Warhol: the Flatness of Fame

THANK YOU all for being here this brisk exhibit afternoon. Id like to thank the GRAM for the invitation to speak in conjunction with such a wonderful exhibition, and especially Jean conjure for all of her diligent coordination on my behalf. (There be 3 parts to my presentation. First, a virtual tutorial on the act upon of separate- printing process secondly, a discussion of the baronial and conceptual soakedial inherent to printmaking, and the carriage in which fighthol expertly apply that potential. Finally, I will conclude with an actual demonstration of screen-printing in the Museums basement studio. In coming weeks, youll shake an opportunity to hear lots much about the cultural-historical linguistic context for Andy Warhols work from two colossal area scholars, beginning next Friday evening with a lecture by my colleague at GV, Dr. Kirsten Strom, and on _______ Susan Eberle of Kendall College of nontextual matter & Design. As Jean indicated in her introduction, I t severally drawing and printmaking at GVSU. In another(prenominal) words, Im approaching Warhols work very much as a studio artist. As a printmaker in particular, Im predisposed to note the large degree (great extent? to which the ingrained characteristics of the medium in this case screen-printing enable and in stamp the meaning of Warhols work. At the outset of each printmaking course I teach at Grand Valley, I provide students a brief overview of the companionable story of the print I divulge its rich heritage in the process of dispensing and preserving our (collected cultural discourse, from) verbal and pictorial languages, knowledge and history, cultural discourse, from ancient watchword to textile design to political critique.In growth I honorable mention the glob qualities specific to the print multiplicity, mutability, and its recombinant capabilities. I open with this background as a means of framing the work students will produce in the course. Id like to pro vide a similar overview here, as a means of framing the work of Warhol, which is so richly intercommunicate by the native characteristics of his processes. As the expression goes the medium is the message form and content are inseparable. First I offer a brief tutorial on the process of screen-print, in the hopes of providing a bit of context and a richer appreciation for the images/discussion to follow. With silk-screening, you pick a photograph, rape it up, stir it in glue onto silk, and wherefore roll ink a flummox so that the ink goes finished the silk muchover not through the glue. ) The Imagery Warhol screen-printed images onto hit the books in the archean 1960s, and he began simultaneously to trans tardily this proficiency to printing on paper. His issues related directly to his paintings of the same period James Cagney, the speed Riots, and Ambulance Disasters. These kit and caboodle on paper were printed in monochrome tones and screened in a method that retained the graininess and immediacy of the potentiometer media images on which they were based.Warhol considered these whole kit and boodle to be unique drawings. Changes in the ink impregnation and/or in the composition during the printing process created variations in each work. Screen-printing was ideally desirable to Warhol in two distinct ways First technically, it allows him to harvest images from a vast bounty of sources. Secondly he fittingly adapted a low culture, commercial process for the production of images chronicling life in celebrity-crazed, consumer-driven, Post-War America.One of the well-known strategies of Pop Artists Warhol and Lichtenstein, among them was their appropriation of the optic characteristics of mechanical echo (which you toilet await clearly here in Lichtensteins Ben twenty-four hours dots pattern. Warhol went further than borrowing the language, employing the means of commercial printing itself. As of the 1930s, screen-printing was a replete (p)ly-practiced process for the printing of posters, t-shirts, and other graphics in the US. In other words, Warhol chose this medium for its associations with the culture of advertising and shopping/consumerism. I want everybody to mobilize alike. Russia is doing it chthonian government. Its happening here all by itself. I wear downt think art should be just for the look at few. I think it should be for the cumulation of American people. But how exclusively does one represent the aggregative of American people? through and through its proxies (A) Through the objects of its consumption Campbells cans, Coke bottles, Brillo pads and Mobil Gas (B) Through the media icons it reveres, and (C) Through the images of anonymous tragic figures Disaster and death were not his primary tendings, but rather the anonymous victims of history the masses.D and D kick upstairs this mass subject, for in a society of spectacle this subject often appears only in stories and images of mass d eath. I want to be a machine The taradiddle of the Print as a means/tool for social and political critique) Although screen-printing as Warhol practiced it is primarily a 20th century advent, the tradition of the print as a vehicle for disseminating ideas and information (as the vox populi) is centuries old.Among the earliest surviving printed artifacts in Western civilization are these two antonymous images a Holy Picture on the left, and playing cards on the right. Each dates from the mid-15th century, each is the product of the same technological innovation, the woods block (and in the eyes of the Catholic church, working at cross purposes with one another ) Many of the most widely reproduced and well-known prints in the Western public are images of cultural unrest and political and social critique.These are a few examples Francisco Goya, 18th C Spanish printmaker William Hogarth, 18th C English printmaker Honore Daumier, 19th C french printmaker Kathe Kollwitz, early 20th C German printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada, late 19th C Mexican printmaker All of what I have to say is right on that point on the surface Remarks such as this one are at times misconstrued as superficiality a dismissal of content declareing to some that Warhols choice of imagery was indiscriminate. particularly today, Warhol is often mischaracterized through his studied, stoic affect as an artist who matte nothing more for his work than for the contents of his local grocery memory board. I would argue that Warhols imagery is anything but indiscriminate, and is instead engaged in the popular tradition/rich heritage of the print as a means of social and political critique, especially translucent in the long time between 1962 and 1980, from the Death and Dying series to the Endangered Species series. (Over this prolific period, Warhols ouvre included references to the Civil Rights movement, the death penalty, and of course the Cold War.Even the artists early celebrity portra its are shrouded with both private and public tragedy Marilyn, Elvis, Liz Taylor, JFK and Jackie O ) To me, Warhols deadpan cynicism has always seemed a calculated critique of the profligate social and political climate. Its an ironic persona reflected in his works an expression of apathy intend to induce the appropriate response from his viewing audience shock and bewilderment that any artist, could produce images of graphic violence and man scathe with such apparent passivity.Multiplicity The first of three formal qualities innate to printmaking I like boring things. I dont want it to be essentially the same I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel. Such statements suggest a strategic, pre-emptive wrap up of the very compulsive repeating that a consumerist society demands of us all. If you cant beat it, Warhol implies, join it. More if you enter it totally, you might strike it you might reveal its enforced automatism through your own excessive example.These remarks storage the role of repetition in Warhol. Here repetition is both a draining of significance and a defending against effect. This is one function of repetition in our psychic lives we recall traumatic events in order to shopping center them into a psychic economy. Yet the Warhol repetitions are not restorative in this way they are not about a neutralization of trauma, for his repetitions not only reproduce traumatic effects, but sometimes produce them as well. Repetition in Warhol is neither a simple representation of the world nor a superficial image.His repetition serves to filter traumatic historicality, but it does so in a way that points to this cosmos nonetheless. Ultimately I would suggest that Warhols use of the multiple functions as a form of potent cultural critique, whether it emphasizes the horror, or whether it desensitizes us to the violence in many of his im ages. mutability (With silk-screening, you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink crosswise so that the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue.That way you get the same image, slightly polar each time. It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrill with it. ) The screen-printing technique affords artists the latitude for simple yet dramatic changes, from impression to impression. With itsy-bitsy trouble, one can shift color, and even scale. The image can be altered through adjustments to the matrix (or print, in this case), or during the printing process itself, through the irregular application of ink.When I originally conceived of this talk, I intended to speak primarily to this one formal aspect of Warhols prints his growing of the process to produce deliberate imperfections that (reflect the true disposition of his subjects) (inform the meaning fundament his images. ) (further enable the content of his work. ) con tribute to the lethargy of his subjects thus emphasizing their artificiality. purposefully crude printing and mis-registration disrupt the pictorial illusion, drawing attention to the flatness of each image that, in a metaphorical sense, speaks to the nature of fame.Warhols arbitrary colors suggest the un-reality and artifice of each subject. These arent real people, but products, and you can have them anyway you want them. We construct reality the way we desire it to be the lips are larger, more red, the hair is more golden they remain young and beautiful forever. Marilyn image that disintegrates and fades out. Elvis that overlaps. (silver screen/ act Recombinant Potential The screenprint is among the most versatile of print techniques in regards to substrate. In other words, one can print on a respective(a) array of surfaces, including paper, wood, glass, plastics, textiles.The exhibition here at the GRAM demonstrates Warhols semblance for the aesthetic of the print on canv as a practice that efficaciously elevated screen-print a low-art technology of commerce to the privileged status of painting. Their visual translation into the language of screen-printing homogenises every subject the queen, a skull, a shoe, a can, Marilyn, all become part of the same glossy, colorful language. In addition to ones ability to print on a wide spectrum of surfaces, screen-printing allows an image to be saved (one may simply store and re-use the stencil or matrix in a later situation. Thus we see Warhols vocabulary (lexicon? ) of celebrities and other iconic images juxtaposed in unsteady circumstances being exercised in a language of signs. These (printed signs) juxtapositions can homogenize even the most horrific of images, emphasizing our mediated relationship to the trauma depicted. This homogenization leaves space for interpretation it can be argued that Warhol has intentionally treated the car crash and the Campbell soup as equal not as references to the actual world.Alternately, it might be argued that the images are intended to shock a complacent consumer culture back to reality through conspicuously carmine juxtapositions. By positioning such horrorific images in the proximity of the celebrity portrait, in the low art language of the advertisement, Warhol critiques a consumer culture lulled into apathy since the War by the numbing effects of Television, advertising, glossy celebrity tabloids, and the veritable gourmandize of shiny new objects available for purchase on every store shelf.Id like to congratulate the GRAM on a wonderful exhibit. Curator Richard Axsiom has done a marvelous job of force together a broad spectrum of Warhols strongest/most resonant imagesand Id like to invite you all downstairs/to the museums studio for screen-printing demonstration. THE IMAGERY Celebrities or anonymous these are images to represent the masses. Art should be for the pubic, but how do you represent the public body? through the icons they look to, or the anonymous Marilyn image that disintegrates and fades out.Elvis that overlaps. (silver screen/motion Warhols remark that all of what he has to say is right there on the surface is misinterpreted as mistaken as superficiality a dismissal of content argued that it supports indiscriminate images and passivity. I would argue that Warhols imagery is anything but indiscriminate, and is engaged in the long history of the print as a means of social critique. I want everybody to think alike. Russia is doing under government. Its happening here all by itself. I dont think art should be only for the select few.I think it should be for the mass of American people. How does one represent the mass of American people? Through its proxies, through its object of consumption, soup cans, Coke bottles. Media icons stand it for the body of the masses. Disaster and death were not his primary concerns, but rather the anonymous victims of history the masses. D and D evoke this mass subject, for in a society of spectacle this subject often appears only in stories and images of mass death. Celebrity and anonymity represent the mass subject. take down into/immerse himself in the language of pop culture. With silk-screening, you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across so that the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. Warhol hand-printed unique silkscreen images on canvas in the early 1960s, and he began simultaneously to translate this technique to printing on paper. He experiments with subjects that directly relate to his paintings of the same period, as in Cagney, Race Riot, and the Ambulance Disaster.These works on paper were printed in monochromatic tones and screened in a method that retained the graininess and immediacy of the mass media images on which they were based. W arhol considered these works to be unique drawings. Changes in the ink saturation and/or in the composition during the printing process created variations in each work. Popular impressions of Pop reduced to candy it was almost too impressive in its critique, ceased to function as a critique irony and sarcastic qualities become eye candy only another commodified visual confection.The sullen flatness of images such as the soup cans these images exaggerate the lack of rotundity these are cylindrical objects void of their substance/their mass. Warhol Prints Not to overlook the obvious Flatness Repetition Imperfection Juxtaposition The multiple, mutable, recombinant image Warhols prints are responding/exploiting each of the inherent potentials of the print. Reality as a mediated phenomenon is the subject of Warhol. Private fantasy and public reality is a primary concern of Warhols brand of Pop.