Andy Warhol

Ah, how contemporary a moment! Witnessing the news ticker to a match of the FIFA World Cup, where apparently a player got bitten by another player, and also witnessing how those, apparently not witnessing the match on a news ticker, commented upon the seen on Twitter (some of the comments, instinctivly associating the biting with cannibalism and Count Dracula, being rather fancyful and funnily playing with words). How is art and poetry going to look like, produced by those, who are growing up with this?

Let’s call it a Post-Art-Basel-meditation what we are doing here. Another issue of the world’s leading art fair being over, we felt it – instinctively – being a good idea to take another look into Andy Warhol’s Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and back again. And why? Because of maybe Andy Warhol might help us to understand better what’s going on around us. Why do we encounter a nude flaneuse changing train at the very center of Basel… But stop.

First of all: We did not exactly encounter the nude flaneuse. What we got to see and to read was just the media echo of her performance. The immaterial frame, as it were, of something immaterial as a performance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art).
Secondly: I know that she had an artist paint words on her body, symbolically referring to clothes, but everybody considered her as being nude, so I am sticking to that terminology.
Thirdly: Apparently she did change train at the very heart of Basel, where a notorious fresco, showing Apollo and the Muses (http://www.altbasel.ch/fussnoten/a.h.pellegrini.html), does look down from the front side of the Casino to a rather conservative city like Basel; and it did take that city probably decades, but the city definitely did learn to ignore that very material nudity, but now everybody is used to ignore it, which is probably the explanation that the nude flaneuse, who did change train at the center of Basel did not cause an overwhelming stir (and which is probably the explanation that everybody considered her as being nude, since one has to recall that probably every culture does produce very efficient strategies to ignore art or what is taken as being art by some. But back to Andy Warhol.

(Picture: sothebys.com; small picture above: devorzongallery.com)

I should like to raise a rather simple question, but this rather simple and seemingly naive question has probably a cascade of other question following: How did Andy Warhol actually look at art?
All those who know the answer, may now take another look into their preferred social network account, but those who don’t, may stay with us here. I do not have the answer, nor do I expect to have it at the end of this Post-Art-Basel-meditation.

But, as mentioned before, we have the Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and back again, and maybe we might find some answers in there. But stop:

I know it is a ghostwritten book. It says so, here on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Andy_Warhol). But some biographers of Warhol have taken it very seriously and even, in a very literal sense, as a biographical source. Thus: Having raised the question of how Andy Warhol did actually look at art, we face the first of a cascade of other questions: How are we meant to read this/his book?

Are we meant to read it like a monk does read a book of hours?

Or is it more like a bottle with an undefined liquid in it, offered to us by a rather spooky creature leaving the factory at 47th street on a windy New Year’s Day early morning? And brave we are, if somehow suspicious, in taking a pull.
Or is it to be read like a hitchhiker’s guide? Or like poetry? Or like a manual how to become a millionaire by producing just one work of art, but having it reproduced in great number, while every single one is being sold or takes as an original?

Beyond doubt is that this book assembles a great many ideas. But not exactly ideas how to look at art. One might even get the impression that Andy Warhol and/or his ghostwriters did not exactly care about art, left alone the business art of Andy Warhol. And the scenery of having spilled down the toilet various artifacts is very funny… But stop:

First of all: It is obvious that this book, whoever did produce it, was obsessively concerned with popular culture and childhood fears, and having images appear at places, where traditionally popular culture icons, if frightful or soothing, where not meant to appear, implies at least a looking at traditional art from the corner of the eye. What’s interesting, however, and not exactly clear, is, if this looking at traditional art from the corner of the eye is full of respect (like pop musicians, the more wild their hair do, the more they are full of respect for classical music and especially the craftmanship embodied in it), or is it literally true, what Andy Warhol and with him the book says, that he never felt moved by a painting (but on the other hand, he felt obviously anger, once being confronted with Abstract Expressionist Art).

(Picture: derekwinnert.com)

Instinctively is, how he, according to the book, did look at his own art. A little bit more of color here, a little less there; and interesting is also the confronting of Leonardo da Vinci, who is claimed here having his patrons pay for the time he just did think (I don’t know if this theory bears checking), with Andy, who did only put his actively, manually doing something to his patron’s account.

»Instinctively«, we already have repeatedly used that word, is probably a key for Andy Warhol’s actual looking at art. From a point of view of craftmanship; and from a point of view of a higly sensitive and witty individual. And it may indeed be that no art ever did move or frighten or arouse or entertain him as much as the popular culture he grew up with did (or the later seeing Snow White in his forties, accompanied by Roman Polanski). And now popular culture stemming from the 19th century comes in:

It is not exactly an icon of contemporary pop culture, but in his last year of productivity Andy Warhol was apparently concerned with Danish writer (and also artist) Hans Christian Andersen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Andersen), whose tales also have been adapted by Walt Disney (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Duckling). And what did Andersen represent for Andy Warhol? What do these two, in our opinion, more than congenial spirits have in common (although or just because Andersen is not mentioned in the Philosophy of Andy Warhol?

It’s probably the merciless and rather instinctive analysis of human ways, of cruelty, and especially of cruelty hidden in beauty and harmlessness. And of having the picture inversed, as Hans Christian Andersen has his brutally-merciless analysis of collective illusion and of how far it can lead hidden in his seemingly »nice« tale of the »Emperor’s New Clothes« (but it’s a less than nice tale, actually stemming from medieval literature of Muslim Spain, and a variant of that tale, replacing imaginary clothes with imaginary pictures does already exist in the 13th century!). And as Andy Warhol, in his Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back in passing-by does speak of the idea of doing a pornographic movie only by showing two mere blossoms.

Note that the, as far as we can see, only exhibition so far dealing with the correspondences between Hans Christian Andersen and Andy Warhol, did actually take place only a couple of years ago. And it did take place neither in the USA nor Europe, but it did interestingly take place in China (http://china.org.cn/english/culture/126622.htm).

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