“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, «So what.»
My mother didn’t love me. «So what.»
My husband won’t ball me. «So what.»
I’m a success but I’m still alone. «So what.»
I don’t know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.”
Andy Warhol
So what
This phrase expresses the feeling of Andy Warhol’s work. “So what” is an oceanic view to the world, hyperextensive, to see that nothing is “too important” and that everything has huge comprehensions to perceive or interiorize. These comprehensions can only be done by facing the spectator’s view.
For Marcel Duchamp, the spectator become co-creators of the artistic object through their personal perception. For Warhol, the other and its look are always present creating a unity with the work and making the spectator an element that creates. This vision of Warhol, inspired by Duchamp, allows him to transform an object of universal consumption into an element of creative criticism available to the entire society; this is his newest contribution to art interpretation.
“What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”
Andy Warhol
For Warhol, pop-art is a permanent “So what”, like a new constant and spontaneous vision of reality. He contributes with a new point of view that opens new possibilities of artistic creation; it’s a new beam of light that illuminates art with new aesthetic and emotional chromatisms.
Pop-Art and Andy Warhol
In response to abstract expressionism, pop-art emerges as a controversy to confront the new consumer society. He reclaims the products of daily use to depersonalize and, by using the language of publicity itself, where he comes from, he’s able to create art for the mass in which objects automatically become icons.
The world Warhol seeks and expresses has elements so innovative as the ones of Jackson Pollock and gets impregnated with Marcel Duchamp and Picasso’s creating force. Above all, Warhol was a facilitator between arte, the intelligentsia of the moment, Hollywood’s universe, creators of the time, models, publicists, painters, musicians, aristocrats, and particular characters of his surroundings. Fascinated by the world of seduction and psychotropics, he explored an art that, besides being commercial, was a rebellion against the abstract intellectualism. With Warhol, the every-day became iconic. Its referents, especially Duchamp and Picasso, showed him how to incorporate visual-commercial resources to transform them into creative material, making of his publicist soul a more inclusive art.
“I started as a commercial artist and I want to end as a business artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating way of art.”
Andy Warhol
This is something that never stops being a very personal way of interpreting art’s concept.
Mechanic Art
Many times, Warhol used a repetitive art style. He developed a mechanize system of production thanks to the mastery he had over serigraphy, creating compositions in which an object or portrait is presented in many different color combinations. Warhol did this production system in series along with a group of helpers that he called “The Fabric”.
Since February 1 until May 6, the CaixaForum of Madrid with exhibit Warhol, The Mechanic Art.
The collection includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, serigraphies, installations, books of the artist, movies, album covers, posters, magazines, objects, and photographic material.
The Rolling Stones, Jean M. Basquiat, Marcel Duchamp, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and David Bowie were transformed into cultural merchandise in the hands of Warhol.
Andy Warhol for Me
This week I propose to transform personal and every-day objects into iconic concepts. In our experimentation table, we will choose an every-day object and we will represent it with multiple shapes, textures, and colors. Choose an element of your life that awakes in you a profound emotion. What do you say? Do you dare to transform it into an icon?
Photo by: Oscar Rivilla
Conceptual design: Carolina Verd
Main image: rings Catalina D´Anglade
Green-latex shirt by Mad Rubb courtesy of L’showroom
skirt by M&L Mirror courtesy of L’showroom
Image two: earrings by Catalina D´Anglade
jacket by Arantxa Morcillo courtesy of L’showroom
vintage dress by Virginie Castaway
Image three: bracelet by Catalina D´Anglade
kerchief by Hermes
vintage dress by See by Chloé
shoes by Marypaz
Image four: pendant on bracelet by Catalina D´Anglade
dress by Zara
boots by Igorshoes courtesy of Finally Press
Carolina Verd 