Contemporary Art World -101

I’ve always blamed the excesses of the contemporary art market on Warhol.  Warhol’s art came out of Duchamp, yes. ( Marcel Duchamp was the guy who exhibited a urinal and said it was art.)  The grand idea is that art is anything that an artist says is art.  Great.   But Warhol, being a product of his time, added a devious twist.  The “anything” he chose to be art, was branded commercial images from the media. As you probably don’t recall being too young, it was the proliferation of homogenized media in the 60’s that fed the cult of celebrity and the growth of a consumerist society.  Warhol was a child of the 60’s in that all he really cared about was buying stuff and being famous. So, of course, his art reflected the time.   He was a self-manufactured brand and subject of his art was how branding created a need for a consumer product or celebrity. So why was Warhol, who recycled the photographic images of our consumer/celebrity culture, so popular? The answer is what I call the Warhol paradox.  Continue reading Why the market got sooo excessive and what will happen next…