this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Warhol's fed-subsidized works are bleak-yet-pretentious trash that have had a negative impact on the art world ever since and I'm tired of saying otherwise.
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.
My problem is that even the vestiges of the subversive/rebellious roots of it are the establishment now. They're the big money in the art world and have been for generations. The tenured professors of art are almost universally on board and in agreement about the seemingly inexhaustible (yet exhausting) novelty of Warhol's work roughly a half century ago.
I do agree with that but well, it was half a century ago and I can for sure say as a long time diy punk guy the style with being fast and ready with the screnprints and stencils and being easy to adopt by people without traditional artistic skill by doing mixed media of collafes stencils, screenprints etc ofnpre existing images to create a new context is very downline from Warhol and has been pretty big in genuine subversive art
Exactly my point. Warhol's "subversions" are so entrenched and established now that it seems absurd to me that they get to keep wearing the "subversion" tag while also commanding the status quo and the gold standard of what is considered to be art for much of the contemporary establishment.
From what I read about Warhol as a person, I suspect he'd be downright condescending to you if you showed him your work. The good things he did for you weren't for those that came after him and were less than accidents; I think he'd have outright contempt for anything like a working class art movement unless he could directly make a buck off of it.
I don't like the guy. Let me be clear there. I like the effect he had. Net gain.
I halfway agree with you but I can't be sure if it's a net gain considering the entire point of Warhol getting subsidized by the feds was to culturally derail Soviet-inspired art and cultural movements among college age kids in the west. I don't know what might have come of that without the reactionary culture jamming; maybe not much at all, but who knows?
I don't think they needed much help. My pro with post modernism is holy fuck does it describe the current condition but the con and it's a big one is thst it ignores changing it. Post modern problems require modern solutions so to speak, by which I mean Marxism. So art coming from the imperial core is going to reflect the condition of the imperial core, Soviet realism wasn't gonna evolve in America in the 60s anyway, I wanna place an honestly held opinion here and don't wanna get removed for sectarianism so mods, this reflects my suspicions and not necessarily the opinions of GalaxyBrain or theye affiliates but the CIA's goal in all this culture jamming regarding post modernism and Orwell etc was to push the American left towards anarchism. I can't expand on thst without getting into trouble which makes this conversation maybe a bit tougher, but I'll say.that post modernism isn't wrong, it just really accurately describes this hellscspe and offers nothing Marxism doesn't while sometimes pretending to be better.
Also Soviet art at the time did kinda suck.
There's an old saying about irony being the song of a bird that's come to love its cage.
Ideologically, I feel similarly about postmodernism's core messaging. I'm not sermonizing against either as a concept on its own as much as saying they really do effectively cage people ideologically when they become and end as well as a means. "Everything is ambigious and vague, interpretation can not be decisively pinned down, therefore knowledge and ignorance are one and the same, dae to each their own" seems like a contraceptive against revolutionary momentum to me.
I think it's true right now and that's a bad thing. Accurate analysis, but doesn't solve shit
I completely agree with you. I got restless in such art and literature courses (I had quite a few) and deep down, I wanted to say "all right, fine. It's vague and ambiguous. Now what?"
That is the point it's ambiguity and pointlessness all the way down. It's not like the Frankfurt school thought this was a good condition to be under either. The now what hasn't changed cause we haven't done that yet. Post modernism is a shitty name and that I do blame on the cia cause it's too convenient and doesn't sound great in French. Post modernism is the inherently temporary place we occupy right now, and that's worth having a good look at, but it's located at the end of the rubber band that is real material modernism. Post modern should just be called late capital, it's more accurate.
I'd like to eventually leave that pit and see what else is possible but the pit instead of sitting in the pit or digging the pit deeper while saying "pit, pit, the pit is the point." Yes, the pit is the point. Sometimes I'd like to not be in the pit and see what else is out there without it being dismissed as "just a painting" or "poems that rhyme aren't serious poetry."
Even the people in this thread that you've dunked on for seeing Warhol's work on a subjective face-value level (and seeing it as, understandably, bleak and ugly) are saying they want to get off of Mr. Bones' Wild Ride, so to speak. A half century (more than a century to be exact if you go back to the roots of the art movement) of saying "gotcha, expectations subverted" is ossifying more and more and maybe something new and different will actually seize the next century's art experience. I can only hope, because reflecting the bleakness of the present status quo, to me, is as ponderous and tiresome as the present status quo itself.
Also, have you ever in your whole history of posting here ever given up on an argument?
What is there to give up? I have a subjective position about art and I'm not going to pledge allegiance to you or what you stand for.
Show me art you like right now
Between this and your above post, I think you're getting far too hostile toward not only me but also people in this thread that subjectively don't appreciate (or even see) what you think is so important that you're apparently looking down on them for not "getting it."
There isn't much good that can come of this exchange at this point.
Post art that you like right now
And also he did do art for the Velvet Undeground. Yknow, squatting junkies.
Starbucks provided venues for beat poetry groups, especially early on. Also unsure about whether the Starbucks empire was a net gain there.
More directly to the point, Wal-Mart has had a long tradition of letting people park and sleep in their parking lots. Squatters of a similar feather.
These are both absurd comparisons and you should know it.
I picked some glaringly distinct ones on purpose, showing the outer margins of bad movements nonetheless providing some benefit in a "trickle down" fashion in their wake.
They're both corporations and corporations aren't people.
conservatism is the new punk rock imho.
Me being told over and over again how wholesomely working class and glass roots and punk an art movement was while also calling me a tasteless unwashed consumer drone because I don't endlessly praise the subversive value of a roughly 50 year old picture of a can of soup is definitely me experiencing an unintentional act of performance art in this thread.
Marx, Paine, Christ, the writings are old, older than fifty years. are they not radical, not subversive? what does fifty years mean? Cervantes did metafiction 500 years ago. tragedy is dead, representational art is dead, plato is dead, they've been dead as long as any one can remember, and the modern condition extends generations.
if a disposition towards socialism is a disposition to ameliorate unjust hierarchy and order, then a concomitant and helpful social practice would be one which illuminates how the social order, which comes to us ready made and carved at the joints, and speaks to its own essentialism, is actually unset and contingent. (such works or practices might do so, even just locally, by calling into question and blurring the borders of their own existence/categorization.)
but who cares. a work of art cannot simply be reduced to a series of propositions; an essay or dozens of posts do not encompass an ecstatic truth. if one can't see the playfulness or wryness, if one isn't touched with reflection or curiosity, in watching a dude get sucked off and watching a chick eat a hamburger, or seeing the mass products of mid century, re-oriented and re-produced in mass, re-commodified, finding an aesthetic form in mass production, reducing art (democratizing art?) as products of a factory, then there is simply something wrong with either warhol or the viewer.
Clearly quite a few in this thread do.
Yeah not arguing there, except to ask why the singular absolutist "you are a barbarian if you don't give continual respect and reverence to Andy Warhol" take that I've been replying to?
Crediting all art that followed after Andy Warhol to Andy Warhol with the implication that he had some unique and profound contribution is serious Great Man Theory nonsense, especially because when extrapolated on widely enough, pretty much every person that ever lived contributed something to the present moment whether or not they got rich or famous from it or not. Claims about how all of it would be drastically different without that one rich asshole, that so much art and culture simply would not exist at all in any comparable or similar or even recognizable form even if absolutely nothing else was changed except the absence of Andy Warhol, don't sound leftist and all and are an unprovable hypothesis in favor of belief in the Great Man's unique and special presence.
I had no idea how badly I needed to hear that.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: