What Would Warhol Do?

“They always say time changes things,” Andy Warhol once said, “but you actually have to change them yourself.” Warhol simultaneously embodied and changed his time—a combination that continues to work posthumously through artists working today. In a new exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art titled Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, the inheritors of Warhol’s legacy gather around to assess what hath Andy wraught for the past half century or so. In addition to being a great primer on Warhol’s art, Regarding Warhol acts as a whirlwind tour not just of what artists have done since the early 1960s, but also just how prevalent Warhol’s influence has been beyond the official art world. Regarding Warhol proves once and for all that it’s still Warhol’s world, and that we’re all just living and creating in it. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What Would Warhol Do?"

[Image: Andy Warhol. Self-Portrait (detail), 1967. Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas.]

 
[Many thanks to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for providing me with the image above and other press materials related to the exhibition Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, which runs through December 31, 2012. Many thanks also to Yale University Press for providing me with a review copy of the catalog to the exhibition.]

Power Surge: The Art Review 100

Scrolling through the 2010 Power 100 of Art Review, I almost immediately had two reactions. First, I’m not on it! (Bloggers get little to no respect.) Second, so many of the artists (and only 18 of the 100 are artists) are either unfamiliar to me or, maybe worse, too familiar. Any list is suspect purely by nature. The makers of this list claim that it’s “[f]irst and foremost,… a guide to the general trends, networks and forces that shape the artworld.” What such lists really provide is something for people like me to talk about. What I find myself talking about is the way the list reflects the true source of power—in the hands of gallerists, curators, and art fair directors and, disturbingly so, not in the hands of artists or critics. What does that power surge to those who aren’t creating or critiquing mean for art today? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Power Surge."

Do the Bird: Maurizio Cattelan’s Protest Sculpture

When Maurizio Cattelan unveiled his 30-foot-high sculpture titled L.O.V.E. in front of the Milan Stock Exchange recently, many people were wondering exactly where the love was. The massive hand with middle finger upraised resembles in style and marble structure Michelangelo’s David, if the young hero flipped off the Philistine Goliath just before firing the fatal stone. Cattelan specializes in confrontational art, but he claims that his prodigious rude gesture is “mainly about imagination” and love, actually, rather than a social comment on the international financial world. I don’t buy it, and neither should you, regardless of what Cattelan says, or even believes. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Do the Bird."