Heading into another pop-art phase, because I'm a writing teacher again; I grade endlessly, fall asleep grading, and, in order to have any time to myself at all, take a few minutes to do pop-art between stacks. But have noticed that blogger is taking digital camera pictures, and storing them quite poorly. The picture, or the pop art, or whatever I make or do, doesn't look so good when blogger takes it and stores it temporarily on the blog system. Maybe it's their way of discouraging use of that free service. Maybe it's enough that they give you billions of blog-kilobytes, free, virtually no questions asked. It's not like I'm complaining; google is my friend.

I did, however, get off my lazy backside, and start taking my own photos, so now I have a crisis related to where to put them, how to store them. fotopic is good for social stuff, stuff I don't mind showing, but maybe I need other places too; stuff where whole bundles can be placed and kept safely. hmmm.

Still mulling over some of AW's ideas. Get art out to the masses. Choose a medium that makes art really spread. Take icons; play on the common person's idealization of reality. Put everything into every picture; don't hide stuff, or make deep, hidden meanings. Let the art put the whole thing on the table.

Not sure if that's how AW would put it, but, after all, I've been influenced by Actualism. One doesn't need a course in Greek philosophy to participate.

a.w. notes from a grainy pocket

I set about reading a little about A.W., and was influenced by two articles which I stumbled upon, and then which spent two months, more or less, in my pocket. Now however I am cleaning out my pocket, and will continue to put some of the things I've found about A.W. in this blog and, if I get time, develop it a little.

A biography of Andy Warhol. (n.d.). Andrew's Art Archive. http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/5252.htm. Accessed 7-08.

"Warhol mocked art..." (par. 3)
"The repetition and crude synthetic colour are the instruments of a moral and aesthetic blankness that has been deliberately contrived. Warhol had an obsession for boredom..."(par. 4)
"Warhol not only wanted to turn the trivial and commonplace into art, but also to make art itself trivial and commonplace. Warhol applies the criterion of 'quantity as quality' to people as well as to consumer articles." (par. 9)

Churchwell, S. (2007, May 29). Too many Marilyns. Guardian, commentisfree. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2090030,00.html. Accessed 10-08.

"Warhol's coloured Marilyns are some of the most recognisable, and valuable, 20th century works of art, each now worth about the same as a Van Gogh." (par. 2)
"Using a publicity photo advertising Niagara, a 1953 film, Warhol launched his career over Marilyn's dead body." (par. 5)
"It is not pious nostalgia to point out that we are evacuating our values of meaning: reputation once meant character; fame once meant honour. The old studio system was no slouch at exploitation, but Hollywood once made movie stars by creating franchises out of personality; now it creates franchises out of spin-offs. We live in a world of derivatives, and Warhol's many Marilyns helped get us there. The price we continue to pay for them is not really &14m. It's that we can no longer tell the difference." (par. 7)