drella the prankster

conjuring magic.living in the age of drella and taking a look at warhol….

by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com):

Trying to tackle in a little essay anything about Andy Warhol is (for me) a supremely monumental exercise in incompletion and frustration. the guy’s actions and ideas and impact are so so profound in the history of late 20th century art that it dwarfs all other contenders. the guy was magic. he couldn’t even piss on a sheet of copper without it being hung in all the major museums (and then carefully documented and analyzed in endless reams of criticism and analysis). it’s a crazy crazy world.

Without Andy Warhol’s studio and what he created and exploited, I wouldn’t be doing what I do today. It’s that direct of a connection to my thinking. but, I like to think I understand his work a slightly different way than the fine art world. that’s because Andy was reared and operated the first decade of his professional life as a commercial artist – and illustrator/design (in that order), just like me. his transition to ‘fine artist” was very sefl-conscious and carefully art directed – just like any design project. he literally created his own turf and then exploited it unmercifully. he brought the ancient system of ‘the studio’ back into the 20th century in full flower. his work is literally art direction and graphic design dialog masquerading as fine art product. I see Warhol as a prankster – a sneaky subversive monkeywrencher in the elite costume of the fine artist. and he really broke that “fine art culture” world into fragments.

If you read much about Warhol, you’ll quickly find almost everything published about him has been written by mavens of the fine art culture. the entire perspective on his output and very existence is seen through the kaliedescopic tint of fine art glasses. reading the stilted syntax and verbiage of the art writers (how many words can you use to say absolutely nothing?) trying to understand basic graphic design solutions and methods is always a fine big laff for me. I’m deeply entertained by what has been written about Warhol. he’s understood by the art world so completely backwards and wrong-headed that it’s like Warhol’s greatest prank – a giant practical joke on the fine art culture. seen from my perspective as a graphic designer, I read that stuff and guffaw. If Andy wasn’t so deeply interested in ‘fitting in’ to that culture and what it represented – an upward mobility unmatched in his family and personal history (in other words REAL success), I would be outraged. but, I’m not. that’s because I can tell that Andy was totally sincerely believing in what he was doing. he loved to WATCH.

This wonderful book on the ‘screen tests’ is a good case in point. I think they are astonishing smart stuff. Andy Warhol’s ‘screen test’ is one of those brilliant yet stupidly simple things that would never have had any merit if Andy hadn’t presented them in the wrong arena – fine art. what I mean is, they seem to be REAL screen “tests” of individuals (selected for various interest ranging from physically attractive to internationally cool/famous to potential buyers of andy’s work) to see how they photographed and how they ‘came through’ on a camera. the method was so simple to be almost idiocy. the subject was placed in front of a camera. some crude lighting applied, a spool of film was shoved into the camera and then everybody walked away. the poor subject in front of the camera just had to DEAL with it until the film ran out. and the way these things turn out is so deeply moving and troubling and revealing that they look like psychic pornography. they are among my favorite idea/problems that andy presented.

Another similar example is the interview style in his magazine – go to lunch, turn the tape recorder on, record everything said and then transcribe that conversation VER BATUM into a commerial magazine – warts and farts and all. It’s an amazing conceit, eh? so much of warhol’s thinking is built around the disturbing yet false intimacy of direct documentation that he has been accused of insensitive exploitation and voyeurism (two practices that he was maybe even consciously exercising). but, the fine art world’s embrace of everything he touched means that these screen tests are presented as ‘fine art’ and analyzed as ‘important fine art’ and approached entirely through that theater.

Even errors and faulty or completely ignorant use of medium is treated as a conscious exercise in artistic decision-making by these art world authorities. these screen tests were first and foremost practical and pragmatic film tests – that’s all. none of them were organized or cataloged until after his death (they were scattered to the wind). Andy even would often write on the side of the box what he thought of it (‘bad’, ‘too dark’, ‘good’) and often misspelled the subject’s name. his later meticulous re-use of his work in other art projects (some say because he was so notoriously cheap) meant a lot of this stuff was edited into other film projects as filler and used as projections on his rock band EPI project and things like that. So, their use in h

rt was like picking up garbage and gluing it to the canvas. and yet, the profound interpretation of that action has elevated these books and exhibitions into exquisite levels of hilarity. even more strangely, with the passage of time, these tests (especially when presented in a fine art museum gallery like a mausoleum), seem extremely profound – even emotionally moving (just look at that cover image of edie sedgwick).

A great example of this stilted interpretation by the fine art culture is when andy used his big silkscreens, he started out absolutley unknowledgable about the process. he made really ‘crummy’ prints (according to the standards of silkscreen artist and craftsmen of the time). the images would fill and break up and fall apart and streak and go dry. art critics and historians have spent entire doctoral theses on this ‘broken image’ stuff as if it were some sort of profound comment on the decay of modern cultrue, etc. etc. In truth, andy let it go out like that because he was incompetent and cheap. Later, when he hired people like Gerard Malanga to do the actual printing for him, he still maintained the crappy printing because it was easy and by that point it had become his ‘brand’ (and it was cheaper to not do it over). he often came back to his cheezy off-register prints and bad ‘passes’ and took a marking pen and put little squiggles in the nooks and crannies of the images, etc. when asked why he did that, he replied (on camera with typical sincerity), “becasue it makes it look arty.” nothing could be more revelaing of his intent. I don’t think he was lying or joking, either. he was a great designer/art director. Andy was like some sort of fey Ed ‘big daddy’ Roth of fine art culture.

Basically, Andy Warhol’s brilliance was in his astute observation of his cultural milieu and his clever dabbling in the sociopychological norms that world to create butterfly-effect ‘ripples’ in them (and eventually tidal waves). he was monkey wrenching. there was always something a little nasty about Warhol’s ideas. that’s why his nickname around the studio was ‘drella’ – short for ‘dracula’ and ‘cinderella.” In a very very strong and primal way, Andy Warhol reflected exactly the world in which he lived. we all live in an age of ‘drella.’