chat

Post modernism wad funded by feds but that doesn't make it wrong or bad it just made it a less dangerous outlet for left leaning people during the time. Warhol was a crap person but his art was essential in mainstreaming ideas about art. He was like a Wes Anderson level guy so you get what you get. I'm not like..a fan but also have to admit he's a huge inspiration to my own artwork through others. Like post modernism in general I've got a weird relationship that I'm working on adequately explaining but that's like, a whole project.

Warhol actually just fucking sucked and was a fed.

Is me asking that the point

yes

so that rich people and art snobs can look down on the people asking

not really

Warhol's stuff was "controversial" (and eventually famous and stuff) because of this sort of thumbing-your-nose aspect. I mean the original Brillo box is art - an artist designed it to look appealing to consumers, tell you what's in it, make you feel a certain way, etc etc. The Warhol Brillo box is a silkscreened wooden crate. Is that art? Is it Art? Warhol is the champion of pop art, which (if you're being charitable) is one angle to look at lowbrow functional art that's everywhere in our society. To approach from a different angle: I like socialist realism, it's good for schmucks like me who like a simple story: Lenin or the People or whatever are great because they're 9 heads tall and depicted in a cool dynamic pose, and it's pretty, but it is usually not "great" art that makes you think. I see pop art as trying to make us think about whatever intrinsic, lowbrow appeal might be found in consumer art.

Of course Warhol was super good at the art market. Part of the thumbing-your-nose part is that he was making a whole run of these things, they didn't take that much effort. Everything is silkscreened. Critic and buyer alike were aware that these were not that much more special than the version in stores, and yet somehow rich people were (and still are) paying through the nose for a Brillo box. I have a kind of grudging respect for that at least. I think that at some point, the art market is rich buyers paying to be let into the club - by becoming the butt of the joke they are let in on the joke.

Or as Roger Ebert put it,

Andy Warhol comes along with a genuinely new way of looking at things: pop art. He also has a sense of humor and a certain feel for the mood of our times. He was right. We were ready for pop art.

Then a lot of people, mostly from New York, invest large sums of money in Warhol. Once they've done that, they have a vested interest in keeping his stock up. Their interest is all the more frantic since most of them, I suspect, secretly believe Warhol's soup cans are worthless. They lack the wit to see that Warhol's art really is amusing and pertinent.

So they overpromote Andy, who overextends himself