Hocus Eye. said:
Well in any case Warhol didn't invent that Marilyn picture he just took it from whatever newspaper or magazine he found it in. The original is a photograph and I don't know which particular photographer took the picture. All Warhol did was to put it through a series of processes using silk screen printing to change the background and foreground colours. This was standard graphic design stuff in Warhol's day. He was originally a graphic designer before he created his own image as an artist.
This is also a method of working demanded by both GCSE examination boards and A level GCE ones. School students do it to get the marks available.
As you suggest Students who take that image and do similar things to it are I agree just being derivative and unoriginal, but who can blame them if they continue with the method they have learnt once they get to college despite the best efforts of the tutors? Similarly things happen with Warhol's Campbell's soup cans. It has even become an urban myth that Warhol was the designer of these cans. People are very confused about Warhol. Warhol fooled the fine art establishment into thinking he was a great artist. Really he was just a famous artist. His art was fame.
As for Hockney I think he is not overrated but underrated, as popular as he is. I saw an exbibition of his drawings a few years ago at the 'Royal Academy' It was just drawings framed on the wall and his sketchpads were in glass cases open at an interesting page. His use of line is very reminscent of that of Picasso - especially Picasso's etchings which are extremely economical in line. I also liked very much Hockney's use of high quality coloured pencils which resulted in the kind of intensity of colours you get in a painting. Many of his pictures were drawn in the lounges of airports and recorded with a sharp insight the character and demeanor of people moving around in that environment.
I re-assert that Hockney is a genius. His work just gives you a thrill to look at it.
As for Manga, I have seen it. I have also seen beer cans discarded in the street. It has about as much interest for me. What is the big deal about cartoony pictures of girls with big eyes? Manga isn't of any interest outside of its sub-culture teenage audience.
Hocus
Im not saying Warhol did come up with it
Im just saying
his particular version has become an endlessly referenced visual cliche.
I dont mean to sound rude, but are you an art teacher? Because as far as I'm aware, having recently completed my art GCSE, you can't just reproduce something done by another artist and get marks for that. Its all about showing work through a variety of media, demonstrating your jouney of ideas, recording your observations and demonstrating a knowledge of art history, vocabulary and analytical skills.
I'm not saying students are to blame for continuing something theyve learnt, I'm saying that that particular image happens to be one which is referenced and pastiched a lot. Blame and being wrong is not what I was getting at.
As for Warhol himself, did he create icons or did icons create him? Who knows. I like not knowing. I don't really want to know the motives behind his work, I just like it. A lot of his art was his fame, I agree, but his art and his fame kind of fed off each other, and the fact that he created pictures of famous people is maybe his own comment on that, aswell as being the method by which he gained his own fame. I dont think I've ever met anyone who thinks Warhol designed the cans himself, and if anyone does I think thats kind of good because it shows that his pictures transcended being simple reproductions of things that already existed.
In the end I think with artists like Warhol, and maybe Duchamp and people like that, where its difficult to see the "fine art" merits of their work, its more important that they were significant and influential and have a place in art history than whether or not what they did had any aesthetic value.
I agree about Anime, manga, whatever. I never know how to use those words accurately. Im sure Shippy can enlighten us there.. I think you're right that it is kind of a subculture and it isnt really up there as something pastiched because it doesnt have a global, adult audience of artists in the way that something like American Gothic, Mona Lisa or The Scream do.
I think I'll have to look again at Hockney, to be honest Im not sure Ive seen enough of his work to make up my mind completely yet.
at self.
