Sharon Lacey

Cory Arcangel is a digital artist whose work is concerned with how technology and media affect culture.  On the heels of our close look at Andy Warhol’s influence on contemporary art, I thought you may enjoy Arcangel’s use of Warhol (along with the Pope and Flavor Flav) in this remaking of the video game “Hogan’s Alley”.

In the film we watched, Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture, Stephen Koch notes, “Wahol’s art is thought provoking; though one of the thoughts it can provoke is ‘B_llsh_t! This is just b_llsh_t. This is nothing but a soup can!’  But if you hold back from that and start asking, ‘why would anyone put a soup can on a work of art to have me look at it?’ pretty soon you do start moving forward with some real thoughts.” He goes on to say it is possible to look at a Rembrandt painting without thinking. Or a Michelangelo. And it’s entirely possible to look at a Fragonard without thinking. (I always fear taking someone’s quote out of context may misrepresent the speaker; Koch was not passing judgment about any of the artists he mentioned or stating a preference, merely making an observation). So, the greatness of the work is not contingent on its power to provoke thought. Premodern work typically invited the viewer to “see” certain things, or to “feel” certain things, but to “intellectualize” or “theorize”? Not so much.

I was discussing Duchamp’s Fountain with my brother the other night, and said something like, “I see his point, but….”  At that my brother interjected, “That’s the problem; you just said it. I’m sick to death of people making points!”  (Ironically, this is a very good point).  Why do artists feel it’s necessary to make points? Has visual art become too conceptual? Are we stuck in a Twentieth century mindset? Jean Baudrillard, a brilliant theorist who makes lots of good points, states in his book The Conspiracy of Art, “here is the point:  it is all the more necessary to talk about art now that there is nothing to say about it.”

Andy Warhol once said he liked “boring things” and wanted things to be “exactly the same over and over again.” In his art work we see a focus on the banality of everyday life, a trend that has remained prevalent in contemporary art.  Also, the focus on consumerism, the cult of celebrity, and superficial reality are themes that Warhol popularized.  Many artists followed his lead, including Jeff Koons and Claes Oldenburg whom we discussed in class.  We’ll look at many other examples in the remaining weeks of the semester….  Rest assured, there’s lots of boring work to come.