) tool is his use of compulsive repetition. In the consumerist pieces, like the Campbell’s soup cans, the most striking quality is the fact that it’s a field of sameness. We see a repetitive line of copies which have no original. Warhol has commented on this structure in his work on numerous occasions. In an interview in POPism, he explains, “I don’t want it to be essentially the same, I want it to be exactly the same, because the more you look at the exact same thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.” [9] Also, in an interview for Art News: “When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have any effect.” [10] In other words, just as Barthes put it above, we’re dealing with an image drained of its meaning, disconnected from what it is an image OF. Or so it would seem. This is perhaps the difference between some tomato soup of rather poor quality which happens to be in a metal can, and “Campbell’s Soup,” the product. What are the implications for other of Warhol’s repeated images though? Consider White Burning Car III of 1963. This is a documentary photograph of an overturned, wrecked, burning car, with its driver somehow impaled and hanging on a telephone pole nearby. There is a grid of six squares, five of which are filled with a copy of this same image, the sixth empty (though we obviously know what “goes” there). Are we to believe this piece means absolutely nothing? No one is actually making this claim, but what it does mean is not so clear. The initial image is still what it is, what it always has been. A violent burning car wreck drained of its meaning would be in no way equal to, say, a bowl of fruit drained of its meaning. If the emotional, visceral aspect of this image disappears, we are aware of exactly what it is which has been lost; it is a very specific lack of something. This exact sequence does occur somewhere besides Warhol’s work, of course. When something horrible happens, it’s documented in some way, and shown on the television news and in newspapers, it certainly becomes a different thing from the actual, original event. The more it gets repeated, the more different it becomes. The accident, or crime, or disaster becomes the material out of which the media builds a simplistic, mass-consumed, attention-grabber. Most people would at least agree that this repetition of an image of a tragedy is gratuitous and is an insult to the seriousness of the situation. Many would go as far as to say that it’s in bad taste and is sensationalizing someone’s dire misfortune for the sake of attracting more viewers or readers (and thus more advertising dollars). So, again, we seem to find Warhol alone in his stance on an issue his work is involved with. Of course he’s not supporting death and carnage, but he has no problem with making a spectacle out of it. *** In some ways this all sounds foolishly obvious. Warhol’s work illustrates the consumerism and sensationalism of the society of the spectacle so well, one feels that describing how it does is a waste of time. [11] It seems that this simply must have been addressed before, in great detail, and on numerous occasions. So, to discuss how this work relates to these issues feels like some kind of embarrassing faux-pas. It seems it would be like going around and excitedly telling everyone that gravity makes things stay on the ground, or that water is a really good thing to drink. If an artwork is to function as social criticism though, shouldn’t it compel people to do the opposite, to talk about it, and explain it, all the time? Part of the reason we do not feel compelled to talk about this, part of the reason the connection between Warhol’s work and the society of the spectacle just seems stupidly obvious, is the way these elements of our society have continued, and indeed gained strength and momentum since the 1960’s. Every issue we can find in Warhol’s work of that time, the fakeness and control of consumerism, the spectacle of the media and of celebrities, the hypnotic repetition, the alienation, has become more prominent, more entrenched, more entangled in our society. These elements have become more visible and even acceptable. The main question here is this: has Warhol actually made the society of the spectacle more exploitative, artificial, and alienating in contributing to it in the particular way that he has? Of course the direct influence a fine artist can have is negligible, especially in comparison with the influence people can have through other forms of culture. But all of the forms are connected, particularly if the art is Pop art. Everything which is said or made does potentially matter, if not directly, then indirectly, through contact with other forms of culture. When we speak on the subjects of consumerism or the spectacle, it’s all the more important to realize this, because the nature of these phenomena is such that they can be incredibly resilient, resistant to any criticism. So the stakes are raised. Could we even count the number of cases where a rebellious, critical statement has been co-opted by the very authority it set out to attack? The popular culture Warhol focuses on works both with exploitation, and by exploitation: it convinces people that they need certain things or believe certain things, and it usurps the voice of those people for use in this process of convincing. It takes a spontaneous and honest cultural phenomenon, something “real,” processes it, making it into something fake, and then sells it back to the population who originated it. Profit is made, and any threat is more than neutralized. This situation of absorbed rebellion has been discussed extensively, from Walter Benjamin [12] in the 1930’s to Andreas Huyssen [13] in the 1970’s, to Naomi Klein [14] in the 1990’s. When we consider what Warhol’s work shows us, and consider his denial of any ironic intentions, it becomes clear that Warhol’s work essentially co-opts itself in the name of the spectacle. Warhol’s work becomes a permission for the very questionable spectacular society it deals with, and it does it with all the critics who write about the work as accomplices. Every time we re-ask the questions, “Is this ironic or not? Is it social criticism, or a detached process of simulation?”, we re-confirm the spectacle as the all-controlling power we hope it isn’t. Any reference to spectacular society which is not very clearly framed as criticism constitutes praise. “Everything that appears is good,” [15] as Guy Debord puts it. Actually, Warhol, in his statements on his work, does something closer to framing his references as praise. He would be dismissed as a harmless fool for doing this, if it weren’t for the continual re-asking, re-arguing, and re-evaluating of his perplexing position, by the critics. This is not to exculpate Warhol though. The reason his work and his statements are so often re-examined is that they are so unacceptable to people, so counterintuitive, so provocative. Andy Warhol wanted to be famous. The biggest thing he did to make this happen – and he did it quite intentionally – was to create this conundrum, with his statements, which are so difficult to swallow. When an artist says things like, “I want to be a machine,” [16] we are transfixed by how wrong it seems. It fascinates us - like a car crash does. This tactic clearly employs the logic of the spectacle, and it has done the job for Warhol: it absolutely keeps our eyes on him, decades later. Should we call Warhol irresponsible for acting as the spectacle, in the name of the spectacle, illustrating the spectacle? Perhaps. Would we want to imply that any artist dealing with social/cultural issues have a certain pre-approved left-wing agenda? Absolutely not. What meaning would any art as social criticism have if the position was not chosen of the artist’s own free will? The possibility of a position we don’t like must be there, otherwise, the one we do like is empty. And who says “the position we do like” is even a known quantity? Social criticism should embody the exact antithesis of any pre-approved agenda. The strength of art as a form of social criticism is in its lack of regulation. In its vagueness and ambiguity, even. If someone wants to make a point in a more specific, “provable,” way, art is not what they would be doing. It would not be possible or advisable to establish any rules for this arena. Warhol does problematize this though. It does seem unethical and irresponsible for someone to allow this sort of situation to form around his work and his words. Irony, if we take that route in reading Warhol, is effective and interesting to a point, but with out any airhole of straightforwardness, it eats itself alive. But again, just as in the dynamic of consumerism, we, the viewers/critics/consumers, are the ones forming the situation, falling into the trap. The Critics are accomplices; so too are the viewers. Baudrillard addresses this in the conclusion of his essay, “Pop-An Art of Consumption?:” “…the works provoke a laughter… which is moral and obscene…. Then a smile of derision, but whether it judges the objects painted or the painting itself is difficult to know. A smile which becomes a willing accomplice: ‘That can’t be serious, but we are not going to be scandalized, and after all perhaps…’ All more or less twisted up in the shameful desolation of not knowing how to take it.” [17] People approach this work as consumers. It can’t bring up any ideas of social criticism for us; we’re too busy pretending that we “get it.” Seemingly, everything people in general, or critics, have done in response to Warhol’s work has made them both an accomplice and a victim. But somehow, Warhol himself is guilty of nothing. [1] Foster, Hal. “Death in America”. OCTOBER no. 75 (Winter, 1996). [2] Barthes, Roland. “That Old Thing, Art.” THE RESPONSIBILITY OF FORMS (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985 (1982)). P. 205 [3] Foster, “Death…” [4] Crow, Thomas. “Saturday Disasters: Trace and Reference in Early Warhol.” ART IN AMERICA (May, 1987). [5] Foster, “Death…” [6] Crow, “Saturday…” [7] Huyssen, Andreas. “The Cultural Politics of Pop.” AFTER THE GREAT DIVIDE: Modernism. Mass Culture, Post Modernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). [8] Foster, “Death…” [9] Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett. POPism: THE WARHOL ‘60s (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980). p. 50 [10] Swenson, Gene, “What is Pop Art? Answers From 8 Painters, Part I,” ART NEWS 62 (Nov. 1963). p. 26 [11] Note: By “the society of the spectacle,” I do not specifically mean the text by Guy Debord, I mean the society. That text of course does an incredible job in explaining the society of the spectacle, especially considering that it was written back in the 1960’s. Debord has expressed his amazement and disgust at how well his text predicted the social/cultural developments of the past quarter-century, and unlike Warhol, he has made it quite clear that his intent is to “do harm to spectacular society.” [12] Benjamin, Walter. “The Author as Producer.” UNDERSTANDING BRECHT, Trans. Anna Bostock (London: New Left Books, 1973). p. 94 [13] Huyssen, “The Cultural…” [14] Klein, Naomi. NO LOGO (New York: Picador USA, 2000). [15] Debord, Guy. THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE (New York: Zone Books, 1995 (1967)). p. 15 [16] Swenson, “What is Pop Art?” p. 26 [17] Baudrillard, Jean. “Pop-An Art of Consumption?” POST-POP ART (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989 (1970)). P. 43
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