Art is what you can get away with

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one that the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the president knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

-Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), 1975Andy Warhol is a pioneer, rock star, icon and original all rolled into one. His work has been around for ages, and despite all the time that has passed, it is still known for his portrayal of pop culture in a completely different light. We all may remember him best from his pop art Marilyn [Monroe] or his controversial Electric Chairs. I remember him because he was the most unpretentious artist of his time.

“Unpretentious artists?” One might ask. “Is there a kind?”

When Warhol famously declared, “I am a deeply superficial person,” he was remembered for his candor and honesty. He liked being famous and did not try to hide it. He did not think he had to be brooding and anti-social to achieve greatness in art. He didn’t devote countless years of work to abstract art in order to show his depth or his passion. Because for Warhol, why mask your love for pop culture when you can embrace and devote your entire life’s work to it? Pop culture and the media surrounded everything there is about Warhol, and he enjoyed it tremendously. “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.” And there you have it. Andy Warhol, the artist, the man, all summed up in that one statement.

So when Jessica and I finally made it to the Andy Warhol Dream America exhibit in the San Diego Museum of Art, I was relieved and excited. Relieved that we had finally gotten this much-postponed trip over and done with, and excited that I would be seeing Warhol’s work.

“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.” And look we did. We understood more about Warhol through his art than we had expected. You can understand how he felt about American consumerism, fame, money, beauty by looking at a single piece of art. I completely got his Campbell’s Soup collection. It was sort of a testament to how the public, for some reason, gets fed the same things everyday. Consumerism is rooted in the public’s love for repetition. There is something safe and secure about having the same product over and over again. Warhol knew it and decided to convey this idea through art by using one of American culture’s most beloved product: Campbell’s Soup.

My favorite Warhol pieces include the ones on Mick Jagger, Muhammad Ali, Shoes and Electric Chairs. I love how Warhol captured the strength and vulnerability of Muhammad Ali as well as the sexuality of Mick Jagger. One of his more moving pieces was the Kennedy piece with Jackie Kennedy.

I’ll end this post with a quote:

“Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see. When I was little, I never left Pennsylvania, and I used to have fantasies about things that I thought were happening in the Midwest, or down South, or in Texas, that I felt I was missing out on. But you can only live life in one place at a time. And your own life while it’s happening to you never has any atmosphere until it’s a memory. So the fantasy corners of America seem so atmospheric because you’ve pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books. And you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one.”