[PDF] Andy Warhol and the Can that Sold the World by Gary Indiana in Arts-Photography

Review

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Remembering who said it first...15 minutes of fame for everyoneBy David LedferdThe older I get the more sense of appreciation I have for anything retro and from my past. If we had all only known how much things from our past would return to make a comeback!0 of 1 people found the following review helpful. CheapBy schnauzers_3Guess you get what you pay for! No pictures. cheaply printed. I would think a book about an artist would have pictures of his work!0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. An Empty SecretBy Jeffrey SwystunMay I make a confession as it holds some significance? I owned a print of the famous soup can that I bought along with other Warhol and Lichtenstein pop classics. This was my attempt at being both cool and refined as I decorated my first few homes early in my career. Most of these works followed me from city to city and home to home. That soup can now hangs in my stepsons first townhome.Gary Indianas book on Warhol and this ubiquitous can attempts to make sense of its allure and place in history. It comes across as balanced but is largely in awe of its impact. Of course. to understand the can one must understand the man. The book begins with Warhols challenging home life and what seems like a conscious manipulation using illnesses. shyness and talent to get his way. Over the years he deliberately confused his history with an "enigmatic quality. which made Warhol a celebrity. infused all of his work with a kind of an empty secret."Indiana appears to suggest that timing was also on Warhols side. "The ideologically gridlocked 1950s fairly begged for a thoroughgoing high colonic." Pop Art was long in the making but was missing the label and a colourful leader. Then came the can which "were produced by hand. using stencils and projected slides. and their handmade quality can be seen..." I love this line. "Warhols technique invested the cheap manufactured object with the solemn dignity of portraiture."It made such a thunderous impact in art circles that it scrambled the generally accepted categories that defined art. To paraphrase the author. the can drew the art gallery and supermarket closer together. For me the next part is the most interesting. I attribute this to my career as a brander and marketer. Warhol has been quoted as saying. "Business is the most fascinating kind of art." He took the awareness of the can and began mass producing it through a silk screening process multiplying output.No two were exactly the same which satisfied those wanting the unique while. at the same. Warhol was able to create an assembly line. This was a time when mass production combined with mass advertising to turn people into consumers and products into brands and we have never been the same since. Warhol did not invent this but he undeniably saw it. leveraged it. and rode it. All of this fits with "Warhols notion of democracy. which he defined as access to consumer goods of identical quality."We will always wonder if Warhol was a good artist or a superior marketer or both. I view him as the Henry Ford and Ray Kroc of art. He spun out works of similar quality and people gobbled them up while media and hangers-on waited on his every word. In moments of lucidity I picture him laughing at this herd mentality. head scratching commercialism and benefits of personal branding.