DuNeRaVeR said:

what is brilliant about a man eating a cheeseburger? I don't understand the artist value of this clip?

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PinballWizard said:

DuNeRaVeR said:

what is brilliant about a man eating a cheeseburger? I don't understand the artist value of this clip?

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It was a hamburger. You obviously didn't understand it.

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no, I didn't at all. Do you care to elaborate? I would like to see the artistic value. I am not saying there is none, I just don't see it.

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kriminalelement said:

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no, I didn't at all. Do you care to elaborate? I would like to see the artistic value. I am not saying there is none, I just don't see it.

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I'm glad you asked.

Andy Warhol made his career a commentary on "branding" and industrial manufacturing, and how these two forces impacted our lives as Americans. He began, as all artists do, by painting what they know. Warhol ate cambell's soup for lunch every day for twenty years, so he painted what he knew, the cambell's soup label. People liked this because they identified with the art.

At the time Warhol was coming to prominence, many artists in the post modern movement were criticizing American consumerism and mass culture. Warhol both celebrated and satirized it, replacing the old negativity and rejection of our own culture by American artists with an OWNERSHIP of the decisions we make and how mass production/mass culture impacts every aspect of our lives.

When you watch this video, you must keep in mind Warhol's larger body of work. The work you are most familiar with is probably his "branding" commentary, the Marilyn Monroe's or the soup cans repeated ad infinitum. The point of those paintings, succinctly, is that our world is full of images or personalities, full of BRANDS, that are repeated over and over again. We consume these brands, and the brands that we like say something about who we are and what we identify with. Those brands unify us as a culture (for good or bad), and they are repetetive and universal.

In this video, Warhol is turning his usual work on it's head. Usually, he makes art that shows how masses of people consume the same product. In this video, he becomes the consumer, one individual consuming a product. You are meant to relate to him directly, as an individual, as opposed to relating to someone else, or to a mass population. You can relate to Andy Warhol because he is doing the EXACT same thing you do. He struggles with the ketchup, he is satisfied but slightly non plussed by the burger.

This is meant to show that we are all a participant in our own culture. It makes our culture, which can seem branded and alienating and too massive to comprehend, more personalized. Andy Warhol, with this and other works, makes American culture more visible and identifiable. It also invites us to examine the culture and whether we agree with our participation in it.

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i agree with what you posted here. the thing i disagree with about Warhol's work is his assumption that the average public doesn't comprehend the consumer driven world we live in. i find that he is just stating the obvious with his work, nothing more, nothing less.

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