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Andy Warhol (1997)

by Arthur C. Danto(Favorite Author)
3.78 of 5 Votes: 2
ISBN
0300135556 (ISBN13: 9780300135558)
languge
English
publisher
Yale University Press
review 1: Arthur C. Danto's ANDY WARHOL, part of Yale University Press's ICONS OF AMERICA series, is a short book (162 pages, including bibliography and index) with a narrow scope. Considering the breadth of Warhol's work, such narrowness is welcome, but it yields a number of troubling generalizations and omissions. For instance, Danto draws too neat a line between Warhol's pre- and post-1968 work (although I give him credit for resisting the myth that the shift in Warhol's artistic approach was caused entirely by his brush with death) in establishing an "important" Andy Warhol and a merely "iconic" Andy Warhol. In pursuit of this narrative Danto also omits any mention of the brilliant work Warhol did with Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 1980s or his Rorschach paintings and Polaroids of... more the 1970s, choosing to focus only on what Warhol termed "business art" -- art, such as commissioned portraits and dollar sign paintings, that celebrated and enacted business practice.The brevity of Danto's book makes it unsuitable as a biography or as a survey of Warhol's career, and it will likely be of little general interest to anyone already familiar with Warhol's life and work, but it redeems itself in two ways:1. As an explanation to the uninitiated of Warhol's artistic innovation: The evident simplicity of Warhol's art, which often takes the form of mechanical reproduction of familiar objects and images, can, to a first-time viewer of his work, hide the philosophical complexity on which it is based. To a new viewer of one of Warhol's Brillo boxes, which Danto believes to be among the most important sculptures of the 20th century, there may be no obvious reason to value the reproduction more highly than the original, resulting in a failure to register Warhol's genius. Danto succeeds in succinctly explaining what makes such objects high art. 2. As an explanation of the value of Warhol's artistic innovation: Critics often refer to Andy Warhol as the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th century, but Danto is the only author I am aware of who has defined this statement directly and methodically. It is his belief that Warhol's art of the 1961-68 period fundamentally revolutionized our understanding of what we are willing to accept as art, thus necessitating a new answer to the millennia-old question, What is art? The space between the objects that Warhol duplicated and the art he produced in careful reproduction must be filled with an entire philosophy of art that simply could not have existed before Andy Warhol. It is Danto's revelation of this novel philosophy that gives his book genuine merit.ANDY WARHOL is a sloppy book, marred by typographical errors, omissions, generalizations, and at least one embarrassingly irrelevant tangent, having to do with Wittgenstein's "language game," the questionable inclusion of which Danto explains by mentioning that its resonance with certain of Warhol's artistic practices at the Silver Factory "came to me in a dream while writing this book, and for better or worse I could not resist including the comparison here." Despite its failings, this book is valuable, maybe even essential, reading for the novice or seasoned supporter of Warhol's work simply because of its great success in positioning Andy Warhol more securely as a god in an important alcove of American art.
review 2: I enjoyed this book. I’m not a huge fan of Warhol, but I do respect his work. And it was nice just to sit and read a well-written book on art. It was a little too-something though. I think maybe it takes Warhol’s work a little too seriously. I’m not saying his work wasn’t serious or important, mind, but this book takes it a step too far. I think it’s when the author brings up the Holy Grail that I thought that maybe he likes Warhol and his work a little too much to be objective in his critiques. less
Reviews (see all)
sjdeezy
Underlying the important contribution of Andy!
Dubey
Great read!
nikkitran98
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