“Andy Warhol: The Artist as Machine”

Davis Rainey
11/16/10

Paul Bergin wrote an article about Andy Warhol, a leader in the visual art movement known as pop art, who also happens to be one of my favorite artists, called “Andy Warhol: The Artist as Machine”. In the article, Bergin, who has committed much of his time to studying Warhol and his works, seems almost more intrigued by Andy Warhol as a human being than by his works of art. He states how Warhol’s image is more important to him than his art, the image that is Andy Warhol. This emphasis on his stylistic view and lack of concern for peoples perspective of him plays a major role in Warhol’s work.

“Andy Warhol has managed to keep himself apart. A kind of enigma, a striking enigma, it is true, with his artificially grey hair, dark glasses, and leather clothing, but an enigma nonetheless.” Bergin explains how Andy Warhol offers his mask and his image to the public eye, but does not offer anything else. The author even explains how once Warhol was asked about his background and replied with “Why don’t you make it up?” This remark makes up Warhol’s character. This shows that Warhol would rather be known as an entity, something that appeared one day doing his work, then will one day vanish, rather than a human being. Warhol is a difficult creature to grasp.

After Bergin talks about Warhol’s unique being, he shows how his character is portrayed in his art. He states how “all of Warhol’s art takes shape and exists close to the unconscious. It is not conceived in a conscious mind; neither is it intellectually precise.” Warhol leaves his viewers with an image, nothing more. His work is free of personality and emotions, concentrating only on the emotions. This is where Bergin ties in the title of his article to the article itself. “It is art of the machine, not about it.”

Bergin then goes on to explain to the readers what the machine is. He says that the machine is a way of life to the artists represented by the field of twentieth-century visual artists and their experience. The thing about Warhol is that all of his art is striving to express the machine in terms of the machine itself. Bergin says that Warhol attempts this through two devices. The first is his reproduction of the subject. Warhol’s emphasis purely on the reproduction of the subject itself, and not of the conscious, is the act of a machine. Secondly, his use of mechanical aid in his sculptures and paintings, which are now considered his famous silkscreen method. There are many advantages to a silkscreen, the first is that it is much easier to reproduce an object on a silkscreen than to paint it free hand. Also, it makes it just as easy for one of Warhol’s assistants to develop an Andy Warhol just as easily as he can.

Bergin then explains Warhol’s four different stages of his career. The phase that Warhol is probably best known for is his “commercial product’ phase. His main interest in these works was food. Like his very popular Campbell’s Soup Cans. Warhol had the ability to be satisfied by hunger with food untouched by the human hand. Bergin calls it “machine food”. Warhol’s flower painting stage expresses the machine differently, calling upon the viewers to distinguish between his flowers and “real” flowers. His third stage of paintings are his death-image paintings, which Bergin finds the most interesting. In these are many of Warhol’s famous automobile accidents and suicides. These use black and white news photographs that Warhol would blow up on a silkscreen, making them a complete visual experience. Finally, Warhol’s portraits. His famous portraits include celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, Mao Zedong, and his most expensive piece that sold for $100 million, Elvis Presley.

Warhol’s work displaying other peoples public mask, best describes his own mask. His mask does not seem unlike the masks in the portraits when you consider the commercial aspect, it becomes one in the same. His character and his appearance are all a part of his public mask, and his portraits make it almost impossible to distinguish the man from the image. Bergin shows how Warhol’s character and his mask make up who he is as an artist. His mask is what drove him and inspired him to do the works that he did. It is hard to argue Bergin’s point, contemporary art has become an advancement in the world of art we would not have without the help from Warhol. Warhol is an inspiration to new artists and there is no better place to be an upcoming artist than in Chapel Hill. Many students have visited and are able to visit Ackland, where some of Warhol’s artwork is available. Warhol is a great artist, paving the way for new artists to follow their own path, not worried about what others think of their mask.