Part Two of John Berger Versus Francis Bacon
"Anatomy is destiny," Sigmund Freud once said. Yet destiny often hangs on a lot more than your gender. You face different futures if you're born into a middle class home rather than a poor one.Your genetic inheritance impacts heavily on your life too. Childhood and teenage experiences can weigh heavily on your future also.
Now Francis Bacon and John Berger lived very different early lives. Bacon was born to a sadistic horse training father and a wealthy mother. His father loathed Francis because he was gay. He got some of his grooms to whip his son. As a child Bacon lived in an Ireland that was being torn apart by a civil war. On one side were the Sinn Fein who launched a successful uprising in 1919 that eventually threw the British out of most of Ireland.
Then there were the British troops that fought Sinn Fein. Bacon used to hear the British
troops outside his home. From an early age then, Bacon felt the tensions of life inside his house and outside it.
Bacon was gay and due to this and other reasons, Bacon's father told him to leave his home when Bacon was 16. Bacon then travelled to Berlin, Paris and then London where he stayed. To survive a life in the streets, Bacon sold his body to men, stole goods from people, worked as a servant, a job he never lasted at, and often skipped out of his rent.
His early life impressed upon Bacon that as the 17th century Thomas Hobbes once said that life, it was "nasty, brutish and short." In the second world war, the London-based Bacon worked in civil defence. Yet his asthma prevented him from joining the regular army.
No wonder Bacon saw life as a brutal struggle for existence. And his name, that was the same as the famous 17th century philosopher Francis Bacon may have confused and hurt him too.
Berger's childhood seems to have been much nicer than Bacon's. His parents weren't rich like Bacon's yet they didn't beat him. Berger went to arts schools and ended up teaching drawing and painting. He then started to write art criticism and then novels. He also served in the armed forces in world war two and at one time was posted to Northern Ireland that was now separate from the independent country of Eire. It was still part of Great Britain.
"When I was in my thirties," Berger once wrote about his mother, "she told me for the first time that ever since I was born she hoped I'd be a writer."
Yet she didn't read most of his books. Still she seems to have been a good mother. Berger's father did hang out with his son sometimes. "My father used to take me to the zoo," Berger once wrote. Yet he also admitted "that going to the zoo is one of my few happy childhood memories."
So Berger's childhood had its ups and downs. Yet it had little or none of the violence and trauma of Bacon's.
Berger joined the British Communist Party when he was in his twenties. Then he left it. Yet he remained an idealist and a progressive. His early years surely put him on a path that differed a lot from Francis Bacon's.
.
Friday 31 July 2015
Wednesday 29 July 2015
John Berger Versus Francis Bacon: Who Was Right? Part One by Dave Jaffe
Berger Versus Bacon by Dave Jaffe
In 1972 in the pages of a British weekly, a great writer discussed the paintings of a famous British visual artist.
The writer was John Berger, then in his mid-forties. Berger had been a visual artist and then had carved out a career as a novelist, screen writer and art critic. The visual artist was Francis Bacon then in his sixties.
The Irish-born Bacon painted human figures, which were often distorted anguished creatures placed in usually airtight rooms. The figures were nearly always men. Bacon's paintings had made him rich and famous.
According to author Kitty Hauser who wrote a book on Bacon, Berger didn't like Bacon's work because his paintings didn't condemn the suffering in his work. Berger at the time was a Marxist and he surely wouldn't have agreed with Bacon's views on life.
Bacon had once said about life, "It's all so meaningless." When he wasn't painting,the openly gay Bacon spent his time in London's inner city. Here he gambled, had sex with men, drank and then went to more upscale places where he hobnobbed with the rich and the famous.
Bacon not only saw life as meaningless. He had little time for idealists like John Berger. For Bacon life was a brutal struggle for existence and anyone who tried to improve people's lives or fought for social justice were just wasting their time.
Berger did praise the power in Bacon's work. Yet he obviously didn't agree with Bacon's views on life as Bacon had set them out in long interviews with the art critic David Sylvester. "The worst that has happened for Bacon," Berger wrote, "has nothing to do with the blood, the stains and the viscera " in his work. "The worst is that man has come to be seen as mindless."
Berger compared Bacon's works with those of Walt Disney's. Disney's cartoons, says Berger, turn mindless, violent alienated behaviour into comedy. So people come to accept this sort of behaviour. "What Disney's creatures lack," writes Berger, "is mind." And Bacon's creatures like Disney's are also mindless.
(End of Part One)
In 1972 in the pages of a British weekly, a great writer discussed the paintings of a famous British visual artist.
The writer was John Berger, then in his mid-forties. Berger had been a visual artist and then had carved out a career as a novelist, screen writer and art critic. The visual artist was Francis Bacon then in his sixties.
The Irish-born Bacon painted human figures, which were often distorted anguished creatures placed in usually airtight rooms. The figures were nearly always men. Bacon's paintings had made him rich and famous.
According to author Kitty Hauser who wrote a book on Bacon, Berger didn't like Bacon's work because his paintings didn't condemn the suffering in his work. Berger at the time was a Marxist and he surely wouldn't have agreed with Bacon's views on life.
Bacon had once said about life, "It's all so meaningless." When he wasn't painting,the openly gay Bacon spent his time in London's inner city. Here he gambled, had sex with men, drank and then went to more upscale places where he hobnobbed with the rich and the famous.
Bacon not only saw life as meaningless. He had little time for idealists like John Berger. For Bacon life was a brutal struggle for existence and anyone who tried to improve people's lives or fought for social justice were just wasting their time.
Berger did praise the power in Bacon's work. Yet he obviously didn't agree with Bacon's views on life as Bacon had set them out in long interviews with the art critic David Sylvester. "The worst that has happened for Bacon," Berger wrote, "has nothing to do with the blood, the stains and the viscera " in his work. "The worst is that man has come to be seen as mindless."
Berger compared Bacon's works with those of Walt Disney's. Disney's cartoons, says Berger, turn mindless, violent alienated behaviour into comedy. So people come to accept this sort of behaviour. "What Disney's creatures lack," writes Berger, "is mind." And Bacon's creatures like Disney's are also mindless.
(End of Part One)
Monday 27 July 2015
Andy And His Art - Andy Warhol Part Four
Andy And His Art - Part Four
Andy Warhol's rise in the art world coincided with a massive increase in art prices. "Corporate capitalism has begun to adopt abstract art," wrote John Berger in the 1970's.Yet soon corporate capitalism and its CEO's started to adopt and buy all kinds of art.
In the early 1980's, 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes noted with alarm the then-massive prices paid by the super rich for art masterpieces.
A mediocre Picasso painting from the early 1920's sold 60 years later for $3 million American. Yet by 2015 art prices for some works went through the roof. A Picasso painting in 2015 raked in nearly $180 million. An Alberto Giacometti sculpture sold for over $100 million. Now Andy Warhol didn't cause these nearly four fold rise in prices - adjusted for inflation that is.
Part of the reason for this massive rise in prices for art was the rise of financial services and their increasing role in the world economy. "Americans used to make money making things," one financial analyst said. "Now they make money by making money." Trillions of dollars and other currencies slosh around in the world's financial markets every day, and their owners were looking for a place to park their money and make money doing this. So the art world soon became a place for the rich to spend their cash and make money doing this.
Warhol couldn't raise the price of art masterpieces by himself. Still, his lifestyle, his massive buying sprees and his joy in being rich, changed forever the image of visual artists. Warhol's actions supported the new trends in art prices.
It's true that Warhol also made movies, invented so-called movie stars and tried to mimic Hollywood - or make fun of it. Yet with the exception of one or two of his movies and his founding of the rock group, 'The Velvet Underground' Warhol will be remembered for his paintings and silk screened images. "When does this film start?" one viewer asked after watching Warhol's film 'Empire' for about 10 minutes. In this movie Warhol just trained a stationary camera at the top of the Empire State building in New York City. And the film just went on like that for hours on end. It bored many viewers who just walked out of the theatre where the movie was being shown.
Warhol brought back the image into painting and aligned the fine arts world firmly with the world of capitalism. He also paved the way for many different types of art, though Marcel Duchamp had done the same thing about 40 years before Warhol came along. Yet after Warhol was through, any type of art was now allowed. Witness the works of Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst.
Like his art or hate it, no one can deny the importance of Andy Warhol in the world of the fine arts. "Andy was a genius," one visual artist told me years after his death. She was probably right; Warhol was a genius.
Andy Warhol's rise in the art world coincided with a massive increase in art prices. "Corporate capitalism has begun to adopt abstract art," wrote John Berger in the 1970's.Yet soon corporate capitalism and its CEO's started to adopt and buy all kinds of art.
In the early 1980's, 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes noted with alarm the then-massive prices paid by the super rich for art masterpieces.
A mediocre Picasso painting from the early 1920's sold 60 years later for $3 million American. Yet by 2015 art prices for some works went through the roof. A Picasso painting in 2015 raked in nearly $180 million. An Alberto Giacometti sculpture sold for over $100 million. Now Andy Warhol didn't cause these nearly four fold rise in prices - adjusted for inflation that is.
Part of the reason for this massive rise in prices for art was the rise of financial services and their increasing role in the world economy. "Americans used to make money making things," one financial analyst said. "Now they make money by making money." Trillions of dollars and other currencies slosh around in the world's financial markets every day, and their owners were looking for a place to park their money and make money doing this. So the art world soon became a place for the rich to spend their cash and make money doing this.
Warhol couldn't raise the price of art masterpieces by himself. Still, his lifestyle, his massive buying sprees and his joy in being rich, changed forever the image of visual artists. Warhol's actions supported the new trends in art prices.
It's true that Warhol also made movies, invented so-called movie stars and tried to mimic Hollywood - or make fun of it. Yet with the exception of one or two of his movies and his founding of the rock group, 'The Velvet Underground' Warhol will be remembered for his paintings and silk screened images. "When does this film start?" one viewer asked after watching Warhol's film 'Empire' for about 10 minutes. In this movie Warhol just trained a stationary camera at the top of the Empire State building in New York City. And the film just went on like that for hours on end. It bored many viewers who just walked out of the theatre where the movie was being shown.
Warhol brought back the image into painting and aligned the fine arts world firmly with the world of capitalism. He also paved the way for many different types of art, though Marcel Duchamp had done the same thing about 40 years before Warhol came along. Yet after Warhol was through, any type of art was now allowed. Witness the works of Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst.
Like his art or hate it, no one can deny the importance of Andy Warhol in the world of the fine arts. "Andy was a genius," one visual artist told me years after his death. She was probably right; Warhol was a genius.
Tuesday 21 July 2015
Andy Warhol - Part Three
Andy and His Art - Part Three
Warhol's painting polarized the art world. Some saw his art as trash. "Warhol's work for me," wrote the British art critic Peter Fuller, "is style unredeemed by an iota of expressivity; he is fundamentally inauthentic."
Warhol epitomized, says Fuller, what went wrong in painting, from the 1960's to the 1980's.
Yet Arthur Danto, a philosopher and art critic for 'The Nation' loved Warhol's work. 'Brillo Boxes' which copied the original Brillo Boxes, took art and art history to a new level, Danto claimed. It raised fundamental questions about what art is and what art could be. For Danto, Warhol's work led to what he called, 'The end of art'. And Danto went on to write books or at least one book with that title. Warhol, Danto claimed, played a pivotal role in the changing of art.
For Arthur Danto, after Warhol came along, the world of the fine arts could never be the same.
Now there's no doubt that Andy Warhol `did change the world of the elite fine arts. Warhol was part of the 'Pop Art' movement that brought the image and images back into the art world. In the early 1960's, artists like Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Claus Oldenburgh and Patti Oldenburgh, Robert Indiana and above all Warhol, reached out into the world of mass culture for their subjects.
Lichtenstein painted or re-arranged comic strips into big pictures. Others like the Oldenburghs took small foods like hot dogs and blew them up into massive sculptures. These artists and others like them did transform in an imaginative way the images they found in mass culture.
Warhol didn't really do this. He just copied photos, pictures of celebrities and even foods like Campbell soup cans and silk screened them. This was a major shift in emphasis in the world of the fine arts. Before the Pop Artists came along, the reigning painters in the fine arts world were the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Wilhelm de Kooning, and Franz Kline. "I am nature," Pollock told the German emigre artist Hans Hoffman. "Your theories don't concern me. Put up or shut up."
Pollock and others, helped by the Central Intelligence Agency turned New York City into the centre of the art world and dethroned Paris from its formerly ruling art perch at the top of the heap. Most of the Abstract Expressionists were big macho men with sizeable egos to match. They railed against mass culture and proclaimed themselves alienated from American society. They supposedly looked into themselves to create their mostly abstract paintings.
Anything that looked like something in the real world, they denounced as 'illustrative'. It was simply inferior art.
Warhol turned the tables on the abstract Expressionists. He painted images from mass culture. He was delicate looking an talked in a fragile sometimes whispering style. He looked fragile and he was. He loved American culture, film stars and American products. "I love Hollywood," Warhol said. "I love plastic." Most counter cultural people in the 1960's loathed plastic, seeing it as a synthetic anti-human substance that was phoney.
Warhol's practice of using other people 's photos sometimes led to trouble. One artist sued him for using her photos of flowers in one of his silk screen series. Yet mostly Warhol got away with using other people's photos. In the end he made a fortune taking photos of wealthy people and then smearing paint on the photos. Rich people paid Warhol top dollars for their portraits by him.
Warhol's painting polarized the art world. Some saw his art as trash. "Warhol's work for me," wrote the British art critic Peter Fuller, "is style unredeemed by an iota of expressivity; he is fundamentally inauthentic."
Warhol epitomized, says Fuller, what went wrong in painting, from the 1960's to the 1980's.
Yet Arthur Danto, a philosopher and art critic for 'The Nation' loved Warhol's work. 'Brillo Boxes' which copied the original Brillo Boxes, took art and art history to a new level, Danto claimed. It raised fundamental questions about what art is and what art could be. For Danto, Warhol's work led to what he called, 'The end of art'. And Danto went on to write books or at least one book with that title. Warhol, Danto claimed, played a pivotal role in the changing of art.
For Arthur Danto, after Warhol came along, the world of the fine arts could never be the same.
Now there's no doubt that Andy Warhol `did change the world of the elite fine arts. Warhol was part of the 'Pop Art' movement that brought the image and images back into the art world. In the early 1960's, artists like Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Claus Oldenburgh and Patti Oldenburgh, Robert Indiana and above all Warhol, reached out into the world of mass culture for their subjects.
Lichtenstein painted or re-arranged comic strips into big pictures. Others like the Oldenburghs took small foods like hot dogs and blew them up into massive sculptures. These artists and others like them did transform in an imaginative way the images they found in mass culture.
Warhol didn't really do this. He just copied photos, pictures of celebrities and even foods like Campbell soup cans and silk screened them. This was a major shift in emphasis in the world of the fine arts. Before the Pop Artists came along, the reigning painters in the fine arts world were the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Wilhelm de Kooning, and Franz Kline. "I am nature," Pollock told the German emigre artist Hans Hoffman. "Your theories don't concern me. Put up or shut up."
Pollock and others, helped by the Central Intelligence Agency turned New York City into the centre of the art world and dethroned Paris from its formerly ruling art perch at the top of the heap. Most of the Abstract Expressionists were big macho men with sizeable egos to match. They railed against mass culture and proclaimed themselves alienated from American society. They supposedly looked into themselves to create their mostly abstract paintings.
Anything that looked like something in the real world, they denounced as 'illustrative'. It was simply inferior art.
Warhol turned the tables on the abstract Expressionists. He painted images from mass culture. He was delicate looking an talked in a fragile sometimes whispering style. He looked fragile and he was. He loved American culture, film stars and American products. "I love Hollywood," Warhol said. "I love plastic." Most counter cultural people in the 1960's loathed plastic, seeing it as a synthetic anti-human substance that was phoney.
Warhol's practice of using other people 's photos sometimes led to trouble. One artist sued him for using her photos of flowers in one of his silk screen series. Yet mostly Warhol got away with using other people's photos. In the end he made a fortune taking photos of wealthy people and then smearing paint on the photos. Rich people paid Warhol top dollars for their portraits by him.
Monday 20 July 2015
Andy Warhol and His Art- Part Two
Andy Warhol - Part Two
In the early 1960's, Andy Warhol became a pop artist. Silkscreened pictures of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Campbell soup cans and imitation Brillo Boxes poured out of Warhol's studio that he called 'The Factory'. Warhol did some of the silk screening but other silk screen portraits and pictures were churned out by his assistants.
Some older artists didn't like Warhol or his his lifestyle that they assumed was gay. "You're too swish," near pop artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns told Andy when he asked why they stayed away from him. Interestingly enough, both Rauschenberg and Johns were themselves gay and had been lovers. Yet Warhol kept on producing art and growing his fortune.
He produced and directed movies, most of which bored audiences. He founded a rock group called 'The Velvet Underground' and began to hang out with the rich and the famous which he was now too. At an art get together in the mid-1960's in Philadelphia Warhol showed up with one of his superstars, namely Edie Sedgewick. The crowd was so great that it nearly crushed Warhol and Sedgewick. In 'The Factory' speed freaks, substance abusers and the truly insane swirled around him.
One of these disturbed groupies was Valerie Solanas, head of SCUM, or the Society for Cutting Up Men. On June 3,1968 she pumped a number of bullets into Warhol and nearly killed him. Mario Amaya, an art critic was slightly wounded by Solanas but he recovered quite easily.
Warhol wasn't so lucky. He survived but barely. At one point in hospital Warhol was pronounced to be dead. and he was never the same man afterwards. "It's the way things happen in life that's unreal," Warhol said about his near death.
After this terrible trauma, Warhol became far more reclusive. He moved to a new office that was well guarded. He started a magazine about celebrities called 'Interview'. He published books like 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back'. He said things that were always quotable.
"Everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes," he once said. And when asked about the Vietnam War that was raging in the 1960's, he once replied, "It's happening."
Then in the 1980's he befriended younger artists like Jean Michel Basquiat who later died of a drug overdose. He started partying again. His inventive days were over but sometimes his art surprised people. He did a series on Chairman Mao which were basically huge photos of China's ruler that Warhol touched up with smears of paint. And in this vein he made lots of money photographing the rich and the famous then touching up the photos with paint.
Warhol loved to eat chocolates. This may have inflamed his gall bladder. He went into a hospital in February 1987 for a routine gall bladder operation. Yet he died in the hospital at the age of 58. Warhol's death staggered the art world. In death as in life Andy Warhol was always news.
Obituaries focused on Warhol's personality, and his pictures or silk screens of soup cans movie stars and celebrities. Others mentioned his disaster series or pictures of car crashes, race riots and electric chairs. A few mentioned his religious pictures that were often copies of 'The Last Supper' Clearly Warhol was an outstanding artist.
In the early 1960's, Andy Warhol became a pop artist. Silkscreened pictures of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Campbell soup cans and imitation Brillo Boxes poured out of Warhol's studio that he called 'The Factory'. Warhol did some of the silk screening but other silk screen portraits and pictures were churned out by his assistants.
Some older artists didn't like Warhol or his his lifestyle that they assumed was gay. "You're too swish," near pop artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns told Andy when he asked why they stayed away from him. Interestingly enough, both Rauschenberg and Johns were themselves gay and had been lovers. Yet Warhol kept on producing art and growing his fortune.
He produced and directed movies, most of which bored audiences. He founded a rock group called 'The Velvet Underground' and began to hang out with the rich and the famous which he was now too. At an art get together in the mid-1960's in Philadelphia Warhol showed up with one of his superstars, namely Edie Sedgewick. The crowd was so great that it nearly crushed Warhol and Sedgewick. In 'The Factory' speed freaks, substance abusers and the truly insane swirled around him.
One of these disturbed groupies was Valerie Solanas, head of SCUM, or the Society for Cutting Up Men. On June 3,1968 she pumped a number of bullets into Warhol and nearly killed him. Mario Amaya, an art critic was slightly wounded by Solanas but he recovered quite easily.
Warhol wasn't so lucky. He survived but barely. At one point in hospital Warhol was pronounced to be dead. and he was never the same man afterwards. "It's the way things happen in life that's unreal," Warhol said about his near death.
After this terrible trauma, Warhol became far more reclusive. He moved to a new office that was well guarded. He started a magazine about celebrities called 'Interview'. He published books like 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back'. He said things that were always quotable.
"Everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes," he once said. And when asked about the Vietnam War that was raging in the 1960's, he once replied, "It's happening."
Then in the 1980's he befriended younger artists like Jean Michel Basquiat who later died of a drug overdose. He started partying again. His inventive days were over but sometimes his art surprised people. He did a series on Chairman Mao which were basically huge photos of China's ruler that Warhol touched up with smears of paint. And in this vein he made lots of money photographing the rich and the famous then touching up the photos with paint.
Warhol loved to eat chocolates. This may have inflamed his gall bladder. He went into a hospital in February 1987 for a routine gall bladder operation. Yet he died in the hospital at the age of 58. Warhol's death staggered the art world. In death as in life Andy Warhol was always news.
Obituaries focused on Warhol's personality, and his pictures or silk screens of soup cans movie stars and celebrities. Others mentioned his disaster series or pictures of car crashes, race riots and electric chairs. A few mentioned his religious pictures that were often copies of 'The Last Supper' Clearly Warhol was an outstanding artist.
Thursday 16 July 2015
Andy Warhol in Three or Four Blogs.
Andy Warhol in Three or Four Blogs - Part One
His friends called him 'Andy' even when he'd become a millionaire and a world-famous artist. Andrej Warhola as he was first known, was an artistic genius. He changed the conversation completely in the fine arts world. Yet was this good or bad? Here people disagree and I can't decide myself.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1928, Warhol's parents were poor immigrants from the northern part of what was then Czechoslavakia. "They were Ruthenians," someone told me. "And in the world of Eastern Europe at that time, that put them right at the bottom of the social scale."
Yet with the optimism and ambition that so many immigrants have shown after coming to the U.S. of A. or Canada, the Warholas struggled and reached upward in the rough tough industrial city of Pittsburgh.
Their son Andrej had his problems. As a child, he was often ill. He had Sydenham's
Chorea and spent a lot of time in bed. He lost most of his hair and pockmarks scarred his face. Warhol's mother Julia protected the frail son of hers from the world and his bullying brothers. His coal mining father realized that Andrej was a gifted artist and saved money to send his son to high school and then to art college.
Warhol went to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, funded in part by the multimillionaire Carnegie families. He graduated in 1949 and then headed off to New York City. Warhol landed in this city, the economic and cultural capital of the U.S.A. and at that time the world, with about $200 in his pocket. This would be about $2,000 in to-day's currency.
In the next ten years he became one of the most highly paid commercial artist in the world, earning sometimes over $125,000 a year. His main ticket to riches was creating ads of women's shoes done in a blotted ink line style. His mother moved to New York City and backstopped her son's efforts. By now he'd changed his name to Andy Warhol.
Then in the late 1950's Warhol went to Europe and visited its art museums. "There he saw the works of the great artist and saw what real fame was," one of his friends said in effect. Warhol returned to New York City, determined to become famous in the fine art world.
Warhol had already had exhibitions in small art galleries. He drew fey or cute pictures of animals and human beings. Now in the 1960's Warhol saw that what became known as 'Pop Art' was the new style. Here, young artist drew images from the world of mass culture and turned them into paintings. Warhol followed this trend and soon became on of the art world's shining stars.
His friends called him 'Andy' even when he'd become a millionaire and a world-famous artist. Andrej Warhola as he was first known, was an artistic genius. He changed the conversation completely in the fine arts world. Yet was this good or bad? Here people disagree and I can't decide myself.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1928, Warhol's parents were poor immigrants from the northern part of what was then Czechoslavakia. "They were Ruthenians," someone told me. "And in the world of Eastern Europe at that time, that put them right at the bottom of the social scale."
Yet with the optimism and ambition that so many immigrants have shown after coming to the U.S. of A. or Canada, the Warholas struggled and reached upward in the rough tough industrial city of Pittsburgh.
Their son Andrej had his problems. As a child, he was often ill. He had Sydenham's
Chorea and spent a lot of time in bed. He lost most of his hair and pockmarks scarred his face. Warhol's mother Julia protected the frail son of hers from the world and his bullying brothers. His coal mining father realized that Andrej was a gifted artist and saved money to send his son to high school and then to art college.
Warhol went to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, funded in part by the multimillionaire Carnegie families. He graduated in 1949 and then headed off to New York City. Warhol landed in this city, the economic and cultural capital of the U.S.A. and at that time the world, with about $200 in his pocket. This would be about $2,000 in to-day's currency.
In the next ten years he became one of the most highly paid commercial artist in the world, earning sometimes over $125,000 a year. His main ticket to riches was creating ads of women's shoes done in a blotted ink line style. His mother moved to New York City and backstopped her son's efforts. By now he'd changed his name to Andy Warhol.
Then in the late 1950's Warhol went to Europe and visited its art museums. "There he saw the works of the great artist and saw what real fame was," one of his friends said in effect. Warhol returned to New York City, determined to become famous in the fine art world.
Warhol had already had exhibitions in small art galleries. He drew fey or cute pictures of animals and human beings. Now in the 1960's Warhol saw that what became known as 'Pop Art' was the new style. Here, young artist drew images from the world of mass culture and turned them into paintings. Warhol followed this trend and soon became on of the art world's shining stars.
Wednesday 8 July 2015
Postscript: The Big Man and The Little Woman
Postscript: The Big Man and The Little Woman
To-day in the world of the fine arts, Frida Kahlo is seen by many women as a secular saint. A woman who grew up in a sexist country, endured disability, pain, abuse from her husband and his faithfulness, as well as obscurity - what woman cannot admire Frida Kahlo? Yet was she a great artist?
First off, Diego rivera was a better artist, technically speaking than his wife. "Men have more opportunities than women," a feminist writer told me years ago. This was true for Rivera.
He won art scholarships, spent years in Europe, studying there and so learned artistic skills that Frida never could. Anyone who's seen just reproductions of Rivera's famous mural, 'Detroit Industry' in the Detroit Institute of Arts, can see its a great work of art. Rivera's communist politics are now history. Yet mush of his art work will last.
"They endured,"novelist William Faulkner said about his famous creation, the Snopes family. And the same is true of many of Rivera's works. They exude power. They will endure.
Then look at a reproduction of Kahlo's 'Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States'. Kahlo did this in the United States about the same time as Rivera was working on 'Detroit Industry'.
Kahlo's work is very good, but her overall art doesn't match Rivera's. Sometimes her paintings descend into pure schmaltz and self-pity. "I am the subject I know best," Kahlo once said. This is true and it's good that she immortalized her sufferings in oils on canvass.Yet sometimes her pain overwhelms her art.
Kahlo has been rediscovered and that's fine. Yet Rivera's art still moves me more than hers does. He was simply a more accomplished artist.
To-day in the world of the fine arts, Frida Kahlo is seen by many women as a secular saint. A woman who grew up in a sexist country, endured disability, pain, abuse from her husband and his faithfulness, as well as obscurity - what woman cannot admire Frida Kahlo? Yet was she a great artist?
First off, Diego rivera was a better artist, technically speaking than his wife. "Men have more opportunities than women," a feminist writer told me years ago. This was true for Rivera.
He won art scholarships, spent years in Europe, studying there and so learned artistic skills that Frida never could. Anyone who's seen just reproductions of Rivera's famous mural, 'Detroit Industry' in the Detroit Institute of Arts, can see its a great work of art. Rivera's communist politics are now history. Yet mush of his art work will last.
"They endured,"novelist William Faulkner said about his famous creation, the Snopes family. And the same is true of many of Rivera's works. They exude power. They will endure.
Then look at a reproduction of Kahlo's 'Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States'. Kahlo did this in the United States about the same time as Rivera was working on 'Detroit Industry'.
Kahlo's work is very good, but her overall art doesn't match Rivera's. Sometimes her paintings descend into pure schmaltz and self-pity. "I am the subject I know best," Kahlo once said. This is true and it's good that she immortalized her sufferings in oils on canvass.Yet sometimes her pain overwhelms her art.
Kahlo has been rediscovered and that's fine. Yet Rivera's art still moves me more than hers does. He was simply a more accomplished artist.
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