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Andy Warhol’s Frontier: ‘The Good, The Bad, The Indifferent’

Kang Tae Hee 1

1한국예술종합학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Andy Warhol’s legacy and the so-called ‘Warhol effect’ have not faded even though his artistic reputation has drifted in the limbo between good and bad for more than two decades. That is mainly because of his repetitive late works and business-minded art productions in addition to the political and moral ‘indifference’ that cancelling out the achievement of early works. But since the opening of the ‘time capsules’ at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Warhol scholarship and exhibitions began incorporating and extending to his ‘business art’ and venturing into the culture industry. This new tendency focusing on his ‘extra-art’ works and visual culture as a whole is important to overall evaluation of him. Fashion and TV show are two ‘extra-art’ areas Warhol devoted his time from the 1970s until his death, when the critical opinions were mostly negative and scarce and he needed a breakthrough. Although fashion was his lifelong passion, he described his part as ‘reflection’ since he was not a designer or maker, nor did he make profit from it. He was involved in fashion since the ‘Youthquake’ in the 60s when he was closely associated with Paraphernalia , the most experimental and ‘pop’ fashion boutique in New York. Iin the 70s, he moved to the high fashion and befriended with the world famous designers appeared in his magazine Interview, but his real contribution to fashion is through his modeling job in the 80s. He became the professional model for Zoli and Ford, and produced a lot of fashion photos but his poses were deliberately awkward and stiff and even ‘feminine.’ By acting the unconventional poses, he seems to test the myth of genuine masculinity and to prove the fact that all poses are performance. As a result, these ambivalent photos can be compared to Cindy Sherman’s rather direct ‘anti-fashion’ photos. TV was Warhol’s favorite passtime and he really wished to be a famous TV star to be broadcasted to every home. He produced several cable TV shows resembling Interview casting with fashion stars, artists, and the celebrities, but they were neglected by people. Even though his trial was not successful, he intervened the one-way network system and showed artist-produced entertainment programs and made some noise. This kind of Warhol’s effort is currently revaluated by the exhibition「 Pop Life : Art in a Material World」, participated by Jeff Koons, Murakami Takashi, Keith Haring, Richard Prince, Damian Hirst, and Tracey Emin, etc. These successful artists followed Warhol’s path and exceeded him in many ways, and their business-minded arts are the proof of Warhol’s foresight in terms of art and commerce. Whether we approve or not, art can not ignore today’s material visual culture and this is why we should stop evaluating Warhol by the qualifiers such as the good, the bad, or even the indifferent.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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