Artists, as a lot, are known for accepting quite a bit, and justifying quite a deal of nonsense. Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Piero Manzoni, Andres Serrano, Joel-Peter Witkin– you dig around in art long at all and you’ll find plenty of questionable, weird, misunderstood, or inflammatory works that many artists will bend over backwards to not only justify, but to revere.
Andy Warhol, "Che"
And then there’s Andy Warhol, the one man who everyone seems to find it OK to hate. And, worse, it seems that the reason there’s so much hate for Warhol doesn;t usually come down to some of the morally questionable things he did in life–no no. People hate Warhol because of how often his style is imitated.
It’s a strange disconnect. Warhol, known for his Campbell’s soup cans, and probably more despised for his multi-color screen prints of celebrities, is almost without a doubt the representative face of the pop art movement. But, it’s not for his actual works (his iconic work of Che is just that— iconic, and still popular fodder for t-shirts among the very people who like to scoff at the work of Warhol today), but for the fact that they’re such a simple, striking visual style that is copied almost without end and almost always without purpose.
Is it fair to hate someone because of the drivel their work inspired? I don’t think so. Not even if you weren’t particularly fond of the original work. Warhol’s work may now seem strikingly obvious and bombastically simple, but it’s worth noting it still wasn’t done before Andy stopped to do it. Whether or not you like it, his pop art had a way of embracing the ephemerallity of media that gives it merit. Imposters and advertising groups like to ride the coat-tails of the instantly recognizable visual style, but none of them seem to understand the almost black humor involved in Warhol’s originals.
Looked at another way, hating Warhol for the hollowness of modern ‘pop art’ would be like hating Tolkien for the loads of derivative troll-and-elf fantasy that we’re subjected to. I pikc this particular example because I am, personally, as unthrilled by Tolkien’s classic works as many people are with Warhol’s works, to illustrate that the difference between artistic merit and enjoyment is one worth noting.
And all you artists out there deriding Warhol for his artistic works, shame on you. I expect better. If you must hate Warhol, he’s got plenty of questionable actions in his biography to work from. But his art, whether you like it or not, is an interesting and worthwhile addition to the history of art. To provide a point of contrast, if nothing else.
