Bob Dylan, Bridgett Bardot, Julie Christie, Richard Price, Damien Hurst. What do all of these people have in common? They were all directly impacted by the life and work of Andy Warhol.
The Art department presented its second event in the 2010 Presidential Lectureship series Thursday night in Ezell. Dr. Thomas Crow, the featured speaker, addressed the topic “Understanding Andy Warhol.”
Crow is a distinguished art historian who has written six books and has taught at both Princeton University and Yale University. He now teaches modern art history at New York University.
Crow was answering two main questions in his lecture: what makes Andy Warhol such an iconic figure, and why is his artwork still considered relevant, even though most of his paintings are nearly 50 years old?
He began by addressing the direction of art before Warhol. Artists like Richard Hamilton began to experiment with creating art from arising celebrities and iconic figures. This reassembling of advertising and media allowed for the beginning of a new type of artistic expression, called pop art.
Crow quoted Mark Rothko, who said, “The familiar identity of things has to be pulverized in order to destroy the finite associations with which our society increasingly enshrouds every aspect of our environment.”
Warhol is an icon himself in art, and each of his paintings has been meticulously scrutinized for any shred of meaning. However, few people have been looking at how his works resemble one another.
Crow suggested that the common motifs in Warhol’s paintings might speak as loud as each painting individually.
Crow pointed to the different depictions of people, such as the hopeful blonde Marilyn Monroe or the dull, dark-haired Liz. Such contrasts in similar characters illustrate the human spirit in a variety of different archetypal and timeless forms.
Crow pointed to movies like Contempt, featuring Bridgette Bardot, and Billy Liar, featuring Julie Christie, as illustrations of Warhol’s influence on directors as they portray the different facades each character has.
Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol also had some exchanges, each fighting with the other as they both influenced each other in expanding music and art. Dylan called Warhol a diplomat riding on a chrome horse in his song “Like a Rolling Stone.”
Warhol exchanged blows with Dylan, ridiculing Dylan’s “country” music.
The feature most people find striking of Warhol is his timelessnes.
“Pop art didn’t end with the ’60s,” Crow said. “Similar procedures came back at the end of the ’70s in the form of post-modernism.”
Indeed, artists like Richard Price and Damien Hurst have continued to use Warhol’s mixture of popular icons and blended mediums to create works that captivate those who don’t normally consider themselves artistic, as well as scores of modern art enthusiasts.
The lecture ended with a few questions from the audience.
“Did Andy Warhol become an image of what an artist should look like?” asked Leonard Folgarait, professor of art at Vanderbilt and fellow classmate of Crow.
“No, I think he became a template, but each artist continues to bring his or her own persona to what that artist is doing,” Crow said.
“The continual concern for Warhol’s art just goes on and on, seeming to be ageless, when the stuff around it seems to be quaint,” Crow said.
“Other artists represent a period, but Warhol seems to continue to be relevant.”
Photo: Kristi Jones