现代艺术大师

01 Andy Warhol

A man who redefined the role of artist.

The velvet underground inspired musicians like David Bowie to really let loose with wild and outlandish performances.

“Why was he so drawn to doing the repetition?”
“All our media today like repetition. Especially now that we have 24-hour news. I mean, how many times can Michael Jackson die?”

“But we are talking about wether he is a prophet?”
“I don't think art is so much about foretelling what's going to happen as it is recording your own time and what's happening in your time. Duchamp said that the artist in the future would be a person who points his finger to the society. He won't be a painter, he'll say that's art and it'll be art.”

He genuinely changed art for ever. He told us that something like a portrait can tell us about our obsessions and desires and about our media-saturated age. He took things really banal, humble objects like a can of tomato soup or a Brillo box that you pick up in a supermarket, made it question the very nature of art. He took the art out of gallery and into the world around us into so many different fields like music, film or publishing even. I doing that, he freed up other artist to do exactly the same. Of course, more than other artist, Andy Warhol was obsessed with pointing out how much we are in thrall to celebrity.

Key words: ironic comment on capitalism, and consumer society, silver factory, velvet underground, David Bowie, Tracey Emin, Damieb Hirst, Jeff Koons, Susan Sontag