Andy Warhol - Ambulance Disaster - Essay Example

Andy Warhol Ambulance Disaster 2009 OUTLINE: A) Biographic s of Andy Warhol and his artist career B) Disaster imaginary of Warhol C) Deathand Disaster paintings: Ambulance Disaster meaning and effect D) Conclusion Andy Warhol is one of the most spectacular artists of the 20th century. He was the one to combine a paradoxical approach to modernist art – on one hand, he was a “commercial artist”, on the other, he tried to be a fine artist. His uniqueness is expressed not in the manner he handled paint (though combination paint and silk-screen technique is characteristic for him) but in his choice of subject or content of his works. The success of his painting depended hardly on the quality of paint-handling but on the image chosen for reproduction. Warhols work is characterized by the shattering myths of its times employing ‘the machinery of fame and publicity that market these myths.’ (Pratt 1997 p.1) Andrew Warhola, the birth name of Andy Warhol was born in Forest City, outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the family of Slovakia immigrants in August 6, 1928. After graduation from the Carnegie Institute of Technology where he studies pictorial design he moved to New York to work as a commercial artist for several magazines including Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and the New Yorker. He was also involved in advertising and arranging window displays for Bonwit Teller and I. Miller. That’s where he developed his unique sense of style. By 1959 Warhol was a successful advertising design professional. His numerous medals and rewards suggest of his professional career. He won several commendations from the Art Directors Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Already in 1952 his first individual show at the Hugo Gallery, exhibiting Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote was launched. He had his first group show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1956. From the early start of professional career Andy Warhol produced images of male nudity in standard "artistic" poses as well as shocking sketches of masturbating men and depiction of same sex intercourse. His sketching and photographing male bodies supported his ability to maintain innovative and influential career. Still he attempted to gain recognition as a "fine" artist featuring “cupids, beautiful boys faces, and penises festooned with bows and lipsticked "kiss marks," which gained little positive feedback from New York art world. (Doyle, Flatley & MuÑoz 1996) 1954-55 Warhol addresses high art. However, afterwar period made high art and mass culture more integrated where artist’s role had been transformed and cultural practices changed. It also effected objects and images and their functions within society. Eventually mass culture started to dominate high art. ‘Art Businessman’ or ‘Business Artist’ that what Andy longed to be. Andy Warhol was uniquely qualified to reconcile high culture ideals and mass culture utilizing his skills and techniques in commercial art. He was first to refuse from concepts of originality and authorship to assume a need of teamwork and collaboration. Warhol produced hundred prints, both individual and in series based on some theme or personality. Multiplying a single image Warhol produced different variations different in color and introduced strong contrasts, even garish combinations of colored inks. (Johnson, 1996 p.30)  1960s turned to be prolific for Warhol who produced his famous paintings such as the Campbells Soup Cans, Disasters and Marilyns as well as 16mm films such as Chelsea Girls, Empire and Blow Job. Early works created between 1960 and 1962 have loose expressive manner, but its imagery is derived from details of comic strips and advertisements. His first work in this domain ‘Saturday’s Popeye’(1960) and ‘Water Heater”(1960) with a mocking hint on Abstract Expressionism were first examples of Pop Art. From reproduction of cartoons and advertisements, he proceeded to depicting household items in a grid design. These works made Warhol recognized and influential artist. He was among the first to turn consumer culture objects into artistic and aesthetic pieces. His often brutal and offensive images were excluded from any signs of personality and meant to shock the audience by its content. In 1975 Warhol creates a portfolio of 10 screen prints of legendary Mick Jagger who was represented in 10 different poses where each print was partly photo-derived and partly graphic. A 1981 portfolio Myths with its 10 images depicted imaginary persons from old Hollywood films or 1950s television: Mickey Mouse, Dracula, Howdy Doody, Santa Claus recalling childhood memories and earlier works of Warhol. (Johnson, 1996 p.31)  At the beginning of 1970s Warhol started publishing Interview magazine and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back Again). Again he returns to painting and works created during this time are Maos, Skulls, Hammer and Sickles, Torsos and Shadows. It was a time of extensive exhibitions in museums and galleries all over the world. Warhols graphic art can be seen in the exhibition Works by Warhol from the Cochran Collection focused on silkscreen prints from 1974 to last series completed in 1986 before his death.  This exhibition, from the private collection has been presented at numerous American museums during the last years. (Johnson, 1996 p.31) The 1980s marked the publication of POPism: the Warhol 60s and with exhibitions of Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century and the Retrospectives and Reversal series. He also managed to launch television shows Andy Warhols TV in 1982 and Andy Warhols Fifteen Minutes for MTV in 1986. However, the greatest Andy’s success was as a commercial designer, which depended on his artistic performance. Diagrammatic painting Dance Diagrams (Fox Trot and Tango) and series Do it Yourself produced by Warhol seems to be a ‘direct response to historical status of renewing the concept of participatory aesthetics. Both types literary involve the viewer into active participatory experience rather than promote mere contemplation. This participatory tradition has become the key strategy of advertising design soliciting viewers consumption. These way popular entertainment rituals were transferred into ‘pictorial plane of high art.’ Real ritual of participation was highlighted by the way how Warhol exhibited his Dance Diagrams in first public installation: they were placed horizontally on the floor, which made display an essential element of paintings interpretation. The other important strategy used by Warhol since 60’s was monochromatic color scheme where the author discovers ‘modernist tradition of monochrome painting’. Warhol also rediscovered silkscreen printing, which turned to be a simpler process for an image recreation, which allowed him to depict the life and images of the time without emotion and thus eliminate the ‘signature’ of the artist. Mechanical repetition of an image emphasized his desire to distance from creative process. As he put it in one of the interviews, “The reason Im painting this way is that I want to be a machine.” (Johnson 1996 p.30) In 1962 Marilyns appears, followed by silver Elvis Presley and many more silkscreened painting created between 1963-1964 – Marlon Brando, Tunafish Disaster, Thirteen Most Wanted Men. In 1963 he created his first diptych paintings with monochrome panels: Mustard Race Riot, Blue Electric Chair followed by Round Jackies in 1964 and Liz in 1965. Monochrome diptych paintings have been one more attempt to negate ‘aesthetic imposition’, which placed a viewer in the relation of dependence with an artist construct. (Warhol, Michelso and Buchloh, 2001 p.15-16) At first Warhol doubted as to his commitment to mechanical reproduction, but by 1966 he felt like defending silkscreen technique against commonly held view of inartistic character of readymade objects. His view was that mechanical means are quicker than hand painting and that was the mark of the age. On the other hand, Pop art was easy to understand unlike previous art movements, it was witty and close to general public tastes. Familiar images forced the viewer to look at the world from a different perspective. “Once you begin to see Pop, you cant see America in the same way,” was Warhol understanding of Pop art. He was the principal and most successful of Pop art proponents. (Johnson 1996) Since 1960s the art turned to realism and illusionism: pop art, superrealism or photorealism and appropriation art. Pop Art responded to press emphasis and Hollywood depiction of catastrophes. Warhol was one of those artiest who produced shocking images of death on the road. Disaster imaginary appears on paintings reproduced from newspaper photographs: 5 Deaths, White Burning Care III, Green Disaster #2, Ambulance Disaster, Saturday Disaster, Foot and Tire critiquing media’s concentration on highway accidents. According to Warhol after viewing the Daily News headline 129 Die in Jet he started his series of paintings depicting human death and disaster from suicide to atom bomb disaster. These shocking and disturbing pieces are displays of death as everyday, routine phenomenon. His first silkscreened car crashes stunned viewers with suffering and prosiness of death. These works shattered the romantic veil of car crashes as being a tragic, yet beautiful end of youth rebellion. Portrayal of victims as “death-and-disaster still life” produces gruesome effect as blood spattered human wreckage appear “trapped beneath cars, hanging out of car windows, impaled on telephone pole spikes.” Warhol turns a delightful picture of American dream into a nightmare. (Cohan & Hark, 1997 p. 197) Pop artists opposed American aesthetic tradition of depicting death in heroic strokes by showing it in unsentimental and deromanticized tone. The artist used newspaper pictures reporting unemotionally of individual deaths and turning them into shocking screens simulating viewers’ imagination and interest. Death is no more depicted in the framework of heroic themes, being shown as “brutal end, purposeless finality,” which is caused by human madness. (Cohan & Hark, 1997 p. 197) Warhol with this images Death in America as well as other thematic pictures (celebrity and fashion, gay culture, etc) represents Warholian pop, which have referential character according to critics. T. Crow deputes the impassiveness of the author finding suffering and death behind the glamour of stars and commodity fetishes. It is not only referential object that Crow finds in Warhol’s works but empathetic subject referring the artist to the American tradition of “story telling.” (Foster 1996, p.130) Whatever the view on the work of Warhol is taken – referential or simulacral, their true meaning can be revealed when considering them from the point of traumatic realism. Warhol did not locate punctum in details of the content. Instead, the punctum is in repetitive popping of the image. (Krauss et.al., 1997) Mechanical reproduction void of depth at the first glance creates the feeling of disturbance and produces an effect of trauma, which is further intensified by imperfection of mechanical reproduction process – flaws and glitches within the mechanized images. These errors arrest and fascinate the gaze, creating punctum. Thus as Foster states punctum “works less through content than through technique, especially through the ‘floating flashes’ of the silkscreen process, the slipping and streaking…” Slips and scars of mechanical process of reproduction allows the viewer to ‘almost touch the real,’ as Foster suggests, through effect of process malfunction. (Arthurs & Grant, 2000 p.81-82) Being “bad copy” of reproduction techniques – marred and shadowy – makes he viewer want to have a closer look at the piece. One has to peer and pry into the paintings. (Glowacka & Boos, 2002 p. 270) As the painting are repetitive (some like 210 times Coca-cola bottle) create an illusion of continuity where “colouring of the frames, the distinctness of the silk screens, the shadowing all give a sense of change through difference.” (Smith, 2001 p.200) In Ambulance Disaster the content is not trivial but repetitions are meant to produce a shock. In this piece Warhol ‘produces a second order of trauma’ by repetition of the image. This technique allows the real to enter from the screen allowing the viewer to touch it. The tear in the bottom image produces the effect of loss. His work impresses with traumatic realism and repetitions ‘fix on traumatic real.’ (Krauss et.al, 1997) As Lucan writes, “what is repeated is always something that occurs … as if by chance.” (54) Seemingly accidental pops appear to be repetitive and even technological. They work on “optical unconscious to produce subliminal effects of modern image technologies.” Term ‘optical unconscious’ introduced by Walter Benjamin in 1930s in response to photography and film was later updated by Warhol who responded to ‘postwar society of spectacle, of mass-media and commodity signs’. (Krauss et.al, 1997) The color choice of Death and Disaster paintings has its specific role to play in piece perception. Throughout the series the artist uses mainly secondary colors serving to intensify the meaning of the content. Gruesome images of car crashes, suicides, funerals and riots shaded by orange, lavender, and pink alienate the viewer from realistic visual representation. The juxtaposed images in Warhol’s piece are not really identical: their colouring and shading as well as definition are different. There’s no priority or sequence or succession of the images. Multiple frames are all equal in one single frame and that what makes a meaning: multiplicity is animated by juxtaposition producing relationality in which the view participates. This way Warhol exhibits to the viewer ‘repetitions of daily commodified life.’ (Smith, 2001 p.205) Repetitions do not interrupt the unity: it is juxtaposition of the images that both separates them and unites into a single unity. The juxtapositions mark the places where differences are highlighted and can be easily identified and intertwined into a locus of painting. What Warhol achieves with repetitions is banality of everyday life, “its sublime banality that turns art into philosophy, that turns visibility of repetitions into a textuality of differences.” (Smith, 2001 p.207) Andy Warhol is among those rare artist personalities enjoyed public recognition during his life. His name is associated with contemporary American culture bright with American images. Artist-celebrity Andy Warhol cherished the cult of celebrity and worshipped fame. He immortalized American icons such as Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley in his art objects. Warhol is also known for his fascination with mass-produced products like Campbells soup cans or Coke bottles and other objects serving as models for his paintings and prints. Thus he was bringing art from everyday life serving it to masses. Warhol has become ‘a portrayer of society and world of collective longings and fears.’ (Krystof & Modigliani, 2000 p.61) He also commemorated social trends of longing for fame where even criminals who are successful can enjoy public acceptance. His works had great transformative effect through exhibiting another America, another way of perceiving the world. REFERENCES The Andy Warhol Foundation http://www.warholfoundation.org/ retr. 26 Apr., 2009. Arthurs, Jane and Iain Grant. Crash Cultures: Modernity, Mediation and the Material. Bristol and Oregon: Intellect Books, 2000. Cohan, Steven and Ina Rae Hark. The Road Movie Book. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Doyle, Jennifer, Jonathan Flatley and J. E. MuÑoz. Pop out: Queer Warhol. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. Foster, Hal The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde At the End of the Century. Cambridge, MA, London, UK: MIT Press, 1996. Glowacka, Dorota and Stephen Boos. Between Ethics and Aesthetics: Crossing the Boundaries. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. Johnson, Mark M. Prints by Andy Warhol. Arts & Activities, 1996, 120, p 29-31 Krauss, Rosalind E., et al. October: the Second Decade, 1986-1996 Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997. Krystof, Doris. Amedeo Modigliani, 1884-1920: the Poetry of Seeing. Taschen, 2000. Pratt, Alan R. The Critical Response to Andy Warhol. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. Smith, Terry E. Impossible Presence: Surface and Screen in The Photogenic Era. University of Chicago Press Co-published with Power Publications, Sydney, 2001. Warhol, Andy, Annette Michelson, and B. H. D. Buchloh. Andy Warhol. October files, 2. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001.   Read More