27 April 1999
This is a paper that I wrote also in my freshman year at FU. It received an A, but only because the professor thought I was funny. The professor gave us a handout with a list and description of topics. She outlined the paper for us - given that this was an introductory class - and all I did was follow the outline and throw in a couple of quotes. The topic I chose dealt with the idea of art. What is art? Compare and contrast Toulouse - Lautrec's posters (advertising paintings) to Andy Warhol's paintings (paintings that contained advertised items). I, being the philosophical man I am, decided to discuss what art is as well as the artists' intentions behind the works. I hope you enjoy it. And, please, if you're in Mrs. Pancza-Graham's Intro to Art History Class, do not copy and paste this essay. She tends to surf the web for essays and I'm pretty sure she's found mine. Thanks. Enjoy!
"It is not the retinal image that concerns us. . ."
The basic difference between fine art and an advertisement is intent and meaning. Fine art's intent is to make the viewer's mind aware of a different perspective, and perhaps to challenge the viewer's own perspective, given the elements of the artwork. This different perspective is the artwork's meaning and the motivation of the artist. An advertisement's intent is to sell, merely to sell. Although advertisements attempt to prompt the viewer's perspective - towards buying - and employ the elements of art, their main purpose is to appeal, rather than to challenge, to the masses so as to sell the product. Given that Warhol used commercial products as subjects for his art, his intent was not to sell, but to give rise to an alternate way of thought. Toulouse Lautrec's intent for his posters was to sell the product or event and to gain fame. Warhol's "commercial" art qualifies as art because of its intent and meaning, unlike Lautrec's which was created to sell.
The poster, from its beginnings, has always been a method of selling. "Unitl about 1840, posters were relatively small sheets with a text, printed in black and white. . . by 1835 already, Parisian publishers had began to advertise their books with colored posters designed by popular illustrators of the day" (Cooper, 37). As the mechanical press gained prominence, so did the number of artists doing "commercial" work. "What more natural, then, than to find that Lautrec, who had a longing for popular acclaim, who had the makings of a great illustrator and was naturally endowed with a dash of showmanship, should have taken up poster designing?" (Cooper, 38).
Lautrec's purpose for poster designing was two-fold: money and fame. His need of money is understandable as is his yearning for fame. However, he painted for the purpose of selling. He applied no meaning in his posters. Although they were excellent aesthetically, their lack of meaning and improper intent disallow them to be called fine art, as is true for Warhol's advertisements in the 1950's.
"In 1957 [Andy Warhol] was awarded the Art Directors Club Medal for his shoe advertisements" (Crone, 22). During the "commercial" art period of his career, Warhol, like Lautrec, needed money and designed advertisements. He called this work, "conditioned behavior required by society" (Crone, 22), pointing out that he had to work in order to live. Andy realized the emptiness of his advertisements:
I was getting paid for it, and did anything they told me to do. If they told me to draw a shoe, I?d do it, and if they told me to correct it, I would. . . after all that ?correction,? those commercial drawings would have feelings, they would have a style. The attitude of those who hired me had a feeling and something to it; they knew what they wanted and they insisted.
(Crone, 22)
His commercial art contained none of his own thought or emotions, merely pigmented strokes from his hand. By 1962 Andy would use advertisements in his art.
"It was a stroke of genius to use the hard, the mechanical, the instantly recognized objects of commercial reality for [his expressionist presentation] - the soup can, the ketchup bottle, the Coke bottle, the cereal box. . . Mickey Mouse or Nancy" (Danto, 130). Warhol used familiar objects and manipulated their images through color, repetition, mechanical reproduction, and insertion (tomato soup cans in place of saints and madonnas) in order to express a new perspective. Marcel Duchamp stated, "if a man takes 50 Campbell's soup cans and puts them on canvas, it is not the retinal image that concerns us. What interests us is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell's soup cans on canvas" (Crone, 22). Warhol transformed the face of art. Through his work, he made reality an internal feature of art (Danto, 131).
Warhol's work with commercial products moved towards people's thoughts rather than selling soup. His repetition of Marilyn Monroe is not publicity for the social icon's films. His repetition may be interpreted as reducing her humanity and overly emphasizing her image, what the public sees, focusing on the façade rather than the reality of Marilyn. Also, the repetition may mean, in terms of society, to stress that the more often something or someone is exposed to us, the more real that thing or person becomes, in society's collective unconscious, which accounts for the rise in number of repeated images. Toulouse Lautrec's "Le Pendu" may be interpreted one way: buy La Depeche de Toulouse. The difference in intent and meaning is clear.
Warhol's goal was to coerce the public to examine their thoughts, habits, and beliefs. Lautrec's goal was to coerce the public to buy products or attend an event. The difference between Lautrec's posters and Warhol's images is the same between the classical music utilized in a De Beers commercial to create a saccharine tone and the piece of classical music heard by itself, without the visual punctuation of diamonds on shadows' hands. Not only was Warhol's work with commercial products art, but it changed the definition of art:
The definition of art has vexed philosophers from the beginning, but they were deflected from an answer because they assumed they already knew which things were artworks, the question being only to make their nature explicit. Warhol challenged the assumption by placing before us an object so like a piece of reality that the actual differences could not conceivably constitute the differences between art and reality. It was now clear that the difference could never be something that met the eye.
(Danto, 131)
I believe that Lautrec's work with posters was revolutionary, but not artwork, let alone the same caliber of artwork that Warhol created. Lautrec superseded Cheret, who developed the mechanical press, establishing himself as the superior painter in this field at the time. He made advances in his own style as he was working with posters as well. However, the key element in art is the work's meaning. Lautrec's posters' meaning - through a lot of stretching - could be that they symbolize his development as an artist, but nothing more. There is no attempt at social change or self-questioning when a poster is made. Warhol, disregarding his advertisements in the 1950's, not only created art, but broke through the barriers of art as well. Warhol defied the definition of what art is and established that anything can be art. In fact, by defying the institutional definition of art, Warhol, ironically, created art. He transcended all social preconceptions and maintained his true convictions in the face of criticism. Although Lautrec was an excellent artist, Warhol redefined art and did so by doing exactly the opposite of what others said art was. I admire Lautrec's work and ingenuity but I aspire to reach the level of creativity and social impact that Warhol embodied.
Work Cited
Cooper, Douglas. Henri de Toulouse - Lautrec. New York: Abrams, 1969: 37-8.
Crone, Rainer. Andy Warhol. New York: Praeger, 1970: 22.
Danto, Arthur C. Art-News. v. 86. "Who was Andy Warhol?" 1987: 130-1.
(C) 2000 RighTings (R)