The accidental genius of Andy Warhol and Sculpturing the Earth

Explain why you selected each of the TWO videos you choose from the selection listed above.
    I selected the video of Warhol because I have always wanted to know how different artists handle fame. I selected the video of Noguchi because I think that the use of natural space as a sculptural medium is something that is under appreciated.

2. For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned.
Andy Warhol: Images of an Image

Campbell's Soup Cans (1962)

By Andy Warhol

Synthetic Polymer Paint on canvas

    I think Andy Warhol’s genius as an artist rested not so much on his ability to draw, paint or take pictures but more in his uncanny ability to turn realist artwork into an abstractness that, in the words of the documentary, “strips the face of its flesh and only leaves the bare bones of the image”. This accidental genius (who admits that his first love was tap dancing), thrived on dehumanizing his subjects and turning their images into objects that could be mass produced and sold. His game plan seems to have been rather simple. It largely involved taking the image of a famous person or object, then manipulating that image into something dramatically different from the original by changing its color, serializing it or making it out-sized and then emphasizing certain parts of the image. Lastly, by making sure it retained something of the original in it that his audience could recognize, he could sit back and watch them fall all over themselves as they tried to read his mind in their race to attach some deep meaning into the image.

Marilyn Diptych (1962)
By Andy Warhol
Acrylic on canvas

   This shameless commercialism (and frankly speaking, deceit) made Warhol so famous his artistic value became self-replicating: the more he deceived the world, the more the world loved him. He seems to have used his growing fame to ingratiate himself to famous people until he himself became a superstar at which point anything he touched, no matter how mundane and pedestrian, became a prized work of art: “a Warhol”, made by the great master himself. Never mind that he admitted, when speaking of his work ,that “…I don't have to work on the object I make at all. One of my assistants, or anybody else, could reproduce the motif just as well as I can.”

    I am not sure if Warhol set out to deliberately deceive the world. I am not even sure he knew he was deceiving the world. All I know is Warhol is a perfect storm of events: uninspired talent feeding on the carcass of public demand and in the process regurgitating bad art that everybody inexplicably wants a piece of. Just for this, I admire him for being part of this charade of mediocrity, for lending his superstar name to modern art while adding very little to it in terms of artistic value and, most importantly, making millions of dollars while doing it. Andy Warhol is proof that force of personality is as powerful as real talent. The value of his art is only in his name in much the same way (and I am mortified just saying this) a painting by Hitler would be valuable. That or I am completely missing the point.

Sculpture of Spaces
    In the Sculpture of Spaces, Isamu Noguchi says: “in looking for frontiers, you have to go to the ultimate.” The ultimate for him is the earth itself as a massive stone to be sculptured into a great work of art. Using this as his starting point, Noguchi sought to turn the open area around him into infinite space. Inspired by the theater stage which can create the illusion of a whole universe in a very small space, his greatest ambition, is in own words, was to “encompass the earth, if I had enough time.”

    Noguchi’s love for landscapes, architecture and outdoor space is obvious in some of the works he has done, in venues stretching from Japan to Manhattan in New York City. These kinds of projects don’t come easy and Noguchi had to cut through a lot of red tape for his projects to be approved.

Red Cube (1968)
By Isamu Noguchi 

    Noguchi’s projects, which he calls gardens, were meant to create spaces where everybody, adults and children alike, can come out to play. Their size is their strength and the bigger he could build them the more value they became. The scale of the sculpture, he said, should be the scale of man. His belief was that the relationship between the sculpture and man should be one of recognition and astonishment seems to be one of the qualities tat defines him best.

     By using te earth as the core element in his artwork, Noguchi brought nature closer to the people as much he brought the people closer to nature in what can only be called a mutually beneficial relationship.

2. How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?

    Both the text and the videos closely examine modern and postmodern art through the eyes of its most prominent and best known artists. However I found that the book is more detailed than the videos in this case because the book examines more than one artist as opposed to the videos which concentrates on one artist apiece. Also, the book tries to look at the future of art beyond the 1980's which is something the videos don't do. On Noguchi, the book only talks about him in the sense of one of his artworks, Red Cube, so in this instance the video I watched is much more detailed

3. What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts?

    The video on Warhol presents him in ways the book can't. In this way, it becomes easier to get a greater sense of the man and what he was all about. The video of Noguchi is particularly interesting because it follows him through by examining his influences all the way from childhood to the completion of his greatest accomplishments. In this way, both the videos I watched, although very different, were able to show me how different artists are able to use the environment around them to create art that reflects their greatest influences.