Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons: consumerism and consumer society

Warhol and Koons:

How does the work of Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons refer to consumerism and a consumer society?

How does the work of Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons refer to consumerism and a consumer society? How does one make use of the verbal language of consumer life, such as an soup advertisement or a cast iron Easter bunny, and deploy such language with irony, rather than with unconscious reverence? Art critics continue to debate Warhol's legacy, life and works, and the value of the artists whom he spawned such as Jeff Koons. Still, viewed in their totality, both artists' life and creations give profound evidence of the ability to subvert the totalizing media gaze of advertising and sentimentality with self-conscious reproduction of images, media, and subjects.

Andy Warhol has grown so ubiquitous as a presence in modern art that it is easy to forget that once a can of tomato soup was merely a can of tomato soup in the eyes of a world that consumed such advertising with a spirit absent of irony. However, before Andy Warhol came to his fullest flourishing as an artist in the Pop Art milieu, if one saw a can of tomato soup on a commercial aisle, one would likely, simply see a product label, not recall Warhol's famous, repetitive image of the soup in one's mind. By elevating a depicted can to the level of art, by presenting a brand label, perfectly repeated as art, a consumer savvy to Warhol was able to witness a message beyond that of product identification, or to buy a particular kind of Campbell's soup -- repetition becomes commentary on the very media of advertising itself, that was attempting to induce a consumer to become more attracted to one brand of soup than another brand of similarly tasting soup, regardless of quality or flavor.

Warhol's use of his artistic media created and reinforced the mass-produced nature and subject of his work. Even the creation of the series of soup cans was an exercise in replication and repetition, as well as the work's effect upon the viewer. "Warhol created most of his pictures with a mechanical stencil process called silk-screen printing. The process gives his work a mass-produced and impersonal appearance. Warhol often derived his subject from advertising or the mass media. He isolated and simplified these images, sometimes enlarging them in a series tinted with various colors. He often repeated them many times in a single picture." By using silk screen, and not bothering to clean up the imperfections of the print: those slips of the screen, uneven inklings of the roller, and general graininess, Warhol was able to suggest not the humanizing touch of the hand but "the pervasiveness of routine error and of entropy, in the phrase of art critic Robert Hughes. In other words, advertising was not elevated, rather it was deflated and its imperfections were highlighted in Warhol's productions. The sameness of the image was replicated in the sameness, the imperfect sameness of the production of the repeated images of soup.

Thus, Warhol took his graphic arts to a level of high art by parodying the means by which standardized images in commercial advertising were created, as if engaged in performance art as well as artistic production. It is interesting to note the importance of performance in the pop art 'scene,' for while Warhol's most familiar subjects are probably commercial products, such as soup cans and soft-drink bottles, his subjects also included celebrities, "notably movie stars Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe and Chinese political leader Mao Zedong." Later, as Warhol became more well-known, some of these same celebrities (although not Chairman Mao) became a part of the Warhol circle, even while Warhol parodied these figures in his art, thus again creating a circularity of art and production -- as Warhol parodied celebrity, celebrities, upon viewing themselves 'elevated' or relegated to art galleries, were drawn to Warhol. Warhol's choice of friends thus even became part of his performance of art and simultaneous satire and celebration of celebrity.

Viewed in the totality of his work, however, Warhol's preoccupation with celebrity, and the fact that Warhol also produced a significant body of film work suggests that these actresses and political figures were also, in his works, seen as commercialized renditions of the self, rather than as beautiful figures. By repeating the faces of celebrities, in their own fashion, these facial images were shown as objects to be sold to the American consumer upon the market place much like soap or soup. This was true even of political figures. Anyone who has seen footage of Chinese peasants during the Cultural Revolution, clutching Mao's little red books cannot deny the commercialization of communism as a plastic artifact, rather than an abstract ideology that transcends such worldly, material concerns.

Warhol seldom worked in isolation. The fact that he so often worked in series again highlighted the focus of commercialism in his art and his artistic process. Like advertisements that advertise the same product, but always slightly differently yet in always slightly the same fashion, Warhol's works were variations on a theme of the same visual theme or note, a kind of graphic, monotonous melodic refrain in a symphony of similar images. No matter where one is in the world, for example, one may open up a can of tomato soup from Campbell's and experience the same, salty, nutrition free yet satisfyingly standardized flavor of not quite tomato-tasting soup. Similarly, advertising provides the same such reassurance for the consumer of sameness and the ease of purchasing food, identity, and fashion by buying into an image.

Warhol's works achieve the same visual stimulation and satisfaction in their series and repetitions, whether of a face or an object, but jolt the viewer slightly because what Warhol calls 'art' is so similar to advertising. When displayed in an art gallery, his art ironically highlights the satisfaction given by capitalism of repetition, even of something that is not particularly good -- whether it be the ugly face of Mao, the acting of Marilyn Monroe (a false blonde in a false romantic musical comedy about a false kind of happiness) or a can of soup without a single natural ingredient.

Of course, artists such as Monet and post-impressionists like Cezanne had painted the same motif in a repetitive fashion. This sameness may be seen in series such as Money's water lilies, church, and in Cezanne's bowls of fruits and still life paintings. But although this may seem to parallel Warhol's work, these impressionist and post-impressionist dabs of color in series were not to satire, rather they were designed in order to display minute discriminations of perception, the shift of light and color form hour to hour on a haystack, and how these could be recorded by the subtlety of eye and hand. Still lives in a series before had emphasized difference. Warhol emphasized sameness, rather than individualism, a sameness ubiquitous to consumer society.

In complete contrast to earlier individualistic and impressionist series, Warhol's thirty-two soup cans are inclined to deflate the subtlety of the design of this Madison Avenue generated image, rather than to highlight it. In fact, upon gazing at so many soup cans, the minute distinctions between the Campbell's label and another label of similar design, such as for, oh, Chef Boy-R-Dee spaghetti-o-s in red seems to retreat rather than come to the surface.

The soup series, thus, is about sameness not an artist's care and vision and unique perceptions of difference in a sea of apparent sameness. Even when a viewer's eye comes across different soup labels in the series this hardly seems to matter. Over and over again one's eye is greeted with the sight of the same brand, same size, same paint surface. In comparing the repetition of colored images of Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor, one might argue even the same kind of fame is stressed, as in other standardized product series of Warhol's hand. Advertising might be described as a mimicry of real life, where everyone is slightly hungrier, happier, and more excited about buying things than in real life but Warhol's works themselves mimic the viewer's condition and subjugation to mass advertising in his or her daily life. The art numbs the mind as one is greeted with mimicries of mimicry, art out of advertising that mimics art, and it is out of this playing upon the viewer's sensibility Pop Art flourished.

The art critic Robert Hughes has observed that Warhol's repetitions are much more deadpan than the artists who may have inspired him, as well as Warhol's work in advertising. For instance, Jasper John's pair of bronze Ballantine ale cans also seems to parody advertising.

But unlike Jasper John's ale cans, Warhol's soup cans seem upon their surfaces much less self-consciously parody and thus much more subtle and disturbing for the viewer. The cool repetition of the soup allows the viewer of the art/advertising text to make of it what he or she may, rather than be 'told' by the artist, often causing a confusing juxtaposition with the viewer's sense of self as a consumer and as a gazer of 'high' art.

But the cool tone of the images in Warhol's works is one reason why a viewer might be tempted to read a kind of backhanded affection for advertising and consumption in Warhol's series, as well as satirical parody. What Hughes calls this affectlessness, a fascinated and yet indifferent take on the object, Warhol does not obviously express a point-of-view, rather he simply deploys sameness in different contexts -- advertising in an art gallery, movie stars tinted with flat paints. Whether he does this with love as well as humor might be possible, but because there is such a visual parallel between the parody or the art and the real, it is hard to assign a definitive tone, other than coolness, to Warhol.

For instance, a viewer might ask, is there, in the repetition of stars' faces such as Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie O. And of course Marilyn, as well as Marlon Brando, and the rest of the faces cataloged in Warhol's series, a parallel with observing these people as artists worthy of fame -- or does the repetition of the image show that the image is what matters, not the accomplishment of the person? Regardless, upon observing these series, the viewer, rather than coming to a specific and quick opinion about these works, is merely asked to acknowledge the presence of the repetition, to take note and record this modern condition of being an uninvolved spectator in a media that is over involved in our lives, and cannot walk away with a secure sense of the artists' point-of-view.

Thus, more than asking the viewer of the art to laugh out loud, Warhol's works, notes Hughes, speak eloquently about the condition of image overload in a media saturated culture. By satirizing advertising and celebrity, the preoccupations of the modern media, Warhol was "variously treating themes that some people have considered a catalog of the preoccupations of the time," in a quick, repetitive, yet efficacious manner -- much like the viewer is bombarded with images while watching the evening news. These subjects or preoccupations of Warhol "included disasters, such as newspaper images of death and destruction," as well as advertising and celebrity, always drawing the media to the forefront of Warhol's artistic discourse.

We consume soup, the media and celebrity, suggests Warhol, and whether this is good or bad is left up to the viewer, he as the artist simply depicts rather than comments about how this modern fact affects him. Alas, the recent monotony of images of death in destruction in our modern media might seem to query the infamous quote of Warhol that the more one sees of something "the better and emptier" a viewer of the media feels. But by better one does not necessarily feel good, perhaps, but reassured in one's own sense of certainty in the world. Through repetition, even of a disaster, the viewer becomes assured of a far off disaster really occurring, rather than as something abstract, narrated only in the verbal medium of radio -- and by repeating one's own image and status through buying into a certain consumed image, one reaffirms one's own identity.

Is this assigning too much meaning and significance to Andy Warhol's critique of advertising and commercialism? After all, one could allege that his work is a kind of homage as well as a satire, and because of its absence of originality it is more of a performance than a true work of art -- without the viewer's participation and viewing the soup cans as different from ordinary advertising, does any art really take place?

Advertising and Warhol's work depend upon collusion of viewer and subject -- they must be viewed to have their full effect in the sense that the viewer must be fluent in the cultural images of the day as well as simply appreciate art. Warhol knew the world of commercial advertising quite well and was quite skilled in deploying its language upon the minds of consumers. He began as a commercial illustrator, and unlike many a recent art school graduate, was a very successful trade professional on assignments such as shoe ads for I. Miller "in a stylish blotty line that derived from Ben Shahn." He first exhibited in an art gallery in 1962, when the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles showed his 32 Campbell's Soup Cans, 1961-62, not very long after he ended his work in commercial, as opposed to artistic design.

Interestingly enough, much like the celebrities whose lives he chronicled, most of Warhol's best work was done in a relatively concentrated period, over a span of about six years, finishing in 1968, after he was shot by a follower/hanger-on/fan. His work, said Hughes "all flowed from one central insight: that in a culture glutted with information, where most people experience most things at second or third hand through TV and print, through images that become banal and disassociated by repeated again and again and again, there is role for affect less art." In other words, Warhol was the first artist to play upon the lack of feeling created by modern culture, and to stress its importance in modern life, by deploying repetitive commercial images and media in his art.

American art was no longer about personal, interior expression, after Warhol. As an artist, " you no longer need to be hot and full of feeling. You can be super cool, like a slightly frosted mirror. Not that Warhol worked this out; he didn't have to. He felt it and embodied it. He was a conduit for a sort of collective American state of mind in which celebrity - the famous image of a person, the famous brand name - had completely replaced both sacredness and solidity."

Warhol's art proved a conduit for the later art works fashioned by the hand of the contemporary artist and satirist of commercial culture, Jeff Koons. Today, Koons is among the most controversial and intriguing artists to have emerged in the past decade and a direct descendant of Warhol. Like Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol before him, "he is concerned with the transformation of everyday objects into art and takes such post-modern issues" as high and low culture, context, and commercialization of art "as the central focus of his work." Koons focuses, unlike Warhol, not upon standardization, but elevating low art images and forms into the galleries of high art, but by making use of supposedly lower-class cliches such as Easter bunnies and puppies, the parody of Koons and Warhol share a common bond, as well as their affect less use of the darlings of commercialized culture.

Koons' art historical glory" resides in the fact that he is flat -- no depth, all about the surfaces of things, even, some have noted, "flatter than Warhol." This meaninglessness and banality, if nothing else, is his most important contribution to art," as Koons lacks even the slickness of Madison Avenue advertising, and the sense of specious sophistication that images of celebrities might create.