Issues in Contemporary Art - Consumerism and Autonomy

Skye CorneliaARTH 3363SchreyachMidterm

Into the Uncertain: How Art Responds to the Conditions ofModernity

Excess, multiplicity, duplication – all are words evocative

of the problems inherent in a society that is subject to, perhaps

even slave to, the mass production of culture. The autonomy of a

work of art is called into question when it is able to be

reproduced an infinite number of times by the artist himself,

another artist, a machine, the possibilities are endless. Can we

still call something a Warhol if it is screen printed by someone

else? Autonomy is closely linked to another issue of modern

living, individualism. This concern is related to the subject

matter of art more so than the status of the piece itself or the

mechanisms used to create the work. Increasing industrialization

and mass production allows the public sphere more unlimited

access to the private lives of those in the media eye. In this

type of culture individuals become depersonalized into objects

for consumption by the masses. These are the types of concerns to

which artists and audiences in the 1950s and 1960s were required

to respond.

If one claims that art is something autonomous, something

with the ability to exist or act independently of another entity,

then one must ignore the effects of mass culture that so clearly

reflect upon artwork in the modern era. To be autonomous one

would have to contend that art is devoid of influence from the

outside world; that social, economic and cultural changes leave

no impressions upon works of art. According to Clement Greenberg,

autonomy is freedom from coercion and ideology, which modern art

is not.

The works of Robert Rauschenberg are an example of the

literal use of mass produced objects in art. His Rebus, 1955,

collages so-called found objects (fig. 1). Mass production is

reappropriated for a new context in a way that allows for new

meanings to be educed. Rauschenberg in a way redeems these

objects – photographs, newspaper clippings, cloth, patches of

colored paint, etc. – by removing them from their original

intended function. This does not however mean that Rauschenberg’s

art is immune to the ideology of mass culture. Just because the

articles have been repurposed does not remove their identities as

products of a consumer culture. The objects retain that identity

even if they remark against it. Thus, even in trying to forget

itself or negate the culture from whence it was produced, modern

art inherently comments upon the mass production of its materials

and subjects. Rauschenberg’s art relies on the viewer’s ability

to recognize his objects from daily life. This legibility is what

gives the audience a chance for understanding; it is necessary

for intuiting meaning from within the actual work.

Other artists around the same time were concerned with the

conditions of modern life that created a feeling that all

expression was inescapably conventional. One such commentator on

the condition of modernity is Richard Hamilton. His 1956 piece,

Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, emphasizes

the homogenizing pressure of the era (fig. 2). In this work one

is presented with an image of the fantasy of what it is to live

from day to day in a ‘garden of commodities’. The figures are

surrounded by imaginings of what everyone supposedly lives like,

what everyone needs – a television, tape recorder, staircases for

the two story house, etc. These mass produced items are

idealized, fetishized and Hamilton seems to be concerned with

just how obsessed society is with possessing ‘stuff’ to achieve

happiness. This mania for consumer goods is entrenched in the

ideology of mass culture. Hamilton may be disenchanted with the

prominence of the ideology but, nonetheless, in order to comment

upon it in hopes for reform he turns to the very images of the

products themselves. Another aspect of this work is important

when considering the effects of mass culture; the work is a

collage of images taken from other sources, mainly magazines.

They were not original created by Hamilton who assumes authorship

for the collage. Does it matter who made the original images from

the magazine? Who made the original object that was first

depicted in the magazine and then recontextualized here? Who cut

out the images from the magazine – was it Hamilton, his wife, an

assistant? All of these queries can be condensed to the primary

question of what constitutes authorship in an endlessly

reproducible society.

Andy Warhol is an artist whose work embodies both of the

issues at hand. In some pieces, he refers to the mass culture of

products and consumerism. These works exercise images of consumer

goods to make a statement about that ideology. In others, the

artist addresses the problem of individuality in an increasingly

spectacular culture. The works that are concerned with this use

images of celebrities as well as everyday people – the subject

matter itself – to comment on modern idealizing and idolizing.

According to Thomas Crow, Warhol produced his most powerful works

by dramatizing the breakdown of commodity exchange.1 Where modern

society fetishizes products and celebrity, Warhol recognizes that

the mass produced image is inadequate in the face of reality.

Warhol is famous for his borrowed imagery. None of his works are

from photographs that he took himself. Some are well known

pictures from newspapers while others are unpublished pictures

from police files for crime or accident scenes. Much of his work

is grounded in Crow’s notion that, “The repetition of the

photographic image can increase rather than numb sensitivity to

it.”2 During the time Warhol worked brutal, violent and untimely

death entered the realm of contemporary politics and thus the

1 Thomas Crow, “Saturday Disasters: Trace and Reference in Early Warhol,” p. 51.2 Ibid. p. 61.

public eye. His works create a discourse on the effects of mass

culture.

In Warhol’s White Disaster, 1963, we see a car accident (fig.

3). A car has hit a pole; a body is impaled. Not a body, a

person. Any person, perhaps a person you know. Warhol repeats the

image to intensify the feelings it evokes. This repetition

forefronts the viewer’s realization that this kind of tragedy

happens spontaneously, unexpectedly and often. The empty space in

the design functions as a suggestion that this will inevitably

happen again. The artist also wants to establish as causal

relationship between buying and dying. The car, which is the

ultimate symbol of freedom in America, becomes a vehicle of

suffering. Thus Warhol juxtaposes the ideology of consumerism

with the inevitability of suffering. Warhol’s use of repetitious

celebrity images, such as that of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie

Kennedy, lend to a deeper conversation about the realized effects

of modern living on the psyche of modern man. Warhol appropriated

mass produced images to underscore the inadequacy of consumerism

to deal with the reality of death and suffering.3 With Warhol’s

3 Ibid. p. 51.

Marilyn Diptych, 1962, we must consider that an icon can be more

than just a memorial, but a funereal memorial.4 The design of the

Marilyn Diptych gives form to the notion of life and death, absence

and presence, through the juxtaposition of vivid color with black

and white (fig. 4).

As stated, Warhol’s images of celebrities also address the

struggle for individualism in a progressively more spectacular

culture. Spectacle invades our relationships with each other; it

mediates relationships and experiences. There are no direct

connections among people in society that is thus spectacularized.

The Marilyn Diptych and Sixteen Jackies, 1964, are both examples of

Warhol’s concern with the modern obsession over celebrity. There

is a definite problem with preserving personal identity within

the context of rising celebrity culture in this time. Though

readers of newspapers probably felt they knew the intricacies and

secrets of the lives of famous people, they only knew what was

fed to them by the media. The outlets for mass circulated news,

gossip and information were emerging at full speed. The images

Warhol provides suggest a sense of togetherness when in reality

4 Ibid. p. 53.

the viewer is entirely isolated from the subject. They are

accessible yet unreachable. In Marilyn’s case, she was dead; in

Jackie’s case, the average reader would only ever have access to

the First Lady through newspaper and magazine articles. Sixteen

Jackies evokes isolationism even further (fig. 5). The audience is

misled into a sense that the artist has given her a diverse

personality by providing images with different emotions crossing

her face. This however melts away into utopian fantasy. As one

looks, one will realize that perhaps separately each picture

would feel authentic and empathetic. But Warhol manipulates the

photos by flipping some of them and repeating most. The result is

of a caricature or a marionette who acts the way Warhol dictates.

Thus Warhol extracts the legitimate connection people felt they

had with Jackie. He shows she is not the idol who the mass public

idealized. It is they who have removed her individuality and

Warhol who gives it back to her. Mass culture makes celebrities

like Jackie Kennedy unattainable in a god-like way. In

photographs like these she no longer gets to identify as a

mourning widow. She is a spectacle through which the nation can

deal with their own individual grief over a man they never

personally knew.

Consider another female spectacle: Roy Lichtenstein’s

painting, Blonde Waiting, 1964 (fig. 6). You can practically feel

the seconds ticking away as the woman waits for Mr. Right to

arrive. Is he late? Will he ever come? In Lichtenstein’s work the

individuality of the subject is rendered totally irrelevant. This

woman could be any modern woman. The mass produced ideology of

modern culture allows an image like this to be instantly

relatable; or rather, the image depends upon that ideology to

ensure the viewer will relate. The audience is not concerned with

the woman’s background, for whom she is waiting, how long she has

been waiting, etc. The significance lies in the fact that this

portrays some allegorical, universal notion of modernity in which

someone is always waiting, constructing his or her life around

time and the speed with which it passes. However, it is of course

significant that this is a female rather than a male.

Lichtenstein describes his work thus:

“The kind of girls I painted were…black lines and red dots…

it's very hard to fall for one of these creatures, to me,

because they're not really reality to me. However, that

doesn't mean that I don't have a clichéd ideal, a fantasy

ideal, of a woman that I would be interested in. But…I have

in mind what they should look like for other people.”5

Clearly the woman is a fantasy, a construction, an ideal. Atsuko

Tanaka’s Electric Dress, 1954, further syndicates mass culture with

the repression of individual identity (fig. 7). The lights which

form her dress are the products of consumerism. They register the

danger or fear of being burnt – i.e. burnt by the perils of

modernity. A dress in and of itself represents the fashion

industry, an industry of commodity. Wearing this dress is to

reflect on the bodily and psychological experience of the

dystopian present. The individual inside the dress can barely be

seen, let alone identified. Tanaka is just another woman in a

dress. As in the Blonde Waiting, Sixteen Jackies and the Marilyn Diptych,

5 “Roy Lichtenstein,” Artnews.org, May 2008, http://artnews.org/gagosian/?exi=11549

individualism, specifically female individualism, is divested

from the subject.

Whether works of art like these function as a response,

critique or example of modern living and the changes involved,

there is without a doubt a link to the experience of mass culture

and the conditions of modernity. The role of mass production is

intrinsically connected to the losses of autonomy and of

individualism.

Bibliography

Clark, Thomas. “Saturday Disasters: Trace and Reference in Early

Warhol.” In Modern Art in the Common Culture, 49-65. New Haven and

London: Yale University Press, 1996.

“Roy Lichtenstein.” Artnews.org. 12 May 2008.

http://artnews.org/gagosian/?exi=11549.

Figure 1: Rebus, Robert Rauschenberg, 1955

Figure 2: Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, Richard Hamilton, 1956

Figure 4: White Disaster, Andy Warhol, 1963

Figure 3: Marilyn Diptych,

Figure 5: Sixteen Jackies, Andy Warhol, 1964

Figure 6: Blonde Waiting, Roy Lichtenstein, 1964

Figure 7: Electric Dress, Atsuko Tanaka, 1954