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Amazingly no mention of Andy Warhol, who made a factory to produce art, via silkscreens and assistants. Sometimes he added embellishments of paint on top, other
by gdubs 4y ago
Amazingly no mention of Andy Warhol, who made a factory to produce art, via silkscreens and assistants. Sometimes he added embellishments of paint on top, other times the work completely called into question the value of authenticity in an age of mechanical reproduction.
The introduction of the camera caused similar reverberations. And actually, if you go back to the impressionists, and through cubism to abstract expressionism — it was all a revolt against “image” being “art”. The surface, the paint, the whole canvas — that started to take on more importance. Art became less and less about the sheer skill of reproducing a scene photographically. After all, a camera could now do that so well.
Warhol was interesting because he called into question things like, is business art? Is art business? Can art be mass produced? Is that a statement on society, etc.
Honestly, people get too precious about What Is Art. And what people in galleries and museums and art school consider art is always way different than what the average person calls art and hangs on their bedroom walls.
Personally, I’ve always went with a definition my dad told me. Maybe it was Picasso originally: “Art is what makes the modern world felt.”
- jhbadger 4y agoThe thing about Warhol's "Factory" was that it wasn't really a new thing. Most pieces of art even from the Renaissance that we think are made "by an artist" are in fact made by a collaboration of an artist with their apprentices, much like how most science is done by a primary investigator and their students/postdocs.
- dpierce9 4y agoThere is a story that Verrocchio hung up his pallet after seeing how good one of the pupils in his workshop was at adding a cherub detail to one of his paintings. The pupil’s name was Leonardo. The story is likely apocryphal but to your point, the ‘factory’ model isn’t new to art.
- recov 4y agoA fun take on this - https://moforgeries.org/ https://moforgeries.org/
- randomsearch 4y agoThis confuses conceptual art with the process of creating a silkscreen (or spot painting, etc).
- sdenton4 4y agoDuchamp's readymades also come to mind, as an earlier example asking the what is art question. And those really were highlighting the 'looking at looking' mentioned in this piece. Either it's worthless, or it's branding, or it's about having a chance to see what this artist has seen. In art markets, the answer is branding... And that sort of thing - as both Duchamp and nfts have shown us - is pretty independent of the quality of the art itself.
- car_analogy 4y ago> Art became less and less about the sheer skill of reproducing a scene photographically. After all, a camera could now do that so well. That art was ever mainly about this reeks like a modernist* lie to justify their dismal works. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog - is photorealism what made it good or famous? Is any random 100% photorealistic picture taken with a phone on a hiking trip therefore strictly better? *Or whatever the art movement is called where three vertical lines or a banana taped to a wall are considered grand achievements.