[WS:] You could have persuaded me, maybe, had you kept this thought to yourself.
Wojtek
On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> Wojtek clarifies:
>
>> 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
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