Does anybody else hate Andy Warhol as much as I do?

I mean, seriously. I have a pretty open mind when it comes to defining things as art, but I have to say that ol' Andy damn near takes the cake.

Seriously. His methodology (if you can even call it that) is to simply take an icon and then change the color.

And then repeat seven times or more.

Some of my friends tell me that he's famous simply because he was the first person to do such a thing, but c'mon now. He may be the first, but that doesn't mean his art is GOOD. Heck, I can take the blanket off my bed, tear it up into long strips, and make a smiley face on the ground with that. I might be the first person to ever do that, but does that make me worth being famous?

Even worse is when people tell me I don't appreciate Andy because I don't "get" him. What's to get? I mean, really, what's to get? The guy changed the colors a bunch of times. That's supposed to be deep?

Nah, but I don't particularly care for his work.

And no, I think the right word is method.

I think most contemporary art is retarded as it is. But that's just me. Andy Warhol doesn't seem any different from the rest of the aloof, pretentious modern artists nowadays.

Pop art was a joke, people often pay for jokes, because he was a classically trained artist: some people thought it would be a good idea to slap the lebel of "art" on it and increase its price (price is very different to it's value). He cultivated a media image of himself, he was a whore, selling himself, he was a pimp: he sold others literally.

He was also simultaneously retarded and wise, rapidly swapping between these two personas. It's now posited that his wisdom was scripted by others and he was just a puppet like Tracy Emin today.

Now, we might ask where is the value in what he did. To really understand what he did you'd need a working knowldge of dadaism, the genesis of photography, fauvism, neo-plasticism and "The Mona Lisa Curse." But I'll try and summarise his signifcance.

Ok, first off: Dadaism. The machine destroyed art, photography destroyed the value of originality. Why go to see the mona lisa if you can see/own a print of it? From then on the only important works of art were primarily conceptual with very very few exceptions. Warhol's driving concern was culture, specifically American culture, capitalism, mass media, mass production (that's the reason why he did large series of prints and paintings) advertising and celebrities. He disliked all that stuff, as decadent and money obsessed popular meaningless tripe, he wanted to criticise and highlight the disgusting nature of modernity.

But he was seduced, startlingly quickly he went from a wide eyed art school graduate and successfull illustrator to a cynical money obsessed media whore. It is because of that that his art is truly significant, he even went as far to say:
"When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums." He once said: "I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."

Amongst Warhols other artistic sins he also ran what he called "the factory" where he took in wide eyed artist like what he once was, he stole their work, he forced some to be in his pornographic films, he had sex with most of them. One of his factory workers even attempted to murder him.

This quote sums him up perfectly: "If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it." - Andy Warhol

This is a good quote that is quite true and goes some way into describing why aspects of his work are occasionally of high quality:
"Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?" - Andy Warhol

BTW I hate Andy Warhol, but I understand his influences and I can appreciate the beauty in some of his ideas and I can appreciate the tragedy of his existence.

Does anybody else hate Andy Warhol as much as I do?

Yeah. Him and Jackson Pollock, retarded

Originally Posted by Arch-hereticK

I can appreciate the tragedy of his existence.

Can we appreciate the tragedy of the existence of people like that long enough to lock them up, and then try to forget them as quickly as possible?

IMO he did the job of a machine. Like what Arch said about the mona lisa curse, famous things getting repeated again and again and changing slightly because of that repitition. Simply taking that (rather shakey and plagarised BTW) idea and merely adding a signature to it is pretty pathetic.

I think he's famous for the same reason Pollock is famous: the CIA funding of art movements that are distinctly American to combat socialist-realism. The CIA had and has pretty bad taste.

I detest Warhol and those like him for the simple reason that they have degraded as many art-forms as possible. Not just painting/sculpture but music, literature and film too. All it really takes are enough people to cheer on an imbecilic non-artist and the investment will flow and drown actual art. With gaming the new evolving art-form, a Warhol-esque developer with access to funding and the cheers of those inhabiting the 'new scene' could turn gaming from its current course. It can be done, like with the Wii, it's the status and the hype that takes over.

That's capitalism. Popularity beats quality.

The tragedy is: he was an artist before he fell in love with money and fame. Art should be free.

C'mon lads, he wasn't THAT bad.

pretty sure the ugy who shot him hated him the most.

Originally Posted by Thanatos

I mean, seriously. I have a pretty open mind when it comes to defining things as art, but I have to say that ol' Andy damn near takes the cake.

Seriously. His methodology (if you can even call it that) is to simply take an icon and then change the color.

And then repeat seven times or more.

Some of my friends tell me that he's famous simply because he was the first person to do such a thing, but c'mon now. He may be the first, but that doesn't mean his art is GOOD. Heck, I can take the blanket off my bed, tear it up into long strips, and make a smiley face on the ground with that. I might be the first person to ever do that, but does that make me worth being famous?

Even worse is when people tell me I don't appreciate Andy because I don't "get" him. What's to get? I mean, really, what's to get? The guy changed the colors a bunch of times. That's supposed to be deep?

Just be glad that you haven't seen any of his films...

Originally Posted by therussian

Just be glad that you haven't seen any of his films...

I'll take that as a challenge:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

4:32 minutes of banality. Bravo!

Originally Posted by skh1

I'll take that as a challenge:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

4:32 minutes of banality. Bravo!

Try watching 9 hours of this, his "Empire"

Warhol does nothing for me.

I kind of like some of his stuff. It's kind of funny.


And Pollock is awesome stuff. A feast of random color and shape. They're like looking at technicolor clouds; you see what you want to see.

Originally Posted by 43rdFoot

And Pollock is awesome stuff. A feast of random color and shape. They're like looking at technicolor clouds; you see what you want to see.

It's not random dammit, anyone could do it random. It's layers of automatic mind-scapes, like automatic writing or free-jazz. You can see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear and read what you want to read: that doesn't mean that there's no objective meaning.

Despite all that Pollock is rather shite.