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Warhol is one of those artists that leaves the layperson scratching their head... how did this guy's work get recognized as high falutin art? For example, see

Warhol is one of those artists that leaves the layperson scratching their head... how did this guy's work get recognized as high falutin art? For example, see Warhol's soup can: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79809 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79809

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
77pt77 2y ago
If Jackson Pollock is any example, probably a CIA psyop. At this point nothing surprises me anymore. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  I have no clue if Pollock was a CIA psyop or not, but were it so, it wouldn't detract from the paintings. They are inventive and pushed boundaries.
  - sleepybrett 2y ago
    The PROMOTION of artists like Pollock might have been a CIA psyop, but I don't think the artists themselves were working for the CIA.
    - onetokeoverthe 2y ago
      [dead]
- axus 2y ago
  That was very astute of the CIA. Trolling "the enemy" to provoke an overreaction and make them look bad. It could happen in modern times too, promote harmless social ideas that leaders of China and Russia overreact to while the West passively tolerates.
- romwell 2y ago
  Then Kandinsky (and other Suprematists) were what, Russian Tsar's psyop? Because surely you can't beat a literal black square[1] in the "come on, you call this art?!" category. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square
conception 2y ago
That actually is one of the points of pop art. Why should a soup can be a piece of art? Why does our culture hold advertisements and products to such a high degree? One of the keys to opening the world of modern art to me was that modern art isn’t about what you see so such as what it makes you feel or think about or discuss. It’s a starting point, not an ending.
dansitu 2y ago
Andy Warhol arguably invented the cultural landscape we inhabit today, but fifty years before the iPhone: reality as entertainment, consumers as content creators, influencer marketing, and DIY viral fame. He's a fascinating pioneer and his impact on today's tech industry is hard to understate. It's well worth learning about his work, which goes far beyond the pop art prints.
- codetrotter 2y ago
  > consumers as content creators, influencer marketing, and DIY viral fame. Indeed. His famous quote comes to mind: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_minutes_of_fame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_minutes_of_fame
ericmcer 2y ago
Have you seen the artists who are celebrated today? I stayed for the credits of a movie the other day and they listed all the musicians at the end. ~80% song attributions were formatted like: `Song written by "unknown person". Performed by "Famous musical act"`. Maybe Warhol was like a proto version of being famous despite special talent, but it is almost all we get nowadays. I wonder if huge companies like Disney know that by distributing power (some people write, others perform, others do marketing, etc.) they can ensure they have final power and any artist can be replaced easily.
- tuna74 2y ago
  In music it has been the standard for hundreds of years that the composer of the music is not the one performing it. And actors don't write or direct or shoot movies either.
  - ericmcer 2y ago
    Totally different. When someone performs a piece by Beethoven everyone knows they are performing his work. Very few Beyonce/Taylor Swift/Nsync/whatever fans could name the people who actually write the songs. Classical composers were total rock stars of their period, they were well known and the face of their music. Modern pop musicians have almost all of their work written by people who are intentionally kept in the shadows. Being a composer is not a public facing profession anymore.
    - tuna74 2y ago
      People mostly don't care about the composers/producers of modern pop music. But if you want to find out it is really easy on all music platforms (Spotify, Youtube music etc). Being a performer and a composer is a very different skill set and a very different business model. Also, it is very difficult to compare the amount of fame of someone in 1800 vs someone in 2020. I am not so sure being a composer was ever a "public facing profession".
    - lomase 2y ago
      It is, just not in the mainstream part of the music industry.
micromacrofoot 2y ago
Warhol's true skill was arguably self-promotion, there aren't a lot of people who think he was particularly skilled as a classical artist — but he developed a look, talked to all the right people, and made a brand of himself in a time where it was a lot more rare to do so. This stuff is also fairly pedestrian to our eyes now because of Warhol's influence, he was doing this in the 60s, decades before anyone could say "looks like a photoshop filter"
- roughly 2y ago
  Warhol’s art was self-promotion, explicitly - commercialization and personal branding was the act.
echelon 2y ago
The answer is right there in the page: > [...] subvert the idea of painting as a medium of invention and originality. This was a new thought.
roughly 2y ago
I think this is an example of what I’d call the “Blade Runner” effect: if you show Blade Runner to someone who’s never seen it before, they’re going to think it looks vaguely derivative, because they live in a post-Blade Runner world, in which everything looks like Blade Runner. Warhol’s really the ur-version of this. We’re all in Warhol’s world, now.
- FelipeCortez 2y ago
  what you're describing as the "Blade Runner effect" is on TVTropes as "Once Original, Now Common". formerly "Seinfeld Is Unfunny"
  - ahoka 2y ago
    Same reason classic perfume masterpieces smell like cheap shampoo.
- fluoridation 2y ago
  Except his art doesn't look unoriginal. It looks, well, lacking in artistic merit.
  - romwell 2y ago
    What is artistic merit? You look at something, and it makes you feel a certain way, think a certain way, say to yourself - wow, I've never seen anything like this before - isn't this a big part of artistic merit? That's the part that vanishes once the art influences the world enough that it becomes commonplace. You can say the same about the work of Russian Constructivists[1] and Suprematists. What's artistic about fonts that look like Helvetica? What's artistic a literal Black Square?[2] Or, you can ask, what's artistic about this building[3] - it looks just about like any other modern building, the standard box-with-glass look with a cylindrical wall thrown in to break up the shape. I'll leave the answers to the reader to ponder on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(art) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(art) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuev_Workers%27_Club#/media/File:Zuev_Workers'_Club_in_MSK.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuev_Workers%27_Club#/media/Fi...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

77pt77 2y ago

If Jackson Pollock is any example, probably a CIA psyop. At this point nothing surprises me anymore. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...

actionfromafar 2y ago
I have no clue if Pollock was a CIA psyop or not, but were it so, it wouldn't detract from the paintings. They are inventive and pushed boundaries.
- sleepybrett 2y ago
  The PROMOTION of artists like Pollock might have been a CIA psyop, but I don't think the artists themselves were working for the CIA.
  - onetokeoverthe 2y ago
    [dead]
axus 2y ago
That was very astute of the CIA. Trolling "the enemy" to provoke an overreaction and make them look bad. It could happen in modern times too, promote harmless social ideas that leaders of China and Russia overreact to while the West passively tolerates.
romwell 2y ago
Then Kandinsky (and other Suprematists) were what, Russian Tsar's psyop? Because surely you can't beat a literal black square[1] in the "come on, you call this art?!" category. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square

conception 2y ago

That actually is one of the points of pop art. Why should a soup can be a piece of art? Why does our culture hold advertisements and products to such a high degree? One of the keys to opening the world of modern art to me was that modern art isn’t about what you see so such as what it makes you feel or think about or discuss. It’s a starting point, not an ending.

dansitu 2y ago

Andy Warhol arguably invented the cultural landscape we inhabit today, but fifty years before the iPhone: reality as entertainment, consumers as content creators, influencer marketing, and DIY viral fame. He's a fascinating pioneer and his impact on today's tech industry is hard to understate. It's well worth learning about his work, which goes far beyond the pop art prints.

codetrotter 2y ago
> consumers as content creators, influencer marketing, and DIY viral fame. Indeed. His famous quote comes to mind: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_minutes_of_fame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_minutes_of_fame

ericmcer 2y ago

Have you seen the artists who are celebrated today? I stayed for the credits of a movie the other day and they listed all the musicians at the end. ~80% song attributions were formatted like: `Song written by "unknown person". Performed by "Famous musical act"`. Maybe Warhol was like a proto version of being famous despite special talent, but it is almost all we get nowadays. I wonder if huge companies like Disney know that by distributing power (some people write, others perform, others do marketing, etc.) they can ensure they have final power and any artist can be replaced easily.

tuna74 2y ago
In music it has been the standard for hundreds of years that the composer of the music is not the one performing it. And actors don't write or direct or shoot movies either.
- ericmcer 2y ago
  Totally different. When someone performs a piece by Beethoven everyone knows they are performing his work. Very few Beyonce/Taylor Swift/Nsync/whatever fans could name the people who actually write the songs. Classical composers were total rock stars of their period, they were well known and the face of their music. Modern pop musicians have almost all of their work written by people who are intentionally kept in the shadows. Being a composer is not a public facing profession anymore.
  - tuna74 2y ago
    People mostly don't care about the composers/producers of modern pop music. But if you want to find out it is really easy on all music platforms (Spotify, Youtube music etc). Being a performer and a composer is a very different skill set and a very different business model. Also, it is very difficult to compare the amount of fame of someone in 1800 vs someone in 2020. I am not so sure being a composer was ever a "public facing profession".
  - lomase 2y ago
    It is, just not in the mainstream part of the music industry.

micromacrofoot 2y ago

Warhol's true skill was arguably self-promotion, there aren't a lot of people who think he was particularly skilled as a classical artist — but he developed a look, talked to all the right people, and made a brand of himself in a time where it was a lot more rare to do so. This stuff is also fairly pedestrian to our eyes now because of Warhol's influence, he was doing this in the 60s, decades before anyone could say "looks like a photoshop filter"

roughly 2y ago
Warhol’s art was self-promotion, explicitly - commercialization and personal branding was the act.

echelon 2y ago

The answer is right there in the page: > [...] subvert the idea of painting as a medium of invention and originality. This was a new thought.

roughly 2y ago

I think this is an example of what I’d call the “Blade Runner” effect: if you show Blade Runner to someone who’s never seen it before, they’re going to think it looks vaguely derivative, because they live in a post-Blade Runner world, in which everything looks like Blade Runner. Warhol’s really the ur-version of this. We’re all in Warhol’s world, now.

FelipeCortez 2y ago
what you're describing as the "Blade Runner effect" is on TVTropes as "Once Original, Now Common". formerly "Seinfeld Is Unfunny"
- ahoka 2y ago
  Same reason classic perfume masterpieces smell like cheap shampoo.
fluoridation 2y ago
Except his art doesn't look unoriginal. It looks, well, lacking in artistic merit.
- romwell 2y ago
  What is artistic merit? You look at something, and it makes you feel a certain way, think a certain way, say to yourself - wow, I've never seen anything like this before - isn't this a big part of artistic merit? That's the part that vanishes once the art influences the world enough that it becomes commonplace. You can say the same about the work of Russian Constructivists[1] and Suprematists. What's artistic about fonts that look like Helvetica? What's artistic a literal Black Square?[2] Or, you can ask, what's artistic about this building[3] - it looks just about like any other modern building, the standard box-with-glass look with a cylindrical wall thrown in to break up the shape. I'll leave the answers to the reader to ponder on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(art) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(art) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuev_Workers%27_Club#/media/File:Zuev_Workers'_Club_in_MSK.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuev_Workers%27_Club#/media/Fi...