Andy Warhol and “Decorative Art”
Andy Warhol played many roles in the art world of the sixties. Although he produced more films than paintings and sculptures, he re-defined “painting” and “sculpture,” bringing these traditional practices into the modern age. Using serigraphy as a metaphor for commercialism and consumerism, Warhol brought his advertising sensibilities to fine arts. Wooden boxes with purloined logos suggested that the art world was a market place for the high-end consumer. Casting aside hierarchy and judgment, the artist consumed the ubiquitous imagery of his time and put together an encyclopedia for his decade. Acting like a bricoleur, he gathered the pictures of mass media and re-produced and re-presented the already known and the already seen and forced the viewers to examine the overlooked and the banal of the culture.
Tags: " Elinor Ward, "swerve, "The Effect of the Real, American Advertising, Andy Warhol, Arthur Danto, commercial art, found objects, George Dickie, Gustave Courbet, Harold Bloom, Image d'Epinal, Jean Baudrillard, Marcel Duchamp, mechanical processes, Photo Realism, Pop Art, Re-Definition of Art, Roland Barthes, Silkscreening, Simulacra, The Institutional Theory of Art, The Stable Gallery