Another Art

Andy Warhol was the Consummate Consumer Whose Work Appeared to Critique a Cultural Craze; Work Which Also Served to Craft a Refined Model of the 20th Century Phenomenon It Seemed to Have Cleverly Questioned.
Fame is an American obsession and it is arguably as essential a component of Americana as are Apple Pie and the pyrotechnics shooting across the night sky on the Fourth of July. Following celebrity news is the less-physical alternative national pastime to the sport of Baseball.  Andy Warhol’s insight into the now highly evolved machine which churns out stardom today seem like the eerily astute annunciations of a latter day, pop culture Nostradamus.
Famous people have no problems, but if they have turbulence in their lives it is of an enviable variety because heck, the rocky road of a star is paved with gold. The rich and famous are perpetually happy, even when they are upset. These are ridiculous statements which reflect a narrow sentiment. Nonetheless, the sentiment is shared almost universally at one time or another by people internationally. It is an intensely American mode of thought which has drenched the global cultural climate. It is the worst byproduct of some of our most audacious and successful innovations in technology; and also the evolution of our values and ideals away from the spiritual and to the material.

The concept certainly existed before this country did, but it exploded with the advent of Hollywood after the creation of film as a visual medium. As is true in so many other instances, America has taken an old idea and brought it to new places; highs and lows. But I say that as a matter of digression. Film was and is a compelling visual medium. Hollywood made film stars into commodities and the resultant fan-fixation by the ordinary people created a niche market within journalism. A new sector of reporting was in demand and money was to be made by those people quick-minded and enterprising enough to provide it. Basically, there was a new need for more gossip columns, tabloids and celebrity “news” reporting.
Prior to focusing on motion picture stars reporters had written about the envied class of the super rich in “Society” pages. These were the folk to obsess over during the years before the advent of the superstar entertainer in America, an age which seemed to dawn during the bleak years of the Great Depression and to become formidable as the nation regained its economic vigor in the post-war years during the 1950’s.  Illustrious gossip columnist Louella Parsons, and those of her ilk wrote who wrote stories related to Hollywood royalty would more likely have been sent to Newport, Rhode Island on assignment to cover the exciting lives of the Astor and Rockefeller clans during the summers at the tail end of the 19th and first decade of the 20th Centuries.
During the 1950’s Andy Warhol was a largely unknown artist living in New York City, ready to have his nose fixed and preparing to unleash his own fame on the nation and world. An anonymous person on the brink of acclaim and notoriety. By 1970, he was an iconic figure and by the year of his 1986 death he was a living legend. His posthumously published diaries prove beyond any doubt that he was both a famed, elite member of the glitterati as well he as an avid fan– obsessed with the lives and personal details of his famous friends.

Before he became this strangely bifurcated celebrity/fan he was an undiscovered artist. One who was taking notice of certain trends in advertising in print and  television. Surely he understood the way in which this force could shape image and boost sales. Before his own fame would come he was fascinated with the theme of mass production and advertising and obsessed with the concept of fame and celebrity. Noting trends in how actors, debutantes and first ladies were portrayed was likely something he did enthusiastically. When not thinking about fame he was pondering the phenomenon of mass production. His comprehension of the profundity of the truth, that factories could turn out thousands and thousands of identical, disposable items was crucial to his role as a creator.

The  confluence of the notion that something good could be duplicated several hundred thousand times and the idea that human beings could be groomed for glamor in the marketplace was problematic and inexorable.  The result of this combination is  ethically  suspect. Numerous psychological disturbances have been cradled by the corporate world via advertisements which sell their productions. Adverts loaded with visual instruction to be thin, to be tanned, to be perfect.  We are lucky that it was the mind of  Warhol which focused on this topic and that his the perception of the hybrid born of glitzy fame and infinite duplication demystify  his mind led him to make bold statements about fame, the value of humanity and the ease with which the entire nation could buy into the notion that almost everything, and just about anybody is replaceable.

At the same time, television journalism was being pioneered. The news was delivered via this magical new technology to the home of the viewer in pictures. This was also a compelling medium and allowed for serious journalism assume a striking visual component. This had never existed. The newsreels played in cinemas were an approximation, but they did not have as strong of an impact on the viewer as did the televised broadcasts. Television news hit the viewer in the gut simply because it was something watched at home.

That National and International  news stories could be zapped invisibly through the air and then be seen as images moving and in real time, and with sound was unprecedented. Enormous breaking news stories were delivered to members of the population as they sat in their homes. Including stories as monumental as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and the two Kennedys and the 1969 moon landing. All were broken to the people while they sat in their living rooms in moving images, with trusted journalists narrating. Journalists had once toiled in anonymity as they wrote for the newspapers. There was no need for reporters to be attractive or to have the type of charisma which comes across best visually. A fine wit would find a way into words and the words were what mattered before the advent of television.

Reporters could be frumpy or downright ugly when nobody saw them.  But after television began covering news, the new medium presented a challenge. People working as television journalists became more attractive and more polished. Executives realized that actors and actresses could become famous while working  on Soap Operas and Situation Comedies. Television news could also make a celebrity of the right personality. Looks became important, as well.  While David Brinkley was very effective and reliable and admired, his looks did not present the prototype. News Anchors and Anchor Women were carefully selected; looks, insight, speech and the way the viewer related to an anchor were all major factors to be considered when hiring.

People seemed to respond naturally and organically to Peter Jennings and Jessica Savitch. Both were articulate and considered to be good-looking.  Each was blessed with camera-ready charisma. Never mind the reality, which was that Jennings had  managed only to obtain an education through the 8th grade and that Savitch was addicted to drugs, depending on cocaine to make her slim and smooth over her personal woes. Those details did not matter, nobody at home knew any of that. Peter Jennings was capable, smooth and dignified. Jessica Savitch was glamorous, educated and her manner of speaking was copied by many other women on television. Ironically, she spoke as crisply as she did because she had a speech impediment as a child which she diligently worked to overcome.Jennings and Savitch are serious journalists, that is arguable but not when they are comparede to their contemporary components
During the 1990’s the relevance  of serious reporters and prime time anchors began to erode as the news began to pander to the needs of the market. The market demanded more stories and reports about the famous. Talk shows became very successful and presented an easy way to obtain a small but often scandalous portion of fame. When you think about Andy Warhol’s quip that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes, it’s difficult to not think about the Jerry Springer Show and the guests he would have on. A parade of slobs  involved in bizarre love triangles, ready to dash out across his stage and in front of America to divulge some filthy secret which anybody who was mentally stable would not announce in a c0ffee shop, let alone on national televison. What other reason did they have but to graner attention and a quick shot of fame? They got to be on T.V. after all.

Another route to televised fame was established when “Reality Shows” were popularized as the decade closed. The Real World, which began airing in 1992 became a template in various ways for these shows. A group of people who represented different demographics and who could be counted upon to yield a decent crop of culture clash and resultant verbal tiffs which people enjoy watching. It was easy to be on a show like that. Talent was no longer any requisite for fame because of these shows. With the arrival of the internet and with blog sites devoted to celebrity news, the concern with serious news, national and international, seemed bound for the confines of memory.

By the present time, in 2010, traditional journalism is nearly a relic of an era during which actual news was reported. Nowadays, television news magazines fail to cover pertinent stories in many instances. Instead their producers opt to secure “exclusive” interviews with whichever famous personality is currently saturating the minds of the masses. Usually, if you look closely enough, you can quickly realize that many of these “it girls” are not very interesting at all and that their personalities are just likeable enough for some clever P.R. agent to have managed to find some shred of charisma in a person who has an atypical set of life experiences. Maybe a lot of folks would have failed to notice anything there. But sometimes, maybe  because her father won a Grammy and she went to rehab and she cut a single–which no record company was interested in but it’s all over the internet–sometimes these people get real famous. The set of circumstances I just created would make for a lovely pitch for a reality show. Especially with the right Svengali is hovering overhead, pulling all the right strings.
Warhol seemed to love to pick people and make them famous and to manipulate that fame like a Svenhali– and he seems to have done so as a hobby. For example, he annually picked out a  “Girl of the Year” and doted on her, feting her with parties. He made every effort to see that she was photographed and filmed, revealed to as broad an audience as possible. His early choices were great beauties like Jane Holzer who was nicknamed “Baby Jane.” Latter inclusions reflected either his deep admiration for old money or his interest in chaotic personalities. Edie Sedgwick was the embodiment of each and was given the title the year following that in which the statuesque blonde, Baby Jane Holzer had been. Holzer later made disparaging comments that Warhol was encircled by freaks and dope. Sedgwick seemed to thrive in the same environment which Baby Jane had found so repellant.
In choosing and in using Edith Sedgwick, Warhol behaved in the following multiple roles, all at once: The talent agent, the producer, the admiration addled and overwhelmed gawker born poor who is impressed by money and pedigree. He eventually allowed her to be his muse and later made her his confidante. In time he assumed yet another role, and behaved much as today’s managers or public relations geniuses would. By creating somewhat interesting, yet staged events for which Sedgwick was to be the focal point.

The young heiress Sedgwick was admired for her slim build, big dark eyes and her athletic legs. But other than behaving like a walking mannequin and acting in mute roles in Andy’s films,  she did little. What she did when not starring in one of Andy’s experimental films was indulge a horrific narcotics addiction and to get belittled by other men who felt she was a viable actress with true star power. She should be in Los Angeles, making real movies! They thought and shewas told frequently. for allowing herself to star in his ridiculous films when she had a great look and a charisma all her own. But she was too unstable and drug addicted to do that. Andy Warhol eventually acted in the plural role of the American Public as it does when it has grown tired of the substance abuse-fueled and other shenanigans of one of its young Starlets— He dropped her. He dropped her thoroughly, the way the entire nation would drop Lindsay Lohan some forty years later.
What Warhol did with the folks he admired, be they his friends or eventual foes is not my concern, here. I am more intrigued by what he accomplished through his visual works of art, barring his use of film. The centrifugal topic of this paper is what he was able to say about the state of affairs concerning fame, the erosion of the value of individuality in the era of mass-production and the huge force of which the powers of advertising and marketing were capable.
The questions raised here can never be answered in a satisfactory way. Questions about Warhol’s role as cultural critic making an unbelievably potent statement about what the concept of mass-production meant to the individual are brought up routinely. What some fail to see is that while he absolutely acted as a critic of both mass-production and of fame, he also was an eager participant in both the game of winning fame and was an enthusiastic proponent of mass-production, too. His works were made in large numbers in a studio named, of all things, “The Factory.” There, he paid a pittance to a crowd of devotees who toiled at copying his original art and getting the replications finished. His studio was not only a “Factory” in the nominal sense. It was an actual factory. Sure, it masqueraded as a very hip place to see, be seen and in which to party, discuss any number of topics or to dance, but it still was more like a factory than the majority of us can ever really know.
What Andy Warhol’s most important works of art asked us was, has anything ever been authentic? What is so alluring about celebrity, and what is ultimately so ugly about celebrity? An artist who understood the Fame Machine and how it operated as many years ago as did Warhol would be surprised at the level of fakery and plasticity amongst the Stars of today. Or would he be? Perhaps the most likely answer is no. Perhaps Warhol had a deeper understanding of the direction in which the Fame Mill in which he took an interest was actually headed. Perhaps Warhol, himself was complicit in the greater development of the same Fame Mill. We know he understood celebrity and yet it is difficult to understand if he was only lampooning this national obsession in certain works. Quite possibly, he was not complicit. Instead his portraits of celebrities and his own enthusiasm for the concept of fame and respect for the power of marketing inadvertently added an influence which has streamlined the manufacture of today’s Superstars. This influence must have been bestowed inadvertently, for there was no way to predict the wild popularity and association with Pop Culture his name would carry. Pop Art, indeed. Today’s Pop Stars are as much the heirs to Warhol’s legacy when his love of fame is considered as they are as likely to have inspired his scorn were he alive today, his equally negative opinion of the same concept also examined.
Has anything ever been authentic? Smoke and mirrors and the blatant imitation of roles set by forgotten and archetypically endowed actors or society mavens years ago account for the inspiration of the creation of innumerable celebrities. Add to this the phenomenon of reality television, which has caused an entire generation of younger people to believe that one can become nationally famous for doing nothing—because it is true.
Andy Warhol was obsessed with the American pastime of stalking celebrities—not in blatant terms, but through the more innocent channels presented by the media, in magazines for example. Warhol himself desperately wanted to be counted amongst the famous and he created some of his best-known works of art by simply mirroring back at those who viewed his creations their own fascination with the concept of celebrity. Amongst his most readily recalled works are the series of portraits he created of famous people: Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, amongst others.
But almost inarguably, most concede his best-known work of art was his simple recreation of a Campbell’s Soup can. Simple as it may, this is amongst the most iconic images from the 20th Century. Not merely from the Art World of that period but in very general terms, this image was and is still so renowned that many are exposed to it without making the chance at decoding or demystifying it. What subliminal meaning could lurk behind such an innocent image, anyhow? People unfamiliar with the true value and import inherent in the work are too many in number.
This was the work which made declarations about fame and the value placed upon individuals in an even more effective voice than he could ever have made in any of his portraits. Because while not an illustration of an overexposed human being, it re-affirmed the idea that more-and-more, American citizens were becoming increasingly affected by advertising. Anybody with a pulse could identify the object in that piece. It was a brand name item made in huge numbers in factories for mass sale.
Remembering that his celebrity portraits were created as a series beginning either after, or at about the same during which the soup can became his most famous subject tells us two things. First, that he was making a clear statement about the power of advertising and that its influence was so undeniable and pervasive that again, anybody viewing that work knew immediately what they were looking at, so he was also asserting the power of “brand.” Nobody could evade the power of brand when advertised, because the visual component of a particular brand is huge so long as the visual is somewhat compelling.
The can of soup may not have been visually stunning or beautiful, but it mass produced and advertised and hence it was made into an item which was then, and today remains ubiquitous. No matter how ubiquitous are the cans which contain the soup made by the people at Campbell’s or the ground coffee made Folgers’ may be, they are designed primarily for one utilitarian reason. That is, to hold a product. The consumer who buys such a product for use at home must necessarily purchase the package in which it comes. The tacit understanding of this consumer at point-of-sale is simple. Once he has used up the contents of the can or box and the package is emptied, it will be cast into the garbage with no accompanied sensation of loss.
Nobody thinks about buying the can when setting out to buy soup. It is not the province of some brigade of intellectuals to make the deduction that these canisters have no intrinsic value whatsoever to the consumer. They are utterly disposable; bits of waste meant to be cleared from the kitchen the moment they are void and no longer able to yield anything of use. That some items are universally considered useless when they no longer hold the goods they had when freshly acquired is not in and of itself a profound concept. Until that bare and boring fact is contrasted with another reality– that the same packages bound for the dumpster are so readily recognized by members from every sector of the population.
His portraits of Marilyn Monroe were not only finished as single-image portraits but also made as diptychs. Others show her image more than two times as in a diptych, but in multiple duplicates as if she had been mass-produced at a factory. In many ways she or a Star of her caliber could so easily be perceived. Knowing a few facts about the way Hollywood operated during the mid-twentieth century would make such a contention far less difficult to form. The studios ran every aspect of the lives of their biggest Stars. They molded and manufactured people. Taking a diamond in the rough, so to speak and refining it until it glimmered and glinted as a true star would. That she was sold by the studio which had refined her is not untrue, and a lot of time was spent by studios when cultivating people like her. The studios dressed and clothed, colored the hair and applied the makeup to their Stars, employing a great number of professionals for these purposes. Additionally, the studios worked with the press to assure that most scandals could never start. Homosexual male actors were routinely sent out on staged “dates” with females who may have been heterosexual or may not have been.
The Movie Stars of the 1950’s and early 1960’s were like Barbie or Ken dolls and seemed to have no problems because any messiness in the personal arena was cleaned-up by the studio. In the case of Marilyn, who had a problem not only with some unspecified mental illness but also with drugs, the studio doctors were called-in to keep her supply of pills plentiful. She ultimately suffered a breakdown which could not be covered-up by any studio. She required hospitalization and the press soused down on her with cameras as she emerged from a psychiatric ward. She was young when she passed away, aged only 36 years. When Marilyn Monroe died the myths about cover-ups surrounding her demise began to swirl and these are sometimes still recounted today.
Is that what people really want when they seek fame? To be famous seems to ensure that even in death society will haunt you, and not the other way around. You will become a sale item and your image, your belongings and any film in which you starred or note you may have written will increase in value when you die. How on earth is that understood as a glamorous concept and not seen as the maudlin, convoluted reality which it, in fact, truly is?
Warhol’s most insightful statements were about the coalescence of both fame and mass-production. It is rare that a can of soup comes under the scrutiny of an artist and neither is it commonplace that the same object would become subject matter for his work. Therefore we must question why this particular artist, with his well-documented preoccupation with fame as well as concepts of marketing.
I cannot imagine that his decision to name the studio in which his art was produced “The Factory.” That this was a wry, tongue-in-cheek or cute action is possible but I think that supposition actually diminishes his motivation to have so christened his working space. That he produced his many celebrity portraits in this environment, with its highly suggestive name warrants a closer examination. A second look at not only the name he gave to the place in which he created his work, but also a more comprehensive evaluation of those images of well-known persons which he conceived and made within these premises.
Warhol remains as inscrutable and enigmatic twenty-four years after his death than he ever was in life. His work hangs in respected museums and is sought after by wealthy collectors internationally. His art and its potent messages, which at once had seemed to contradict one another, now seem to have eerily commingled and today we have a distorted brand of celebrity about which Warhol either warned us to avoid, or which he championed and even played an active role in creating. Those seem to be the two most easily appreciated realities. That Warhol was instructing his viewer to dislike the way things had become or that he was extolling the nature of what he loved in the works I have mentioned. There is a third reality and is a well-rounded one in which the artist was probably aware of the contradictions inherent in his messages.
That final possibility, and the one in which I trust, is that he was the epitome of the fan, one who loved the famous and who chased fame himself. In doing this, he became increasingly aware of the mechanics which create famous individuals. He learned that bare circumstance alone was not enough to account for a person becoming a Star, and that there was a machine behind the entire phenomenon. Besides from learning this, he saw the utterly cold the truth about how celebrities are made and destroyed. He had to learn, at some point, that people were made into Stars only because they were meant to be sold. Again, his keen understanding of marketing and advertizing came into play. In reality, the potent force advertizing exerts over the population is unthinkably strong. It can charm them, swaying people to be compelled into the purchase of one brand. It can make them love a particular Star. The same mechanics which create and sell disposable cans to hold soup are not identical to those which make celebrities. They are, however, very similar.
The throw-away culture in which we live today is simply a heightened version of the reality which Warhol espoused in both his duplicate images of Hollywood Stars and via his Campbell’s Soup can. Perhaps some of the authenticity we believe is innately human was still at work within the souls of the consumers as well as within the souls of the human chattel while he was working on his portraits. Now, Human Beings without real fame are commodities sold for less than nothing on television and more of late, online. No, nothing is completely authentic and we are alone without a wizard who can predict the next turn-of-fact. After all is written about Warhol, perhaps his greatest role, the role of a prophet, warrants much more analysis and scrutiny.

Jeffrey Justice