When Art Critic Robert Hughes Called Andy Warhol Stupid
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- Опубликовано: 8 янв 2024
- That time art critic Robert Hughes called Andy Warhol "stupid". It's from the documentary "The Mona Lisa Curse", and the documentary as well as any excerpts from it have been blocked on RUclips by the BBC and/or the makers of the movie... Nobody knows why for sure. I share it here for posterity, strictly following "fair use" guidelines, and incorporating it into a larger discussion for educational purposes. I believe it's an important part of art history, and it's a shame that art history has been whitewashed to exclude Robert Hughes's final video testament on art, as well as the most volatile and humorous segments.
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When Warhol died, it was discovered that secretly he had been a collector of classical art. His New York home was filled with the works of master painters and sculptors. His public image had been a performance.
Interesting. Can we infer great depth to his character or was it an attempt to feel or quietly present as cultured? I guess you could judge by what his collection looked like. Again we come back to question of taste. He is the trump of his time. Opportunistic and essentially cynical. But is that great and how will future historians treat him? He is like cult leader. His factory is the ashram. He the king. His eccentric games of cat mouse becomes part of the allure. I wonder if Robert meant stupidity or narcissism. We can’t read people’s minds but we can imagine. Is Warhol a protagonist or antagonist? From my perspective his value lies in his anatagonism and I’m not talking about subversion of the capitalist project. I mean individual to me. He takes up space in my mind because he is so lauded. So I am forced to deal with him just Robert Hughes is too, despite being not very interested by his work or him in particular. Simply forced to acknowledge the trend or fashion.
Hughes is one of the greatest, but he also imposed established image of an artist on Warhol. Andy wasn't stupid, just played a unespected role
@@miranblazek5303 He didn't impose an established image, he rejected an image dictated by the commerce of the establishment.
@@artvsmachine3703 i was talking more about expected image what is an artist and how should he behave. Warhol played the market and attention he recived, by playing shallow person. Hughes wanted him to fit in certain image of an artist, that was his problem.
No. That's like saying that it's the peoples problem when they objected to Nixon breaking the law and spying on his political rivals. "We were holding Nixon to as standard of what we believed a president should be according to a certain image in our heads. He played the system he received by being a shallow person". All hail corruption, selfish self-centeredness and greed. Yes hail corruption, weakness and vice!
I went to art school in the late 80s and thought Warhol was a fraud even then. I also thought Keith Haring, (who was popular at the time) was an 80s version of the same nonsense. I now believe the art market is largely in place for money-laundering.
Yup. For me this was painfully obvious when Jean Michel Basquiat became big the 1980's.
@mistermousterian Yes. I painted in acrylics, drew in pencil, ink, etc. I have a degree in commercial art but lost interest and eventually became an elementary school teacher for 30 years. I used my art as a teacher but don't do much lately.
@@mistermousterian Thank you!
As an artist myself, I'm kind of an "artist's artist" in that I really appreciate imagination, skill, rendering, painterly flourishes, originality, and fine touches. I'm impressed when an artist can do something that I can't, or imagines something I didn't. Warhol doesn't do anything in that department at all, and Haring does outline stick figures.
@@artvsmachine3703 Exactly! Craft, technical skill, true innovation...silkscreening a soup can label or a box of Brillo is horseshit in my opinion.
Hughes was a man of towering intellect. The Fatal Shore is a tour de force.
Robert Hughes Called Andy Warhol Stupid... His art I agree is stupid. The REAL Stupid people are the media and the ones who believe his work is "great art"
And today critics show little appreciation for the genius Hunter Biden
Can't believe somebody is making a video on Robert Hughes in 2024 . Thank you !!
There's another one coming soon about Hughes versus Hirst.
He's a glorified poster hack and most critics out there (not including Hughes) only exist because they themselves have no artistic talent. Art, is quite possibly the biggest and maddest circus around.
Well, certainly in terms of the market. As Hughes points out in the documentary, after drugs art is the biggest unregulated market in the world. When you have extreme money laundering factored high into the equation, followed by unscrupulous and amoral investment schemes, and the worst aspects of capitalism, there's not much room for any genuine interest or appreciation of art.
He WAS stupid, he once flew on the Concorde from Paris to New York --during the flight he saw legendary bebop icon Dizzy Gillespie on the plane. He complained to the crew about "that man" and wanted to know why he was there and how he could afford it.🤡
Great video, learning about Warhol was my bane at design school, all my lecturers thought he was brilliant... I thought he was just a plagiarist.
The last 150 years has been awful for art. It’s not just Warhol, though. Mark Rothko is hailed as a genius for the paintings he did for the Four Seasons Hotel, all them repetitious and dull.
The last 150 years, really? That's just a snobbish comment against modern art in general that ignores all its variations.
@@karlkarlos3545 art has gotten more and more abstract since photography has come about. There can still be some interesting paintings and sculptures, but something has been lost when representational art is phased out.
@@zachgates7491You forget that art has been abstract or stylised thousands of years, compared to very short lived periods of naturalism, that simple minded people cling on at high stadart or "true art".
@@karlkarlos3545 abstract art is the norm in the Islamic world. Some carpets, some mosques are beautiful, but a good deal of Islamic art could be described as decoration. Like the moderns, Islamic artists on the whole restricted themselves.
The fraud of contemporary art.
I always thought I was the only person to think Warhol was pretentious shite. Thanks for telling me there was another.
Visit the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Some of his early drawings and sketches hint at greater talent, but the rest is what we used to call schlock. I can’t believe people thought this was art.
robert hughes was 100% correct.
Warhol was stupid and his 'work' pure garbage.
Thank you for this. Always nice to hear someone speak truth in a world full of bullshit.
Cheers. Next up is Hughes vs Hirst.
I spent two years in an art school that leaned heavily into Conceptual Art. I left when I realized I was becoming a con artist.
Thanks for this, I really appreciate your videos.
Thanks for sharing! I had 4 years, plus another 2 in community college. I feel your pain, and I think I got a worse dose. In grad school I was only allowed to make conceptual art that deconstructed my white male privilege.
Mr Warhol gives me the creeps…..
“Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60.” ~ Gore Vidal
😂
If I'd ever seen that quote before I'd have included it in the video. Cheers.
@@artvsmachine3703 is it true.. i know it could be but I hope it is 😂😂😂
I looked it up, of course. Appears to be real.
Problem with that quote is that it defines genius solely by IQ. There are other metrics.
I like that David Bowie did not like him. He tried to have a conversation with Warhol and it was an empty hour for him. 'He had nothing to say. Literally nothing to say.' That's the quote I know of I might paraphrasing there. And David Bowie was a painter himself. He graduated from Art School, he knew empty when he saw it.
Interesting. It certainly corroborates Hughes's impression.
I think two things can be true at once. On the one hand, Warhol's art has an important place in art history: it anticipated the financialization of everything, the nihilism of deconstructionism in philosophy and criticism, and even the brutal, soul-sucking calculus of the 21st century attention economy. On the other hand... none of these developments has led to a flourishing of the human spirit. Quite the contrary. With the benefit of hindsight, we should see Warhol's work as a warning to be heeded, rather than an ethos to be celebrated.
Yes, two things are very often true at once. So few seem to fathom that. And, I like how both the things that you mentioned as true are deleterious. "Warhol as a warning to be heeded". I like that!
Well said!
It accurately rreflecteded the crass coomercialism where much f the culture was headed, but it was not true to the transcendent nature of the best art.
"It accurately reflected the crass commercialism where much of the culture was headed." Right, you got it. And a lot of people try to say that that's a good thing. But it's really not at all. Not only did he "reflect" the crass commercialism, he practiced it and profited enormously from it. Meanwhile at the same time Francis Bacon, who is one of my favorite artists, was making highly personal, expressive, painterly, innovative, and f'ing original paintings that addressed the human condition. So, while Warhol was doing this BS, another artist was doing real art.
Bacon famously said that there were certain people - "cows" he called them, I believe - who he prefered did NOT like his work. T.S. Eliot once filled a stadium for a lecture or poetry reading, and before it started, he quipped that there were only a handful of people in the world that appreciated his poetry. In other words, sometimes it's a good sign when people don't like art.
Robert Hughes gave us the permission) as a young Artist) to say what we instinctively thought.
Warhol wouldn't even make it as an artist today competing in this endless sea of banality with all of the repetitious selfies and mindless circus sideshows on social media.
Great video!
LMAO-AW created all of that many lifetimes ago.
Jim's point was that today appropriating images is nothing because anyone and everyone does it when they share something on social media. It's just curation. Warhol was a curator of popular culture, and today so is everyone, so it evaporates in the wash.
it also proves Warhol right when he said that, in the future, everyone would have their fifteen minutes of fame @@artvsmachine3703
@@artvsmachine3703 Yes, well said. And done today to such an extent that millions of images are added each day as to become an impossibility to even recognize them in a lifetime. A constant battle for attention that is rendering images sterile and fake.
@@artvsmachine3703Society of the Spectacle. Debords writes about this in the 1960s.
When I think of Warhol, he makes me think of someone who was fired from an art department of some big NYC advertising firm because his work was mediocre and uninspiring.
Look,there's no such thing as art (I found this out from certain art critics and a certain working artist who's art I saw on the cover of an art magazine) therefore Andy Warhol's art is as good as any other artist's art.Also it's a LOT more famous so it sells for a LOT more money to investors.
Is this comment supposed to be ironic?
When I think of YOU, @stephenkneller6435, I think of the person who delighted me with a funny, normal, informed and yet nonsensical sentence in a place I assumed was devoid of such things, the comments section of something I genuinely enjoy. And even though I'm literally typing this with a ski mask on in the dark, I'd like you to know it was from A.R. Neophyte and my sympathy dog Rocco Pasquale Masterson. the sympathy is for good things for him, not me. im poor, unknown and happy
He was the most successful commercial artist in New York City for 10 years before he left that field to become a fine artist.
Ironically, all of his “original” work was for commercial clients. And when he started making fine art, he chose to reproduce the most mundane icons of consumer culture. He also abandoned his expressionistic and illustrative style and was more interested in mechanization. He initially reproduced the work by hand and later moved to silk screen. You may not like his work, and that’s completely fine as all art is subjective. But he wasn’t unskilled. Picasso’s most famous work is his more primitive and childlike art, yet he had mastered realistic painting by his teens and chose to abandon that style of art.
Picasso never did primitive and childlike work. Go take a look at Guernica. No child or "primitive" could do that, and Guernica uses all his supposed "primitive" and "childlike" techniques.
Warhol never exhibited anything I would consider even on the radar of noticeable artistic skill in drawing or painting. His best illustrational work was charming rough ink tracings of photos. Any nimrod with an ounce of talent could learn to do that.
Now, we could say that he has an excellent eye nonetheless. However, he would instruct his assistants, which included artists like George Condo (much more skilled than Warhol), to make variations of silkscreens according to their own choices. Some of the best Warhol silkscreens may just be cherry-picked from dozens and dozens of variations created by other hands and other eyes.
Warhol produced images not art. Endless repetition with little or no content.
These are not stupid insights. This is truly inspiring. Thank you.
Not stupid at all, but a bit misleading
"Modern art" is code word for zero standards to the absurd point of unironically claiming that three year old's incoherent finger painting is a masterpiece that belongs in a museum.
Those were the good old days. Contemporary conceptual art makes that look quaintly traditional. You can have an invisible exhibit and people will buy invisible art. Yves Klein has done it.
It also refers to all the great painters after Romanticism and neoclassicism, which is a huge catch all. It really has different meaning depending on who you're talking to and if they are art history buffs. MOMA and the Gugenheim have some of the greatest paintings ever done in them. For me modernism ends with WWII, in general.
@@mazolab You'd have to be specific on who the "great painters" were. Chances are I'd disagree.
@@tsalvlaxitov9594 Art is subjective, but it’s not that subjective. Artists who can paint know who the great painters were, even if they disagree on who and what they like best. Painting didn’t really go south till after WWII. Modernism started in the mid 19th century pretty much. So many great artists, geniuses, we’re in those years. No one really disagrees with that. We don’t need to list the name, or…
Hughes was absolutely right! Warhol was not just stupid, he was shallow, cruel, vacuous, monumentally pretentious and not even SLIGHTLY talented.
Don't hold back your true feelings!
@@artvsmachine3703 I NEVER "hold back my feelings" my friend, that was Warhol's biggest problem, being a stupid, cold empty fish.
OK. Well. A bit harsh, but since I'm on the other end of the spectrum from Warhol I'll just chuckle away. "cold empty fish" made me laugh.
@@artvsmachine3703 I forgot to mention that your short documentary on this incident was outstanding! I knew who Robert Hughes was, but I was unaware of how boldly and accurately he had accused 'The Emperor' of 'wearing no clothes.'
Warhol's integrity as a Human being is definitely questionable. He was not very nice to a lot of people.
Leo Castelli was the puppet master and turned Warhol into Midas, in much the same way Saatchi and Jopling pulled the strings for Hirst..
I'm so glad this was in my recommended. I needed this and it's crazy how suppressive the contemporary art world has become. Even our local small-town galleries have become a part of this machine.
I disagree with Hughes’ assessment but wholeheartedly agree that it should be visible and easy to find. I find the idea of “art collectors” (read: investors) influencing discourse in this way for financial gain both scary and despicable.
Who makes money off it? Nobody. So it disappears into the ether. I doubt it's some evil conspiracy. Most people don't care, particularly the dealers, artists, and buyers.
It's a question of who loses money off of it. In essence you have a man who was the world's most famous art critic saying that a product or commodity is shit. It's not good for the value in the marketplace. In a world that is only about money, it's not that hard to imagine people might pull strings so that their wealth isn't compromised.
I'd jump at the chance to own an original Warhol serigraph. I had an opportunity to own a small Warhol guache 50 years ago. $800 was over 3 months' rent. I was hardly in a position to have that much cash on hand.
If you genuinely enjoy his art, I'm pleased about that.
@artvsmachine3703
My whole thing is objective historical context. Warhol was the face of Pop Art in the 60s. He was a giant then, and a major work is still a prize for any museum of contemporary art or one with a substantial body of Modern masters in their collection.
I tell other artists how much disdain I hold for Andy Warhol. Terrible wreckless art. Turned art into a soup can with nothing inside.
There are lots of these 'emperors new clothes' situations in the world. I think its part of human societies because we are so often ashamed to admit we don't understand or like something that appears popular or fashionable, for fear of being ridiculed or outcast. So your Warhols and Hirsts emerge triumphant out of that collective illusion.
Even in terms of pop art, AW's works were quite facile. He's a glorified lithograph, probably owing to his own myth.
He redefined the role of the artist and changed art for the worse, turning it into an exercise in PR and marketing, devoid of beauty, craft, or emotional depth.
A bit of hyperbole, but, yes, there's a lot of truth in that. His art was low production cost, fast turn-around, large-scale, high output, and maximal profit. The market loved it and has by now completely rewritten art history to prop up the kind of art that is the most profitable. This includes the retroactive sainting of Duchamp to give Warhol lineage and more credibility as Fine Art.
Some would defend it as an ironic critique, but frankly I don't think his art was a critique of society but a love letter.
I thought Koons was doing "ironic critique" but then I think his publicity/marketing team, his agents, or whomever told him that made him look arrogant or something, because now he basically says that he loves kitsch and in so doing reaffirms life, love, and that everybody is perfect. See my upcoming video for more on that.
@@artvsmachine3703 haha, it's all critique until they actually accept you. 😂
I have never seen the “genius” of Warhol. It’s just silly and boring
I saw Hughes in a Melbourne bookshop in the late 90's signing a copy of his latest book, and he had to politely turn down a very loud, pushy woman who wanted him to come speak at her local art group. She walked off in a very grumpy mood, probably not used to people saying no. Amid the crowd I saw a very skinny, poor looking artist come up - I think he was a young student from Melbourne University, probably living the poor bohemian artist life, dressed in a sort of scruffy "I'm poor, but I am a painter" fashion. He had a roll of his paintings and he wanted to give them to Hughes. Hughes made endless time for him and couldn't have been nicer, seemed very enthusiastic, asked the student about one of his teachers they both knew at the University, shared a joke. As the young guy was turning to leave, I saw Hughes made a point of giving the young man his phone number / email address / contact details - "Here's my details, please keep in touch" - as Hughes was keen to see the guy's art, and the young guy was keen to send it to him or show it to him. Hughes had been the chief art critic for TIME magazine for decades by then, but still went out of his way to encourage a young painter who was probably set to return to a cheap student share house in Melbourne to continue working on his paintings. I found it kind of touching. Hughes later had a hell of a time in Australia when he was involved in a car accident in the country and local tabloid radio was incensed that, after spending years in the US, he may have been driving on the wrong side of the road. They should have given him a break. Top bloke, I wish he was still around.
Thanks for sharing that anecdote, Anthony!
Hughes’ criticism should be anthologized. Truth is the product of repetition.
There is an anthology.
The Andy Warhol Diaries read to completion, up to his death, dispel any idea that he didn't live as a 360 degree work of art. He was completely sincere and a great mind.
What does that mean? 360 degree work of art? His whole existence is a piece of art?
People are desperate to be known for what they are not.
Warhol, Emin, Banksy, that-bloke-what-did-the-shark-in-the-tank are all savvy businessmen and women.
Yet they are desperate for history to compare them to serious artists who legacy spans centuries, not ephemeral fashions.
Lots of truth in there.
I wouldn’t put Banksy in with those other folks.
My 8 year old daughter - whose ambition is to be an artist - came home from school one day spouting stuff about Andy Warhol being a great artist and blah blah. I sat her down and said is he really? We had a long discussion about pretentiousness. 🤣 But another thing I detest about Warhol is the "scene". The horrible debauchery that blossomed all around him. Weirdly enough, because David Soul died recently, I was watching a documentary about his life, and when he first went to New York, Andy Warhol hired him as a pretty boy for "entertaining". He was interviewed at great and disgusting depth about his sexual fantasies in order to place him with various people. David Soul by his own admission was never gay and did these things because at the time he was very much the starving artiste and did not want to have to go home and admit defeat to his parents. At that time he wanted to make it in the music business. I always knew the whole Andy Warhol thing was basically a beano - The Emperor's New Clothes - with everyone fawning all over him and him pretty much detesting everyone who was taken in by it. Its hard to believe that everyone is STILL taken in by it.
At least my daughter has a fat toad of a mother that isn't fooled.
My advice to my daughter is that art is in the DOING, not in the studying, and Art College is a waste of time. Sure, if you go to somewhere in London you might meet contacts, but you could just as well do that by drinking or partying in the right places. Robert Hughes apparently was a highly perceptive individual. Investment Art is indeed killing the craft.
Yeah. I'm with you. People don't know that the art market writes and rewrites art history and art criticism, in which case everything is skewed enormously to favor the art that appeals most to the rich buyers, their station, and their tastes. Artists are making art for the rich buyers. That's why the general public is completely alienated from contemporary art, unlike music, film, or even literature. Contemporary art is made for elite, super-rich people. Art like Warhol's, Hirst's, Koons's, and hordes of others can be so large that you could only show it in a foyer or a mansion, and a working-class artist could never have the space or the wherewithal to produce it. In the end, the successful contemporary artist is like Andy, rich, and making rich baubles for the super rich.
Warhol, Koons, Hirst, Emin, Basquiat... these fools and con artists were never really of any quality or quantity to flood the art market with all their crap products. If you measure your success as an artist by the standards of these people, then you are in the wrong business at the wrong time. Go ahead... entertain your fantasies about being the next Warhol or Koons or whoever. But know this. There are only so many angels (artists) who can dance on the head of that pin. Most artists I know and all of the art I have on my walls came from artists whose style and work were somewhat traditional in the scheme of current art making. They also make a living doing this type of thing. I buy what I want, can afford, and can live with at comfort and ease. I wouldn't walk across the street to spit on a Basquiat painting caught fire, but if you would, then fine. So too, if you are willing and able to purchase a Basquiat work for millions of dollars fine! I think it's more of an example of sour grapes mentality for anyone, especially artists, who are decrying that they aren't selling their crap to anyone for millions of dollars. Jealousy as much as greed are influential factors most overlooked and kept secretly quite the realm of contemporary art. I refuse to be a part of that. Life's too short. It's always laughable to hear a disgruntled fool exclaim that Investment Art is killing the craft.
Y'know, Larry, I can agree with part of what you are saying, but other parts you get really hostile and you also launch personal attacks. Reel it in, bro.
Did you read how supposedly the CIA was involved in financing abstract painters during the cold war in order to validate modern art in the USA when compared with Soviet art?
Apparently they financed and practically "made" Jackson Pollock and others by creating and financing great art institutions that supported the artists financially, and then artificially attributed financial values to the art. This was done without the artists' knowledge and without even the art institutions' knowledge.
Yap. There was all that meddling in order to make New York the new center of the art world, to promote American culture internationally, and to all around claim to be top dog.
Sounds like many rants I’ve gone on before. I work as an art handler in New York City. You would not believe the trash I have to hang up in these rich people’s homes. Unreal
Amen brother! It’s about time someone pointed out that the emperor has no clothes.
Anything that Warhol did, Duchamp had already done. But since he did it in a time of commerce it got received as some sort of comment on western culture.
Duchamp started the trend. Basically, it's curation. Finding stuff to show in the museum as art.
@@artvsmachine3703 Joseph Beuys has dog turds he picked up in the park on exhibit in some major German museum, I forget where.
Beuys it turns out was a huge fraud about his personal heroic story of a plane crash he survive and how some people wrapped him in fat and felt to save his life. Turns out to be complete fiction.
If you find a like for the dog turn thing please share with me.
@@artvsmachine3703 I'll see what I can dig up. I've written a bit of art-crit in my time and translated quite a bit of it as well, and it was in the course of some of that work that I came across the Beuys dog turd, which was in a glass display case. Beuys, as you probably know, also famously said "Everyone is an artist." This seems to be where we are at the moment.
Interesting i was always underwhelmed with his Campbel soup tins ? and amazed by how he was rated as some kind of super genius ? I guess like so many things in the 60s he was simply in the right place at the right time to be able exploit the gullable art critics ?
I remember warhol on SNL.
Wondered who he was, so i looked him up in the library when i was a kid.
I was not then and am still not impressed by the weirdo.
Calling Andy Warhol an artistic genius is like calling Kim Kardashian a marketing genius. They both tapped into this silly sheep behavior that most people fall into when it comes to persona, mass exposure, repetition, and superficial appeal. This is nothing new, marketers have known how to control the masses with these simple tricks that don't take much talent.
Maybe it's junk food for the soul. Too sugary for me. Somebody must actually enjoy it. My favorite artist of the second half of last century is Francis Bacon, so I'm on the other end of the spectrum. Yeah, I think you're take has a lot of overlap with reality. It's all about the $$$$.
Way I see it, Warhol also mastered large scale, high output, low production cost art that made huge profit. The marketplace loved him for that, and they've written the version of art history everyone now has been suckered into to the point where we don't even question Warhol, or Duchamp.
the persona part is most impactful as the pop culture priests (celebrities) lend their own "status" to create a feedback spiral of the lowest common denominators.
the best analogue for "art" like this i can think of can be found in the NFT and Crypto Coin fads.
Underneath it all, just like Warhol's productions, there is no intrinsic value when stripped of the status.
Warhol's art wouldn't be fit for dorm rooms without the New York Times and Hollywood turning it into a battering ram against Classical Art
Marxist subversion and subterfuge, nothing new.
What a gem / thank you for putting together this video 👌
Thanks, Anna. My pleasure!
I had to remind myself that I wasn't in China after not being able to find the documentary.
I used to live behind the great internet wall of China.
Just as THE LOTTERY is the ignorance tax on the impoverished,
in like manner, MODERN ART is the ignorance tax on the affluent.
@mbggafix- Just as THE LOTTERY is an ignorance tax on the impoverished,
in like manner , the CREATION MUSEUM is an ignorance tax on those with an IQ below 60 .
Go back to your creation museum. I guess science and art aren't your strong suit.
Not sure why someone got upset over your comment. It's pretty funny.
Good video.
Robert Hughes wrote a book titled - CULTURE OF COMPLAINT: The Fraying of America.
Even though it was written in the early nineties, it prophetically describes the American social/political landscape of our present day and age rather accurately. The title says it all.
Your use of the word "censored" is spot on.
Seems like Mr. Hughes has found himself on the list of Wrong Think at the Ministry of Truth. In other words, cancelled.
I read "CULTURE OF COMPLAINT". He got a lot of it spot on a looooooong time ago.
AW was a very good commercial artist early on who decided that commerce trumped art, QED
Robert Hughes had cut-through. A more formidable and engaging presence would be hard to find.
He copied Truman Capote's tactics who copied Salvador Dali's outrageous self promoting media tactics.
it's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. Hughes is right.
We're in big trouble then, because most people have been fooled about the most important issues we face for years on end.
Hughes is right because he 'is' a critque.. Warhol ? stupid or not or whatever doesn't matter ... his work is important. .... Would I protect the value of my investment ??? if ? maybe thet are really shit? .... it's all getting to compicated, I think I go to a late period Rothko.
@@tomglenn485 Go mid career Francis Bacon. He's no going anywhere.
NO. (That is the answer). Superficial art for a superficial public.
As a Hughes admirer, I enjoy quoting from his 1994, “The Culture of Complaint…,” especially, “pale patriarchal penis people!” Kudos and Thanks to Art vs Machine.
Cheers. I'm working on part 2 of this, which is when Hughe's addresses Hirst...
I wondered where this video had gone.
Warhol was the Chancey Gardiner of the art world.
Emperor’s new clothes 😅
Everything is these days.
I never looked twice at Warhol's work. I went to art school for a bit but, got tired of hearing so called artist opinions and regurgitations of plagiarist speeches, I looked around and what was highly regarded as amazing and unforgettable was actually garbage to me. A lot of people calling themselves artists, were only artists in their own minds. I could oil paint, sculpt, draw, ink and basically anything creative. Most can't and are not well rounded. They became art majors and snobs cause they didn't fit into society and became a fake persona to hide their flaws and inadequacy being social. Fake and flakey and Andy was their God. Hughes was right. In my subjective opinion.
Not being an artist myself my criteria is; "if I can do it, it's not art."
HA HA HA HA! Good litmus test.
Hughes prolly would count a living Impressionist as a great artist.
Not likely at all. Just because he didn't throw painting entirely under the bus in favor of anti-art doesn't mean he was a reactionary that thought any paint daubing was superior. He wasn't a Stuckist. I gather you haven't watched Shock of The New.
Nice to hear an honest critic.
It's not art if I can do it.... I speak of a picture of a can of soup..
When I was on high school, we talked in one subject about Warhol, with detail on Ofset. Teacher showed us his works in one catalogue/book - there is still in my mind point - „What is artistic or what skill issue has this?“ But one has put terror in my mind - Cut that he printed from work of Paolo Uccello's Saint George. It disgusted me as I knew how much did Uccello put time into his study of perspective and his experiments. It's still in my mind as worst example of what we do today to old craft.
@@mistermousterian Oh, let me see it... Looks little bit trashy to me :D
The ego on Schnabel could inflate a blimp. And his art, I give it a "B".
You are so right. Today they stand tottering on the shoulders of giants.
Totally agree with this. The modern art world is screwed.
I knew Andy Warhol. His public personna was largely a marketing and branding act. He wasn't stupid. He was amazed that people paid a lot of money for his "art" at all and if people paid all that money for it, more power to them. All in all, what is going to be popular in the art world, music included, is largely curated well ahead of time and being inflicted upon the public so that a certain class of people can make money. Ypu are essentially being told what you like and the masses generally fall for it. The art industry is like Tulip bulbs (obscure historical reference) When the public realizes that it's just a tulip bulb, the 'intrinsic value' turns to zero in monetary terms. Warhol knew this and exploited it. His ability to make money for himself and others is his real art.
Personally I wouldn't say "stupid," though I'd certainly say that about his decades-long insufferably boring (and smug) public performances. I would say "superficial" about Warhol as a whole.
@artvsmachine3703 Indeed yes!
Well he obviously was a very astute businessman.
Pop art was fun for a while, now it's like fingernails down a chalkboard. When navel gazing ideologues run the institutions, nihilism and banality are king and you get what you pay for.
That’s what Michelangelo said when he was carving slaves.
Oof, yea. The emperor hasn’t had clothes for decades in the music industry as well.
Andy could draw shoes as advertisements and that is all.
I've seen his drawings and they aren't very good at all. He didn't really have any talent for painting/drawing as such.
He gathered so many people around him so he could steal their ideas.
This was really interesting, thanks @Art vs Machine
Hughes was right
Outsmaerting the AI is Awesome!
What?
“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” - Andy Warhol 😐
I think this quote says a lot about his priorities.
Yes, and doing business gives us nothing to look at. But, uh, I made a whole video about that: ruclips.net/video/1I8gCzZzSQM/видео.html Ew! It is tied with my all-time least popular video. Curious.
Really enjoyed this. Great editing.
Love Robert Hughes.
New to your channel, the censorship idea is fascinating. I teach art and have searched for debates I watched 5+ years ago on contemporary art to get a conversation going in the classroom , but have not been able to locate them. I thought it was me.
Feel free to use my video in the classroom :-)
@@artvsmachine3703thank you, I think I will!
Andy Warhol is a commercial illustrator.
Andy Warhol is to Art....
As a big Mac is to Cordon Blue
Or the people who thought it was art, and made him famous are stupid, maybe.
Frankly, you can bury Warhol but don't praise him. Despite this awful man's history, I agree with his opinion of Warhol. His films are a waste of cellulose, he learned to market to weak-minded individuals what was expressive. A snake oil salesman plain and simple.
Preach, Dennis the Great, preach on!
@@artvsmachine3703 my art prof n I went head to head on this one. I did one assignment duplicating one of my Profs pieces multiple times in Warhol style. He was not Impressed. Point made.
Ew! Nice tactic! I was also known for taking on my instructors, including Paul McCarthy, if you know who that is.
@@artvsmachine3703 Why have I heard that name?
Perhaps my other video about conceptual art.
I ran into him in 1977 on Broad St. in Columbus Ohio across the street from CCAD.. He seemed smart and outgoing he asked a lot of questions about the school.
Hughes or Warhol?
Warhol@@artvsmachine3703
It's refreshing to see the vacuous Warhol called for what he was: not an artist at all, but a marketing gambit.
I would just say someone, back then, HAD to be Andy Warhol, because that perspective on art needed to be expressed, so HE did it. But, like Freud, he only ever had one idea, and when everyone finally got it, he was done.
Andy wasn’t stupid, he was a professional Hedonist.
Love your editing and narration. Very high fidelity schlocky. Love the organ music. 4:14
Cheers! I get into the visuals and music and sounds. I do my best with what I've got when it comes to narration.
The paint dripping across the screen looked great. And I love the toad eating mice edit. It’s not subtle foreshadowing but the placement of gives it a more ambiguous feeling along with the sounds.
It’s ironic that the style of your film could be attributed to pop art and Warhol by the pop and conceptual art enthusiasts. And that’s what detractors might point out.
But I think they would be mistaken because the tradition lies in the Dadaists and that hybridity is no better exemplified than in Max Ernst.
Even the schlock horror connotation of your film is traced to Ernst. His collages of cheap horror / thriller French novels and paired with poetry are my favourites. I think that might be the link.
Apologies for the ramble. This format of communication I feel is both direct and broad all the while I treat it like thinking out loud. If a little incoherent then it’s because the thoughts are flowing and I want to get them down. It probably means people switch off a because of this indulgence.
The perceived anonymity is akin to writing on a bathroom wall. Of course most are not exactly anonymous.
You've picked up on some of my subtle, non-verbal arguments. The style of the video is my normal style. Watch any other one, and you'll find me playing with the medium, often having extended segments where there's just visuals and music, and throwing in things like classic sci-fi references. In this particular video, I used several devices, like rows of repeating images, basically to show the Warhol people subliminally that I "get" Warhol and I get the aesthetic. As an artist I can't help experimenting, even when doing video. It's loads of fun. And that is also an issue I have with Warhol. He didn't really experiment much at all. He borrowed the silk-screening process from commercial applications, made a few tweeks, and that's it. He had other people make them for him. It's a different kind of art.
That sounds like an artistic mindset to me. Always experimenting. Watch david lynch latest twin peaks series and he’s doing it the whole way through. Not one episode follows the same formula and it get downright abstract and sublime. He’s also from that absurdist tradition. I think you’re right that there is something fundamental in exploring or playing with a medium discovery as opposed to creation. And the nuances of your choices that are unconscious and developed through much trial and error are what give rise to new ways of seeing or thinking or whatever. So much of conceptual art seems didactic or contrived. It feels like a dead end to me. Warhol was definitely a hack. I love Takeshi Murakami but when he designs Louis Viutton hand bags I’m not impressed. Same as political commentary or the idea that all art is inherently political really bores me. If politics is the subject matter then fine but good art I think has something deeper to unveil about human experiences. And a classic painter or sculptor is observing and transcribing the data from out there to inside his mind and then out again. It’s a classic synthesis. The product or artefact is reality. The problem I have with Warhol and non art art or conceptual art is that it’s trying expose the mental Space but in the end that’s all that traditional art forms were doing all along. Now I suppose we could argue about which form best conveys that idea. I just realised that the playing with a medium is like a feedback loop and keeps readjusting. Anyway I’m rambling again. Apologies. Lost in thought. Trying to think this one through.
All very well said, insightful, and shows someone who has looked at a lot of art over a long time and reflected on it deeply. And about the "mental," well, great artists have made gorgeous visual works that also explored mental terrain and ideas beyond the purely visual. There's a huge mistake today in people saying that art is about "the idea." The "idea" they have in mind is usually some argument or information in linguistics, which is not even visual language and doesn't use visual imagination or visual intelligence. It's the same as saying that the best pizza is the one that conveys the most cogent and important political idea in line with forgone conclusions and a social agenda.
Note that I also made a video about why all art is NOT political: ruclips.net/video/Pbwa3gksuRM/видео.html
Check out "The End of Art" by Donald Kuspit. His chapter on Warhol is ruthless.
Oh, excellent. I'm a fan of Kuspit, and I don't recall having read this.
Andy is a an Arsehol not a Warhol.
OK. This made me laugh.
Warhol wasn’t stupid/ just greedy and immoral
I'm glad I was able to watch this video before it mysteriously disappears from RUclips.
This is the best thing I've seen in weeks.
Well said, and yes interesting how the Mona Lisa Curse was banished, glad I saw it when it came out....I miss Robert Hughes
Hughes didn't like Andrew Wyeth, either. He was wrong about him, too.
No art critic liked Andrew Wyeth. He was to them what country music was to someone who wrote about rock music. Hughes wrote and created the video version of "Shock of the New". Well, Wyeth was anything but shocking. Wyeth, despite his obvious technical skill at realism, didn't participate in the development of "modern art," in which case he might as well have been an illustrator, like his father, as far as critics were concerned. Me, I love some of his paintings, but am more a fan of N.C. Wyeth. I admit to loving his paintings of American Indians in canoes. But, yeah, the art critics aren't going to give the time of day to that kind of art in general. They dump on Norman Rockwell to the point where he's almost a joke. As an artist myself, I'm too aware of the skill and talent needed to produce works that I may not be thematically interested in to completely dismiss them. Rockwell isn't my cup of tea, for example, but I can't deny his accomplishment.
I remember a quote by wyeth about struggling to preserve .."that abstract flash.." and often referring to himself as an abstract artist..claiming the subject matter was secondary..
Interesting anecdote. Thanks for sharing.
"The Shock of the New" introduced me to Modern Art. Thank you .. Robert Hughes
His “work” was part of the beginning of the end of ART-all bs all the time.
I think David Bowie said it best:
Like to take a cement fix
Be a standing cinema
Dress my friends up just for show
See them as they really are
Put a peephole in my brain
Two new Pence to have a go
Like to be a gallery
Put you all inside my show
Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all
Andy walking, Andy tired
Andy take a little snooze
Tie him up when he's fast asleep
Send him on a pleasant cruise
When he wakes up on the sea
Sure to think of me and you
He'll think about paint and he'll think about glue
What a jolly boring thing to do
Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all
Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all.
Andy yet, Bowie was a fan....and Hughes is an old fart
Andy Warhol was a scammer and his art was just a bunch of superficial and boring shit, the fact of his fame and notoriety highlights the preference of the masses for this type of product.
I was in my teens when "Pop Art" burst on the scene. It was fresh, lively, and relatable. Abstract Expressionism was sidelined for the time being. It was the new kid on the block and took its place at the head of the class. Popular Art was recognized by everyone, a flashpoint for personal introspection for students of modernism, and a goldmine for those with the wherewithal to jump in, checkbooks in hand.
Kind of like shoulder pads in the 80's.
@@artvsmachine3703
Shoulder pads were the Campbell's soup cans on the grocery shelves equivalent of popular personal expression.
Like I said in the video, I'm not sure unoriginality with a wink is much better than straight up unoriginality.
LOL in the beginning there was no shortage of critics who were disgusted by Warhol and his work.
The only good thing Warhol ever did was to give a stage to the Velvets😂
Yeah. Totally. "The Velvet Underground & Nico" of 1967 is the only thing connected with Warhol that I've ever really enjoyed.
No, he sort of ruined that too by forcing them to include Nico, which the Velvets didn't want to do. They're much better without her. (And besides, she was a fascist.)
Everyone is a fascist these days. The word has lost all meaning.
@@artvsmachine3703 I agree, but Nico was fairly explicit about her fascism, so in this case the term is rather justified. Indeed she was probably more a nazi than a fascist, since she openly expressed more than once her belief in the superiority of the Nordic race. This comes up repeatedly in the various chronicles and biographies.
Yeah, even if it's true, I'm all burned out on witch burning for the season.
Is there a place for cynical visual presentations? Sure. It's small. The social media resurgence of this 'phenom' is unsurprising; 15 minutes becomes a half-hour. Did Marilyn like it? Or Campbell's Soups? Reorganized random materials are stock in trade, so we've been led by these businessmen to view even 'trash', when organized, as potentially articulate, and even if I suppose it might 'speak', the message is clear, like an accountant's ledger. Mr. Warhol is all business, the perfect expression of the 20th Century's war on humanity, and how the money flows. This is an opinion, only, though it is likely an unpopular one.
I wonder if the age of modernism is going to come to a close like wokeness is currently.... yes, we went through postmodernism, which was just a bunch of confusion and now we are into meta-modernism, which is a mix of cynicism and sincerity, so I sincerely hate modernism. How's that.
Awesome video, love the editing.
Thanks so much! I get complaints about my editing.
I associate Warhol with his slavering fans. Arrogant, self-centered, they want you to know how much they adore Warhol.
And, with peace and love, they’re just the sort who’d despise me and vice versa.
Addendum: The world needs MORE outspoken art critics because there are three kinds of people; Those who see, those who see when shown, and those whom will never see even if shown.
@@mistermousterian like I give a fuck about your elitism
I go to museums and galleries, make art, and write art criticism. Also made about a dozen videos about art, come to think of it.
Keep it clean boys. Keep the blows above the belt.
Pot shots at one of the most overvalued, richest, and famous artists who ever lived. And it's really in the name of all the struggling artists who never got a shot because the market favors factory churned out, low production cost, large scale commodities for the market. Hughes is punching up.
So, you're anti-painting as well, which means anti-visual imagination, visual language, and visual intelligence. It's precisely the same as taking a big shit on anyone who can play a musical instrument, prefer instead "found sounds" and appropriated commercial jingles. But, uh, I gotta get to work on my next video, which will deal with Hughes and Hirst, and there's going to be a section dealing with the ideas that are used to prop up Hirst, Warhol and other appropriationist artists. You can build up your invective and hone your arguments for the upcoming comments section. Also, why not watch a video about an artist I find interesting: ruclips.net/video/9ggQMADhqik/видео.html