Regular readers of ‘owning art’ may have noted an animosity toward Andy Warhol that seems downright obsessional, and perhaps I should explain. It’s possible I’ve been over familiar using his rather unwholesome visage as shorthand for a process, an infection really, with Andy serving as its main vector, its figurehead. It’s true Andy gave the impression that direct sunlight would turn him even more translucent, like a newt-boy hybrid in transition, and central-casting perfect for the part. It would seem to follow that a celebrity ghoul feasts on dead celebrities, Marilyn and Elvis come to mind, and a metro vampire drains the vitality from living cultural institutions to animate their lavishly deviant lifestyle, but he isn’t my concern and I find his renowned amorality artistically irrelevant. It was his introduction of a virus into the already fevered and deranged body of visual art that cranks my ire.
virus -- 1. an infective agent .......... able to multiply only within the living cells of a host. "a virus infection" -- a harmful or corrupting influence."the virus of cruelty that is latent in all human beings" 2. a piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.
Take your pick, either will do. Viruses are dead fragments of living cells capable of replicating only within a living host, and then it’s curtains, all downhill, because once they’re in they replicate like crazy. So what is a soup can label, an interesting and conceptually challenging visual image, or a forgotten fragment of childhood memory buried so deep that seeing it again intimates something innately familiar and nostalgically appealing, don’t know why? Are his myriad portraits of Marilyn more revealing than the cover of a movie magazine from the fifties, no, not a chance, because it’s the same photograph. That Andy made a lot of money is way beside the point, it’s the corrosive effect his wholesale piracy had on art -- ‘a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data,’ that needs fixing now.
At some point the fever subsides, and the patient recovers, the outlook different. We recommend simple pictures of things, something from an art fair or a studio tour, not too expensive just as a starter. Slowly, as confidence returns, the average citizen may move up to art that costs more but will seem worth the price, because they want to own and live with it, on the mend with a healthy direct interest in visual art, more aware and more engaged than before.
virus -- 1. an infective agent .......... able to multiply only within the living cells of a host. "a virus infection" -- a harmful or corrupting influence."the virus of cruelty that is latent in all human beings" 2. a piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.
Take your pick, either will do. Viruses are dead fragments of living cells capable of replicating only within a living host, and then it’s curtains, all downhill, because once they’re in they replicate like crazy. So what is a soup can label, an interesting and conceptually challenging visual image, or a forgotten fragment of childhood memory buried so deep that seeing it again intimates something innately familiar and nostalgically appealing, don’t know why? Are his myriad portraits of Marilyn more revealing than the cover of a movie magazine from the fifties, no, not a chance, because it’s the same photograph. That Andy made a lot of money is way beside the point, it’s the corrosive effect his wholesale piracy had on art -- ‘a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data,’ that needs fixing now.
At some point the fever subsides, and the patient recovers, the outlook different. We recommend simple pictures of things, something from an art fair or a studio tour, not too expensive just as a starter. Slowly, as confidence returns, the average citizen may move up to art that costs more but will seem worth the price, because they want to own and live with it, on the mend with a healthy direct interest in visual art, more aware and more engaged than before.
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