Page 11 - Studio International - November 1972

Л. ПАВЛОВ

Andy Warhol's 'factory' of modernism

L. Pavlov

`He will soon be as famous as Salvador Dali alone, two thousand 'pictures' were produced in billboards, copies of labels from various
or Maria Callas' wrote the French critic Otto the 'factory'. 'Every pose, every gesture of commercial products, and copies of photographs
Hahn in the weekly L'Express when he reviewed Warhol's', remarked Otto Hahn, 'is functional, of celebrities (Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy
the major exhibition of the American aimed at publicity in the press and on radio and etc.) taken from illustrated magazines. Warhol
avant-garde artist Andy Warhol, organized last television'. has elevated the mediocrity, banality and artistic
year by the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris. The last thing Warhol resembles is an artist. primitivism of the advertisement into an
Although Warhol has not yet achieved the He is more like some hard-headed businessman, aesthetic principle. The sudden acclamation of
succès de scandale of the Spanish surrealist or the always ready to change his policies and not Warhol's 'portraits' of cans and bottles of
triumphs of the Greek singer, nevertheless 1971 particular about methods, who has organized tomato sauce as chefs d'oeuvre of the new art
marked the beginning of his 'conquest' of the mass production of avant-garde art in his cannot simply be explained by the fact that they
Europe. `factory'. More than once Warhol has declared 'I make no demands upon the observer. The other
Apart from Paris, he exhibited his works in want to be a machine, I want to be anti-human important explanation is that Pop Art was
London's famous Tate Gallery, and in West and detached from my art'. What terrible irony! essentially the first American 'school' which
Germany Rainer Crone published a monograph The artistic search, the joys of creativity came to have influence in Europe.
in defence of his work. In August Londoners cynically sacrificed to the mass production of Pop Art brought together the avant-gardism
saw his first play Pork, and of late Warhol's commercial products. and the 'mass culture' which played an
most boring films have become fashionable Modern bourgeois culture of the twentieth important role in the cultural expansion of the
among the intellectual snobs of Europe. He has century is not unfamiliar with those whose work USA among the countries of the Old World.
already made more than seventy films, and it undermines the basis of art. The path of sudden Thus bourgeois ideologists and Pop artists
should be borne in mind that each film lasts fame has brought many to personal and artistic themselves have stressed that Pop Art represents
from eight to twenty-five hours. But his disaster. The fate of the avant-garde composer a supposedly genuine popular art, and arbitrarily
activities do not stop there. Quite apart from Adrian Leverkiihn in Thomas Mann's Doktor. ascribe to it social significance and humane
everything else, Warhol writes novels, owns a Faustus has become a text-book example. Yet values. They have often claimed that Pop Art
club for drug-addicts in New York, and even Warhol is unique as an example of an artist who, has succeeded in bridging the gap which, in 'the
dreams of acquiring his own television channel. without any doubts or spiritual torment, has put industrial society', divides art and reality, art
An English critic once remarked that art on a purely pragmatic footing. and the masses. In their eyes, Pop Art is
Warhol was 'less a phenomenon of Warhol took some time to reach his present genuinely a generally-accessible mass art.
representational art or the cinema than a `heights'. At first he was a shoe designer, then he As Otto Hahn has written, 'the phenomenon
phenomenon of social history'. did a great deal of work in advertising and in of Andy Warhol is clear proof of the bankruptcy
There is a good deal of truth in this observation. journalism (in particular, with the extreme of the demagogues of modern art'. In his work,
It is difficult to find anyone more typical of the right-wing newspaper The New York Daily Warhol follows three precepts : 'All is
modernist culture of the USA. News). His first exhibition aroused no interest. pretty', 'it really doesn't matter',
The whole story of this son of a humble It was only in 1962 that he 'found' himself, when 'everything is false'. From this last precept the
Czech emigré exemplifies the career of the the impresario Irving Blum organized an artist has drawn the comfortable conclusion that
artist-opportunist in 'the consumer society'. exhibition of Warhol's work in Los Angeles. It he 'must lie and falsify to be taken seriously'.
Warhol in no way resembles that romantic was there that the public first saw the With such ethics Warhol is more than suited to
figure of the man who initiates new movements enormously enlarged illustrations of labels from the values of bourgeois society.
in art, but whose genius goes unrecognized, so Campbell's soups and bottles of tomato sauce. Warhol fiercely dismisses attempts by
that he languishes in a cold garret, and is only To these cans and bottles Warhol owes his over-enthusiastic admirers to declare him 'a
acclaimed after his death. For 'the high priest of fame as 'the father of Pop Art'. rebel', 'a creator of new values', 'the artist who
New York's bohemia', as the bourgeois press Yet however strange such 'art' seems at first reveals the seamy side of the affluent society'.
avidly acclaims him, art is first and foremost glance, essentially there is nothing paradoxical These ardent comments are provoked by the
business; it is work which demands shrewdness about it. It was with some justice that Michel fact that Warhol's later works include enlarged
and calculation and sensitivity to the whims of Ragon, the well-known French specialist on photographs of the electric chair and of car
fashion. problems of modern art, described Pop Art as accidents. However, only the subject has
It was Warhol himself who aptly gave the `a typically American art-form, steeped in the changed, while the principles of his 'aesthetics'—
name 'factory' to his studio, where he turns out everyday reality of the United States'. if this word is appropriate here — remain the
enormous numbers of the paintings which sell in In his extremely primitive 'canvases' Warhol same. As before, his work rests on three
the United States for between ten and twenty has created absolutely nothing. He has merely foundation stones : lack of content, lack of ideas,
thousand dollars each. Between 1962 and 1964 made naturalistic imitations of advertising and lack of humanity.
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