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Andy Warhol: the Snobbish Machine by Jean Baudrillard.
Warhol himself asserted that, in Baudrillard’s terms “there’s basically nothing to say,” about his work. ... Warhol deflected the significance of his images into the insignificance of his discourse, and this is where the riddle of the Warhol-machine really abides. It is this riddle and the paradoxical nature of Warhol himself and his works which transcends the paradigm of art and history.
Warhol’s images are rendered with ‘total transparency’, devoid of pretensions and allusions, producing works can not be naturalized by discourse. Warhol’s works do not reflect a ‘banal world‘- in fact the opposite, they have no desire to interpret or give meaning to the world. Baudrillard sees the problem not with Warhol’s lack of meaning but with our addiction to it, we are meaning junkies. Warhol elevates the subject to a position of pure figuration which signifies nothing of this world and it ‘radiates in the void’. ... This is where one of the Warhol paradoxes lie- He created artificial artifacts. ... This theory is an existential understanding of reality, which Baudrillard likened to the principal of Evil. ... This state of illusion is highly democratic and egalitarian, says Baudrillard, as everyone and everything is equal within the illusion. ... In fact, in his article, Baudrillard contrasts Warhol with ‘the mystical vision’ in which one has a feeling of transcendence with Warhol‘s images where there is stasis. ...
Baudrillard argues that modern artifacts become naturalized; they loose their artificiality and become accepted and overlooked. But because of the nature of Warhol’s work, the artificialness of his artifacts, they refuse all natural and sensual signification and therefore becomes an object of fetish. ... Baudrillard asserts Warhol will transcend then aesthetic conventionalizing of illusion because both he and his work have entered the “Fetishistic stage.“ Baudrillard believes artists now do not produce art works but fetish objects which perpetuate the existence of this mysterious thing called Art.
Approximate Word count = 1538
Approximate Pages = 6.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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