> he is not appealing aesthetically to me.
Okie-doke. No accounting for taste, I guess :-)
> You can also interpret "merits" in the sense of being influential
> for other artists - but I am not sure whether this applies to Warhol.
To me, Art is a single thing: it's the result of a response to the urge to communicate. It's solely at the discretion of the artist whether it's Art or not. Once you have that response, it can, of course, be judged on any set of criteria that one wishes. Subsets of people can agree on various subsets of criteria, and so on.
I divide "conventional Art" into two broad categories: that which increases the scope of the conversation; and that which is critical of the conversation. So your 'merits' above is probably just the former. And of course, sometimes it's both: "Here's a new way of thinking about things that's also a criticism of what came before" ... and on.
> A lot of people talked about him, to be sure, but I am not sure
> that he influenced art that followed that much.
Since this is one of the main theses about Warhol -- that he was both a vanguard and a leader of the Pop Art movement -- you're going to have to back that up with more than just "not being sure" ... I welcome your dissertation :-)
As an opening volly, I'll perhaps remind everyone that Warhol had work in the first museum-curated Pop Art show in the US, New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1962. Surely the guy who was in the first major show can't be seen as simply a hanger-on ... yes? And to keep it topical, if Damien Hirst isn't his direct descendent, I'll eat my hat. I'm not saying he invented Pop Art; but he was there long before it really got going, and he was part of the group that formulated it into a "something different" ...
And of course he's had lots of influence in other areas besides wall-hangings. To pick a random one: music, via The Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo, etc. But there's plenty of dance, sculpture, movies, fashion, magazines and the all-encompassing subject of "popular culture" that has a direct link to him. I'll give a for-instance: Andy Warhol was really the first one to turn art into a "lifestyle" -- *being* art. This is now commonplace, but 50 years ago it was not.
I think you have a lot of work on your homework assignment; report back with status updates on a regular basis.
/jordan