Forty Inches By Forty Inches
I was thinking about blogging about Andy Warhol last night, when I had seen some of the first half of his biographical documentary on PBS' American Masters, but I'm glad I waited till after I had seen the rest tonight.
I don't know if I identify more with him or with the Silver Factory crowd that he surrounded himself with and exploited. I mean "exploited" in that they were a factor in his fame/business--and in his attitude toward them. Still, I'm sure I fit the description of the kind of person who would have been drawn to the Silver Factory and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Maybe I do have some smarts and some talent, and maybe still a little ambition...but evidently not enough for me to be a success on my own or even with a little help. I go from seeing the "screen test"/"portrait films" to seeing myself in the bathroom mirror...seeing my own face in the space of forty inches by forty inches, as in Warhol's iconic paintings. I see this image and I wonder.
I'm a generation too late, of course. I was twenty the year Warhol died, and learning about him was spoiled by the fact that in High School, I had an Art teacher who was too big a fan of him. He showed us Warhol's Marilyn Monroe (and his soup can and his Brillo box) and gushed, but failed to give us any sort of perspective--the why and the where and the when. Warhol was using the tools of his subject to comment on the subject: the tools of industry for the theme of industry; the tools of mass media for the theme of mass media; the tools of fame for the theme of fame. My Art teacher failed to get us to grasp this fact. In my Art classes, I dabbled a little with pop art but only because it was a back door into other things I wanted to do. It didn't really connect with anything else in my life. Perhaps if it did, I might have been more serious about becoming an artist...but then again, my school was in the process of making a truly good artist (Solomon Gavin, who is now a name in the field of religious art) and I felt irrelevant in that direction.
Either way, I've always been a para-focussed man. Whatever I'm working on, the thing at my most immediate attention, is the more important thing in the world to me. I don't love any specific thing so much to make it my whole life exclusively. I have to rotate among things. I have to discard things for months after finding something new and perhaps come back to it later. If it takes too long for me to get back to it, the project is dead. Which is horrible as I love grand projects too. I've wanted to produce a TV series, a feature film, a long-running comic book, a series of novels, a product, a stage play...and I don't have the emotional endurance for such things. It is the great shame of my soul. There may in fact be a oneness to my creativity, but I don't see it myself. Maybe I can't be a "true" artist because of this lack of holistic vision.
And again, I must ruminate. Mother says I'm good at that.
FP
I don't know if I identify more with him or with the Silver Factory crowd that he surrounded himself with and exploited. I mean "exploited" in that they were a factor in his fame/business--and in his attitude toward them. Still, I'm sure I fit the description of the kind of person who would have been drawn to the Silver Factory and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Maybe I do have some smarts and some talent, and maybe still a little ambition...but evidently not enough for me to be a success on my own or even with a little help. I go from seeing the "screen test"/"portrait films" to seeing myself in the bathroom mirror...seeing my own face in the space of forty inches by forty inches, as in Warhol's iconic paintings. I see this image and I wonder.
I'm a generation too late, of course. I was twenty the year Warhol died, and learning about him was spoiled by the fact that in High School, I had an Art teacher who was too big a fan of him. He showed us Warhol's Marilyn Monroe (and his soup can and his Brillo box) and gushed, but failed to give us any sort of perspective--the why and the where and the when. Warhol was using the tools of his subject to comment on the subject: the tools of industry for the theme of industry; the tools of mass media for the theme of mass media; the tools of fame for the theme of fame. My Art teacher failed to get us to grasp this fact. In my Art classes, I dabbled a little with pop art but only because it was a back door into other things I wanted to do. It didn't really connect with anything else in my life. Perhaps if it did, I might have been more serious about becoming an artist...but then again, my school was in the process of making a truly good artist (Solomon Gavin, who is now a name in the field of religious art) and I felt irrelevant in that direction.
Either way, I've always been a para-focussed man. Whatever I'm working on, the thing at my most immediate attention, is the more important thing in the world to me. I don't love any specific thing so much to make it my whole life exclusively. I have to rotate among things. I have to discard things for months after finding something new and perhaps come back to it later. If it takes too long for me to get back to it, the project is dead. Which is horrible as I love grand projects too. I've wanted to produce a TV series, a feature film, a long-running comic book, a series of novels, a product, a stage play...and I don't have the emotional endurance for such things. It is the great shame of my soul. There may in fact be a oneness to my creativity, but I don't see it myself. Maybe I can't be a "true" artist because of this lack of holistic vision.
And again, I must ruminate. Mother says I'm good at that.
FP