A review of Andy Warhol but it's dog themed.

Result #1

The first to do with Andy Warhols art is the exhibition by Pete Townshend, the late of Andy Warhols residence at the New York Public Library. It's a pretty good job, as it were, of The New York Times. (Apparently, the New York Times is the most read paper in the world, and that's one of its strengths.) The show is a splendid one, but the Times is no better than the other major American newspapers. The Times is a commercial publication, and Warhols show at the public library is a little like the Pittsburgh press-orgendis. The Times is a tabloid, and one of the only newspapers that is dedicated to a propaganda campaign. Its got a pretty heavy dose of magic in it. And theres something all too obvious about the kind of work that you can see here. Most of it is just a war for artsy-kids, a self-admiring sort of work. And the art is pretty standard, with a few people doing the work, as if the Times were the same as the New York Post. Theres a lot of the stock painting, which is a good thing. And the Times has an audience that is too big for art, and that doesn't like art too much. It's funny, though, because it's so simple, and one of the things that it's good at. There's a lot of paintings that are done in a style that isn't particularly fashionable, which is fine, but there's a lot of painting that is trendy, which is not. That's a problem, because art has to be fashionable. If you want to call it art, youve got to do something with it. If you dont, youre only a fashion critic.

Result #2

. . .Its an easy formula. . . . Disrupt the meta, and your paintings will look like the last 60s, when the images, with all their dignity and sense of humor, were the worst of art.

Result #3

If the aesthetics of Warhols work are best understood as a response to the dominance of the commercial art world, and as a form of protest against the world being run by corporations and the government, the Warhol-as-government package is a fine one. This is an art that generates energy, that keeps changing, and that often comes back to us with an answer. Warhols public art is a challenge, but one that gets off the ground.

Result #4

A review of Andy Warhol but it's dog themed. His dog is a tiger, and the only time he appears in the show, it's as a tiger. However, the same logic of his transformation from animal to self-portrait, by reason of his being a tiger, could be applied to many other animals, and to himself, and to the world at large. The animals, and the world in general, are often as ugly as Warhols. I have no idea why, but it must be ugly. The Tiger Tattoo at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1979, is one of the many exhibits of art that seem to me to be quite superficial in their presentation of the work of Andy Warhol—they neglect to present any of the ideas or even the interest of Warhol himself. In a show like this one, where Warhol is presented in such a way that he is not presented as an artist, and where the world appears as if it were a Tiger Stadium, the tigers become such a nuisance that they overwhelm the art.The idea that there is an imbalance of power between the artist and his audience—that artists work as if they were politicians—is undermined by the fact that Warhol is the first artist to recognize that there is a problem with this sort of artist. He was at one point asked whether he would be ashamed to admit that his art was becoming more political than artistic. I think he would. Warhol is an artist who needs to be able to say, Look, this is what a politician does. Thats what I am ashamed to admit. I would like to say, Im not ashamed, but I know I am.I dont know whether Warhol would be ashamed to admit this. His art is obviously political, and political art is not necessarily bad. But I think he would say, Im not ashamed of it. His art is obviously political, and his political position is not necessarily a moral one.

Result #5

It has to do with the fact that Andy (or his cohort) routinely made himself the subject of his work. Andy was, in many instances, the object of explicit sexual fetishism, and his art has often been interpreted as an attempt to mirror and criticise the sexuality of the artist in order to acknowledge his complicity. (It's a truism that Andy's work often looks queer, as evidenced by the queer photography that often appeared in the pages of Vogue.) Andys relationship with the avant-garde was mutually assured, and he often collaborated with avant-garde artists (including, notably, John Baldessari, Roy Lichtenstein, and George Herms) in the 70s and 80s. His relationship with the avant-garde was the result of a common love of symbols, and the desire to perpetuate the symbols of avant-garde art. Andy still makes art, though, and he does so in the absence of any avant-garde obsession, which means that his work is both universal and elusive. Andy's work has always been queer, and it's not because he's effeminate. It's because he's continually asking the question, How much can I be said of work that I can't say about it?Andy Warhol: A Retrospective travels to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Boston, Feb. 15–May 17, 2017.Alex Kitnick is a writer living in New York.

©2024 Lucidbeaming