October 26, 2006
The Selling of St. Andy
By RUTH LA FERLA
IN 1968 Andy Warhol placed an advertisement in The Village Voice: “I’ll endorse with my name any of the following: clothing, AC-DC, cigarettes, small tapes, sound equipment, ROCK ’N’ ROLL RECORDS, anything, film and film equipment, Food, Helium, Whips, MONEY!! love and kisses ANDY WARHOL. EL 5-9941.”
Warhol was not being coy. He was firming up his position as a sociocultural commercial institution, an artist who churned out silk-screen prints with assembly-line efficiency, a magazine publisher, a television personality, a filmmaker, social gadabout and self-styled prophet, who saw the erosion of the line between art and commerce. He was intent on turning his name and mystique into a brand.
“Being good in business,” he wrote in “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again),” newly republished by Harcourt, is “the most fascinating kind of art.”
But even the seer in Warhol could not have envisioned the degree to which he has become commercialized. In time for the holiday season, nearly 20 years after his death in February 1987, the marketing of Andy Warhol is in full flood. “We’re seeing Warhol energy peeking out from everywhere,” said Robert Lee Morris, the jewelry designer and a former member of the artist’s circle, who has brought out a line of jewelry with Warhol motifs like the dollar sign and the Brillo logo. “We are witnessing all the ways that his reach has extended into the moment.”
Warhol’s mercantile essence, both high and low, is distilled in carpets and coffee mugs, calendars and greeting cards, T-shirts, tote bags and a style of Levi’s wax-coated jeans called Warhol Factory X, for $185. To judge by all the merchandise, Warhol is being positioned as the next Hello Kitty. There will even be a Warhol Pez dispenser. Imagine his jaw popping open to disgorge a mint.
It is “the fulfillment of Andy’s fantasy about business art” said Jeffrey Deitch, the art dealer and former Warhol associate. “I think he would have been amazed to see what has developed.”
Warhol-inspired wares are being sold in stores like Macy’s and Nordstrom and in youth-oriented chains like Urban Outfitters and high-end fashion boutiques like Fred Segal in Los Angeles. This month Barneys New York will roll out a holiday marketing campaign around the artist, including shopping bags with Warhol-like doodles, four store windows and a limited edition of Campbell’s soup cans.
“It’s a good moment for Andy Warhol,” said Charlotte Abbott, a senior editor at Publishers Weekly, noting the many recent Warhol books. “Culturally, he is still on top,” she said. “There is more of a rebellious New Yorky underground feeling coming back into the zeitgeist — or maybe it’s just a nostalgia for all that.”
Warholiana is being pitched ever younger. People in their late teens and early 20’s are apt to identify not just with the cool, affectless Warhol persona, said Irma Zandl, a youth trend forecaster, but also with Warhol the entrepreneurial go-getter.
Among the new books are “Edie Factory Girl” (VH1 Press), a photo chronicle of the artist’s relationship with his socialite muse Edie Sedgwick, and “The Day the Factory Died” (Empire), pictures from Warhol’s memorial service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Christophe von Hohenberg, with text on the Warhol circle by Charlie Scheips. There is also “Andy Warhol ‘Giant’ Size” (Phaidon), a coffee-table tribute to the artist, packed scrapbook style with 2,000 images and documents.
Why Warhol, and why now? Those thrusting him back to the cultural and commercial forefront — if he ever left it — offer several explanations. “There is a longing for that era in Manhattan of self-invention and discovery, of cultural questioning,” said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys, who is orchestrating the store’s many-pronged Warhol holiday marketing.
He described the present moment as one of “trompe l’oeil grooviness, all ironed blond hair and girls wearing Blahniks.”
“But Andy wasn’t pseudohip,” Mr. Doonan said. “He is the primordial mulch from which all cool in Manhattan sprang.”
In a celebrity-fixated society, which often equates style with substance, Warhol’s canny exploitation of fame and image are particularly resonant. “He understood celebrity and branding,” said Tobias Meyer, the worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s. “He came from a commercial world and made it part of his art. That is why he is so relevant.” ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/fashion/26warhol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>
Carl
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