Again, and Again

We are done with the last century!
In the wake of post modernism, artist tried to create something against convention against convention and against convention. Art became a scam and a protest more than a visual representation of life. Starting from abstract expressionism, in which action painters (Pollock) and color field painters (Newman) somewhat innocently attempted to create an art form in which convention of the time was being challenged the art instead transformed at best in a psychological  experiment, and at worst "safe art" which could be hanged in any corporation, office, or public place. This trend grew more cynically so by artists like Rauschenberg in which he, again, challenged the, again, established convention of the time really forgetting composition, color theory, and all that good stuff.
Now I'm all for the free thinking of art, I perceive art as a free expression of self, but when art is pushed pass the expression, pass the skill of the artist and into the  commodity of art directly, that is when art dies. And art died in the greater part of the twentieth century. From Rauschenberg, to Jasper Johns' targets,  and flags (which again challenged convention of the 1940s) rose Warhol. He, them most cynical of all, may have had an artistic mind, but fame and money was the heart. Now while Pop art attempted to merge high art and art as a commodity (which pop artist where very content to scam people into buying their work) minimalism said fuck it! lets just shove cubes (Donald Judd) in galleries and convince people to buy them. and people did buy minimalist art. and minimalist did wrote long long essays to convince people.
There is story in Mexican culture, that when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs and other natives, Aztec did not really cared for gold, to them jade was more valuable. So the Spanish, being as smart as they where, started trading mirrors for gold. Now mirrors was something an Aztec had never seen, to see himself reflected for the first time must've been the greatest thing in the world! and the Spanish left happy with their gold, traded for mirrors.
Trading gold for mirrors has been the trend of the twentieth century art scene. People did not bought art, the bought innovation, something that was not seen like that, or presented like that, but eventually became common and, well, lame.
And Donald Judd, and Frank Stella made their little fortunes with corporations buying their "safe art" and everyone was content with buying and making lines and cubes. Feminism stuck the art world! Now, while I do respect the movement, and it was necessary for humanities' advancement, when female (and later male) artist started with appropriation art as an artistic protest, my respect ends when money starts. It is not possible to comprehend the person watching a picture of a picture and thinking wow! how clever! it's never been done before! Well yes it has, it just wasn't hung in a gallery before. The "artist" knows it, and the artist had become the greatest prankster of the twentieth century.
Thank God its over!
But trends of the Prankster Artist still ensue in some pockets of the art scene...

The Massacre of the Winnies

This is what I had for dinner yesterday. In a fit of boredom I decided to scavenge my fridge and kitchen for what ingredients and sauces I could find. the result:
4 winnies
4 pieces of bread
1/2 onion
1/2 of roman tomato
cilantro
oregano
pepper
salt
A1 sauce
and chili beans

the A1 sauce I brushed it on the floor for a kind of steaky flavored bed, and I sprinkled the bread with pepper and salt. the rest is just chop, dice and mix.

My God Andy what have you done to me?!

Andy Warhol made his point today. While searching the North Park Mall I noticed something that I had not noticed before; Warhol had art works here, ten of them, and I hadn’t notice them in the three years I’ve shopped here. These ten prints are unnoticed by most, including myself, passing by as what exactly they are: ads. After a while, I finally read the little plate in the lower right corner, that read; “Andy Warhol (…) Ads 1985”. Suddenly the ten unnoticed print became works of arts, worthy of pictures and comment.
Andy Warhol was famous because he was Andy Warhol, he is an artist because his signature (which he actually did sign these ones) is worth more than the print, or the effort that took to make the print. Even the plate specifies “signed and numbered”.  Looking at the painting in this new light, I can see the hand of Warhol in the ads, even to he tried so hard to take the artist out of the painting, in the selection of the color scheme representing each “Ad”.  Although a common theme throughout the ten prints is pink, or a tint of pink, the use of pastel with high chrome colors depicts a typical Warhol print (if there can be such thing).  I am specially drawn to two prints, one shows the Paramount pictures logo and the other is a Volkswagen ad.
The Paramount pictures logo is specially striking; the clear purple and pink combination along with the white background pops that print right out of the wall. Warhol’s understanding of the importance of visual media is shown with this print because it is the simplest of the ten, or at least it is meant to appear that way. Because Warhol was first an accomplished commercial illustrator, this print summarizes this understanding; not needing any other “effects” or deliberately offsetting the image, it just is: plain, with a stark bright white background. The Volkswagen ad is especially significant to me, because in Mexico there was a time when the majority of vehicles seen in the streets where this type (or a variation) of car. And the design of the ‘bug’ is as simple en efficient as it can get. I is made to be mass produced, minimalistic in aesthetic design, and made for a basic comfort. “It’s ugly, but it’ll get you there” the tagline read. Andy Warhol understood this very well, his artwork is strangely reflected in this ad, I suspect purposely done so. In the print itself, the bug is placed in simple ¾ view as to appreciate the basic features of the vehicle, with no background or anything else to distract the viewer from it. It is then titled “Lemon” in a kind of a little pun, as to the color and basic shape of the vehicle. The text and the image are married by the title, giving it a bridge between the visual information and the descriptive one.
Another theme I noticed in the print is that it depicts powerful entities, persons or corporations, but by having the prints depicted in the selected color scheme, Warhol does not take them seriously. Warhol makes fun of those entities by making them cartoonish. Nor does Warhol makes them appealing, the print look toxic and even creepy in one case. Personalities of the time are reduced to a cartoonish state and brought down from their celebrity status. It is as if Warhol is making fun of his own celebrity status by equating himself to them. Warhol valued fame and money more than the art itself, for him it was all about the money. His prints where a means to an end, and I could go on with more cliché about him, but that was his point with his persona. This façade of the eccentric artist is a partial truth, he was more interested with the experimentation of human being, as are the ads depicted here, experiments, some in technological, others sensational or visual, but all very specific. These print are not works of arts, Warhol himself said in an interview in the 1976 documentary Painters Panting; “…Bridget does my paintings, have done it for the past three years…”, thus the value is not in the print, but in the signature.
Andy Warhol is the lead in pop art, and will continue to be so because his artwork cannot be outdated. The meaning of these prints will be lost in time, and to most it as no significance other than being pretty pictures. These prints get unnoticed by most, in the four hours that I stood here, only one person stood, photographed, and read the plate. She was young, contemporary, and probably a student instructed to study the prints (much like myself, except for the “contemporary” part). But it is because the name persists, commercially and in the art scene, is why his artwork will continue to exist, unnoticed, but always there.