Solitude

Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, Big Electric Chair, 1967

Solitude
By Ella Wheeler

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.

Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Editor's Note: Students were asked to pair a poem and painting with no explanation of the connection.


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32 Campbell Soup Cans

32 Campbell Soup Cans


Andy Warhol, 32 Campbell Soup Cans, 1961
By ELISE FINN

Iconic. Eccentric. Symbolic. Mechanical. All words to describe the unique being that is Andy Warhol. His obsession with mass-produced consumer goods spurred from years as a commercial artist. He combined his experience with advertising and his love for art to create some of the most iconic pop-art paintings of the twentieth century. He had a devotion to exposing the values of society in a mechanical style. His focus on mass-produced culture became almost an obsession of his. 

32 Campbell Soup Cans is 32 individual canvases (20" x 16") lined in rows and columns. Each canvas depicts a different soup flavor, in order of the year it was produced. Warhol picked an item that's heavily manufactured and that most Americans recognize, so it's easily relatable to the viewer. The production process of this piece started with Warhol practicing the tracing of these soup cans. It's also different from most of Warhol's work because it is a combination of hand-painting work as well as stamped and printed parts. The mimicked repetition of the soup has a sort of mechanical style. The accuracy is visually pleasing which is why most people think of this specific piece when they think of Andy Warhol. After completion, Warhol discovered a new way to make his art. Transferring a photograph or picture from a source, typically a literary source, to a canvas or silkscreen is known as screen-printing. At first, the style was meant for commercial use because it was easy to mass produce, but it became an art form, and Warhol's signature process. 

With this new process, Warhol started to use the help of assistants to make his art. His reliance on others can be seen as lazy or genius. Personally, I think it takes away from Warhol's influence because you know that parts of the work weren't made by him. Knowing that an artist put his blood, sweat, and tears into a piece adds to the work's uniqueness. If others help with making a piece, I think it's important to recognize their dedication in addition to the main artist. 32 Campbell Soup Cans triggered the possibility of making works in a series. He would pick an object or a celebrity (he was obsessed with the glamour of Hollywood) and would slightly change and repeat the artwork. This piece sparked Warhol's recognition in the art world. It solidified his focus on manufactured culture and was the beginning to the pop-art culture he created.
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Rock On: Mick Jagger

Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger 142, 1975
Rock On
By ETHAN DOSKEY

One of the ten portraits Warhol made of Mick Jagger, 142 shows the rock icon laughing unlike the other nine renditions. Often with pop stars, their stage personality is mistaken with their personal identity. This is especially true with the Stones’ “bad boy” status and their disreputable actions on and off stage. In 1975 The Rolling Stones were in the height of their popularity and Mick Jagger had become a common household name in the U.S. and in the U.K. This print, done that same year, continues Warhol’s series of celebrity portraits; a fascination in public figures like Marilyn Monroe to Mao Zedong saturates most of Warhol’s portfolio. But in actuality, it was the Stones who approached Warhol asking for cover art for their album, “Sticky Fingers.” They were looking for a simple and grabbing image in Warhol’s sensational style to which he delivered. The scandalous picture Warhol produced soon became perhaps the Stones’ most recognizable cover art. This contract began the two subversive icons’ friendship which lasted until Warhol’s death in 1987.

With this print, I feel it is a closer look at the human being Jagger and not the chicken-dancing persona that he took up on stage. Warhol’s screen printing technique begins with a snapshot—a frozen moment of humor that is then pulled away and simplified. This abstraction of Jagger’s face in executed in a way that fundamentally breaks it down to an exaggerated state divided in blocks of color. The yellow rectangle resembles a post-it-note as if Warhol is jotting down only the essential aspects of Jagger’s physique. Overall, there is an experimental and loving feel to this piece in trying to capture Warhol’s friend in a piece of art.

This series of blogs aims to discuss various paintings by or of famous classic rock musicians and inspect the correlation between the figures and the art involving them.
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Theme and Variations: Campbell's Soup Cans

Andy Warhol
Theme and Variations
Relating Music and Art
Curated by Becky Reilly

Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962


Andy Warhol's 1962 Campbell's Soup Cans and the Buggles' 1979 single "Video Killed the Radio Star" both reflect the rise of consumerism and new technology and cope with their effects.  They reflect the domestic issues of the cold war, away from the international scene.  With the Cold War's ongoing arms race and intervention into other countries, the United States fueled industry over decades to produce a consumer culture of mass-production and rapid change.  Old ideas yielded to new inventions, for better or for worse.  Both pieces seem discontent with American culture but also upbeat on the surface.

Warhol created his Campbell's Soup Cans in a wave of pop art inspiration, recalling that he had had the soup for lunch for more than twenty years.  The painting shows his loyalty to the brand.  In one panel with one soup can, Warhol may have produced a rosy, homey piece between the can's shades of red, gold, and subdued white.  But this repetition of can upon can rejects that feeling for something more mechanical.  The very painting of so many panels mimics the process of mass-production.  He subverts the comfort of the everyday.  The familiarity of a cup of soup becomes an invasion of ideology into the household.  Some critics saw a Marxist message of sameness, while others believed that it praised American industry.  Its banal subject matter was also a source of controversy as critics debated whether art was only in new experience or whether the effect could be achieved by interpreting nontraditional objects.

"Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first music video broadcast on MTV and despite its upbeat rhythm and melody shows an unhappy view of the future.  The lead singer wears sunglasses and a shiny, futuristic suit, apathetic to his surroundings and singing expressionlessly.  He is the embodiment of the song's title, showing how the march of progress tosses aside the old for the new, just as the modernists (as in post 5 ) feared.  The verses sound fairly modern, the minimalist piano and vocals like a contemporary song.  The lyrics illustrate the betrayal of a radio celebrity to television culture as the singer states, "They took the credit for your second symphony/Rewritten by machine and new technology."  The song seems a strange choice to celebrate the music video scene, portraying television's appropriation of music as cold and mechanical.

This is my last post for the art history blog.  It has been wonderful being able to write this year and having such great class… and a greater great audience.  Thank you for reading.

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There's Always Money in the Banana (Stand)

Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, Banana, 1966



The line, “There is always money in the banana stand,” is repeated throughout the entirety of the show Arrested Development. It becomes a staple, a repeatable tagline of the show. The saying is plastered on merchandise for adoring fans - heck, even I have a banana stand shirt. People associate the imagery with the show, just like the familiar Andy Warhol imagery of soup cans and celebrities. Warhol considered these images iconic in 20th century America, and now his images have become iconic themselves. That’s the thing about icons: they sell. Just like my Bluth’s Frozen Banana shirt, people ate up Warhol’s diptychs of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Soup (no pun intended).

In terms of monetary value, Warhol had an incredibly successful career making prints of these iconic American figures. People loved him, and he consistently had buyers and museums pining after his work. However, in his later work, critics called him “superficial” and “commercial.” They found no significance in his art other than his desire to sell the pieces.

Despite the criticism, Warhol didn’t exactly sell out. He started out producing holistically American art, and his life mirrored the fundamental American values that we still see today: money is everything. That’s probably why Warhol replicated the dollar sign over 100 times in a series. And he wasn’t shy about his love of money, having had both the experience of coming from a poor family and being propelled into a fabulously rich lifestyle. This was the America that Warhol lived - poor industrial families and plastic Hollywood superstars, soup cans and magazine covers.

Andy Warhol will always be remembered as the artist of American pop culture. He has become iconic in ways Lindsay Bluth can only dream of.

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Campbell's Soup and Power

Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup, 1962

Click here for song

Say what you will about Kanye West; it’s undeniable that he’s an icon of music. In 2009, he suffered the climax of a disaster largely of his own creation. Still rattled by his mother’s death over a year before, Kanye believed somewhere in his mind that it was a good idea to interrupt a 19-year-old Taylor Swift accepting her award for Best Music Video at the VMAs. The horrifying scene that played out on the stage made for great television, and Kanye appeared to have finally lost it.

He disappeared from the world stage, hiding out in Europe and Hawaii for over a year. Then, 18 months after the incident that turned him into a villain in America’s eyes, Kanye came out with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a disturbing, virtuosic album that fully lived up to its name. The initial single, representing Kanye’s return from the brink, was "Power." I remember first hearing this song, listening to him explain his absence and introduce the album that would throw him back on top, I was amazed at the shift in his career. This song, and more generally the album, represent a diatribe against the very consumerism that has vaulted him into celebrity. Kanye West admits that fame taxed his skills, saying, “I just needed time alone, with my own thoughts/Had treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault.” His sample of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” encapsulates his album’s stance on celebrity and consumption—the schizoid man is one of contradictions, controlled by consumption and yet at the same time relishing what he is able to consume. Much like Warhol, Kanye muses on the nature of fame and the destiny of a man like himself in the modern world. Kanye may have lost himself four years ago, but with this album, he was found.

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Mean Girls and Warhol

Andy Warhol


Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe, 1962



 The Plastics - Regina George, Gretchen Weiners, and Karen Smith -  rule the school. Their expensive clothes, freshly-colored hair and flirting skills make them the girls all the guys want and who the other girls want to be. Take this description back to the 1950s, and you have Marilyn Monroe. A young girl who wanted to become a face recognized by millions. And boy did she become just that. Both Marilyn and the Plastics are idolized for their looks. The Plastics with their “fake” features that never seem to be amiss, and Marilyn for her classic red lips, black eyeliner, and white dress. The girls are glamorous, desirable, role models to some, but their looks are more than just something to idolize. They are something reproducible.

“On Wednesdays, we wear pink.” Translation – if you want to sit with us, you must match us. Copy us. Reproduce the look that has made us famous. Become one of us, and you too will be popular. Produce TV shows, movies, paintings, release photos, dress up as Marilyn for Halloween, and you to can reproduce her image. Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe does just this. He produced this glamorous painting silkscreen combination from another image, one from a movie, and then released his creation to be imitated by others. Different colored copies of this image litter the Internet, each one portraying Marilyn through a new filter. Marilyn can have pink lips, a yellow face, blue hair, purple eye shadow, and yet, everyone recognizes her and connects the altered image to her natural image: Blonde hair, pale skin, red lips, glamorous smile. An image that can be recreated. After all, Marilyn created this image for herself, as did the Plastics. They molded themselves into the women everyone watched, everyone idolized. They produced their own images. 

Through makeup, clothing, language, and mannerisms, people today can reproduce these images for themselves. But do you really want to wear pink every Wednesday?

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