Many artists have distinguishing qualities which help to set
them apart from other artists, and Andy Warhol displays his own
distinguishing quality. This quality for Warhol was to deviate beyond
the mainstream and go beyond the established limits in a contemporary
society of art. Andy Warhol depicted his abstract and nontraditional
ideas through the use of various media. The introducer of the avant
garde pop art movement of the 1960s, Warhol would strive to depict
everyday life while employing techniques of commercial art through
his drawings, paintings, and even his films. Warhol introduced the
concept of silk screening, pioneering a new form of art that would set the
trend for many years to come. In taking an interest in controversial
pop art, Warhol would turn his variations of various popular mass
media images into a whole new realm of the art world, allowing art
to take on a whole new perspective, opening many different
interpretations by the American culture. Individuality and the tendency
to not conform are key elements of Warhol's works, although Warhol
later turned his attention to the mainstream world of narrative cinema
by producing a string of controversial experimental films which dealt
with such concepts as time and boredom which represented an attack on
elitism in a modern day society. Nontraditional themes and controversial
themes often characterized a major portion of Warhol's drawings,
paintings, and films which have helped him gain recognition
throughout his career.
--Krista Olsen
Thanks, Scott, for finding my program notes interesting enough to reprint for the list. On the second night of the Pop Resurrection, my notes for Horse had a sort of conclusion that might serve as an addendum - particularly since it deals more directly with the question of boredom.
>If Warhol's ongoing explorations of the culture of celebrity have often seemed monotonous or pointless to many spectators, it is because these films foreground something endemic to our culture which we would all much prefer to ignore: that the manufacturing of stars, and of the commodified dramas which support and enhance their allure, is only intended for us to the extent that we support the continuing existence of the machinery itself. Within the logic of the big budget spectacle - regardless of whether it comes out of Hollywood or Washington - the individual spectator only counts as a cipher, a statistic in the abstract calculation of potential gains and losses. Where Warhol confronts us directly with a machine-like indifference, he brings us one step closer to the recognition that this indifference has become the fundamental condition of late-capitalist social life.<
I lay on the Frankfurt School with a heavier hand there than I ordinarily
would....but if we ever needed a strong dose of Adorno, it was during that
whole Clinton thing.
One last minor correction: where "Koran" appeared in the first transcription
of my notes, I had written the much less interesting word "form."
cheers,
David Conner
History of Consciousness
UC Santa Cruz