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Certain & Uncertain Part II Rex Butler |
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Warhol's
Ambiguous Smile Certainly, we find this kind of in-joke in Andy Warhol’s art. Take, for example, his Campbell’s Soup Cans. Looking at all the different "varieties" mounted along the wall of the gallery, we can see Warhol explicitly aligning his own artistic production with that of the industrial assembly line, that the individual paintings are no more than the different lines of the same brand name: Warhol like Campbell. But, of course, at the same time, despite making this analogy between his work and mere soup cans, these paintings are still regarded as masterpieces: unique, original, the vision of a genius. This has led to the long-running question, still unresolved by art historians, as to whether Warhol’s work is a critique of the commodification of art or only a symptom of it; whether he stands outside of aesthetic notions of uniqueness, originality and genius or only gives them one more twist, another turn. Whether indeed these paintings have any real meaning and value or none at all, possess only that value given to them by us. Whether, in short, they are critical of the processes they seem to participate in or are complicit with them. Standing in front of a Warhol, says one of his Marilyns, this is certainly the series of questions that goes through our minds. At first, we think: No, he can’t be serious. These are, after all, just pictures taken from some silver-screen fan magazine, blown-up and screenprinted. Anyone can do that. And Warhol himself does nothing to allay our suspicions, appearing on television as he does looking like a Martian in a silver wig on acid. But we see other people around us seemingly taking it all at face value, paying it some attention, attributing to it some kind of meaning. In order to fit in and not to appear philistines, we say, We’d better do the same thing or at least appear to. So we speak about it as a "devastating critique of commodification", a "parody of consumerism’s free choice, of self-expression through the purchasing of consumer objects", a "deconstruction of the Romantic notion of the genius", and so on. But all the while we’ll be wondering whether that $350,000 we paid for them was really worth it or even whether it is a fake. (As is well known, Warhol refused to sign his works and often lent out his stencils to friends in need so that they could make copies for themselves.) Is the joke in the end on us for taking it seriously in this way — or even on this essay for asking this? This is perhaps the final enigma of the work — the image behind it, as it were. Is it laughing with us or at us? Are we one of those insiders who gets the joke (even that the joke is on us) or one of those outsiders who is excluded by the joke (the fact that we don’t think it has any meaning or even perhaps that we do)? Why is this camp such a decisive point in Western culture? Why after Warhol will things never be the same? Is it, as with Madonna, that camp will no longer be critical because it is henceforth everywhere? Does Warhol’s work constitute the last critical possibility for avant-garde art within advanced capitalism or does it mark the end of art as a social force, as offering a transcendental position for speaking of and judging ourselves? Was Warhol in fact too successful, in that the irony he insinuated in his art is now all-pervasive, no longer directed against the dominant ideology but part of it? It is a beautiful and unexpected situation because, if once Warhol wanted to be like everybody else, today everyone wants to be like Warhol. Everyone believes that they are slyly poking fun at conventions while still outwardly adhering to them, that by means of a secret irony they are able to be socially acceptable while still doing exactly what they want to. © Rex Butler and |
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