Andy Warhol e a deriva da cultura contemporânea

Andy Warhol and the drifting of contemporary culture

Cristiano Klanovicz, Unisinos, Brazil

Fábio Parode, Unisinos, Brazil

Abstract: This article, through the bias of critical semiotic and the post-structuralist perspective, analyzes the work of Andy Warhol entitled "Twenty Marilyns". With the theoretical-critical framing of aesthetics and of contemporary culture, this paper aims to understand which are the meanings produced by this work. Andy Warhol is considered by many art sociologists one of the main representatives in the aesthetic school who was broken with an art perspective which saw it as a space for social critic, making it get closer to consumer culture. Thus, it provides us with its aesthetic and poetic, inputs to reflect on the current crisis the values of contemporary society. What is the role of Warhol's work in the context of social and cultural transformations of the '60s? What is the relation between the representation technologies with social movements?  In an exploratory way, we aim to identify in this artist's work social and power codes underlying to his language, forms and contents, whether they are explicit or evoked, aiming at analyzing the processes socio-cultural signification. As a result of this investigation, we expected to contribute with questions about the role aesthetics in works of art and the drifting of contemporary culture.

Keywords: Andy Warhol, Pop Art, contemporary culture

Introduction

T

he American context of the 60s was marked by the strong trade growth of the postwar period and by an avalanche of new visual information coming from the new communication means. This situation ended up influencing the field of art in several ways: the breaking of the manuality, the end of the merely contemplative character of the the work, the appropriation of the space inside and outside of the gallery, the participation of viewers in the work and the sensitive experimentation as a aesthetic experience connected no longer just to the sense of sight, but to all other possible senses, were some of most evident changes in the artistic aspect.

Developed mainly from the technological resources appropriated from the field of art and the cultural values of that time, this prospect of disruptions to the traditional art making has brought a kind of redefinition to the production system of symbolic goods and the structure of these goods itself which ended up, thus, leading to a new artistic movement, i.e., the Pop Art.

The Pop Art was a figurative type of art as opposed to the abstract expressionism that dominated the aesthetic scene since the end of World War II. The artists resorted to irony in order to develop a critic of excessive consumption which, together with the cultural industry, permeated social behavior, making mass products more aesthetic, such as the ones coming from the sphere of advertising, the movies, comics books and related areas. The arts started representing the most conspicuous components of the popular culture and of the powerful influence in the people's daily lives.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was one of the most famous and iconic artists of the Pop Art. While rejecting the "elitism" of high culture, the artist broke with the artistic standard of the time, creating mechanically reproduced images of industrialized products andof popular culture icons as the focus of his art.

For the purposes of this article, the focus is on the analysis of Warhol's piece called "The Twenty Marilyns. Knowing that "every act of cultural production implies in the affirmation of its claim to cultural legitimacy" (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 108), the Pop Art and Warhol's work become particularly enlightening on the production systems, the circulation and the consecration of principles and artistic values of his time. Thus, the theoretical reference occurs mainly based on Bordieu's theory of the "artistic field" (1974, 1998), also raising the notions of "habitus" and "symbolic goods" proposed by the French sociologist, as well as some ideas presented by McLuhan (1996, 2005) and by Flusser (2007).

Andy Warhol and "The Twenty Marilyns"

Andy Warhol began making paintings of the movie star Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) after the death of the actress. The artist used photos in black and white, taken by Gene Korman for the release of the movie "Niagara" (1953) in order to create a stencil for printing photo images to the screen. For four months, Warhol created more than 20 works based on Korman's photos. One of the the most famous works is the one called "The Twenty Marilyns".[pic 1]

Figure 1: Andy Warhol, "The Twenty Marilyns". Silkscreen. 1,97m x 1,16 m. 1962.

Source: Farthing, 2011, p. 488.

[pic 2][pic 3][pic 4]In this work, Warhol used a form of artistic creation hitherto unknown within the art field. The artist combined painting and photography through a technic called serigraphy. In this printing process, the ink is poured by the pressure of a squeegee through a prepared screen. The photo image is applied on top of the painted image when black ink is put on the screen with the squeegee. The rude manipulation of the blurs on the screen creates grainy areas and spots (Figure 2), spoiling the glamour of the original photo and creating allusions to anxiety. The colored areas - hair lipstick, skin, eye shadow, collar and bottom of the image - seem to have been hand-painted on a layer of white ink visible on the teeth of the actress (Figure 3). The painting was applied on a silk screen resulting in multiple images of the actress with bright and abstract colors. The effect is artificial and very distant from the perfection of Monroe's photos published in the journals of the time.

                Figure 2: Ink spots                            Figure 3: Colours                     Figure 4: Repetition

By adopting silkscreen as technique of mechanical reproduction, Warhol's work shows the same image filled with small variations (Figure 4). These variations occur due to the excess of in, or when the screen got out of place, so that apreexisting image could be transformed through a process upon which the control is partial. The images are in perfect alignment and are fairly consistent in their resolution, although the shadow begins to take over the left side of the actress as in which the images go from left to right.

Due to the fact that the composition of images focus on Monroe's face, there's little space for her clothes to appear. However, she seems to be wearing a sort of blanket or coat with lapels. If the actress's body could be seen, the left shoulder would go forward and the rest of her body would be positioned away from the viewer. In a bright yellow golden color, the actress's short hair is slightly wavy and curly at the ends, falling under her ears. Her face has square chins, protruding apples and a light skin painted with a pale pink. The eyes are accented with the same Turquoise placement of her clothes. With her dark eyebrows, the look of Marilyn is directly focused in painting's viewers. She has a short and rounded nose and her smile reveals a row of pearly white teeth. Her lips call attention due to the black color with red accents. Just above the mouth, on the left, it is possible to see a small dark wart.