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Authors: Arthur C. Danto
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incorporated repetition and the effect of being machine-made, both of which were central to Warholâs aesthetic. And their production fit perfectly with Andyâs thought that he wanted to be a machine. âI like things to be exactly the same over and over again.â
There is not a lot of difference, in one respect, between selecting a readymade, like a snow shovel or a metal grooming combâor a bottle rack or a plumbing fixtureâand having something fabricated. In both cases the object is produced by someone else, the artist himself taking credit for the fact that it is art. On the other hand, not just any object can be a readymade. In a talk Duchamp gave at the Museum of Modern Art in 1961, he said: âThe choice of these âreadymadesâ was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste . . . in fact a complete anesthesiaâ (Duchamp, âA Propos of âReadymades,ââ 21). Duchampâs agenda was polemical, as the word âtasteâ implies. In classical aesthetics, taste, and, in particular,good taste, played a crucial role: it was connected with pleasure. And in the 1950s and the early 1960s, visual pleasureâwhat Duchamp scorned as âthe retinalââwas what art was supposed to be about. When the critic Pierre Cabanne asked Duchamp where his antiretinal attitude came from, Duchamp replied, âFrom too great an importance given to the retinal. Since Courbet, itâs been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyoneâs error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral. . . . Our whole century is completely retinal. . . . Itâs absolutely ridiculous. It has to changeâ (Cabanne, 43).
In a certain sense, Warhol was a follower of Duchamp. When he asked an assistant, Nathan Gluck, to bring some cardboard boxes from the supermarket near his house, he was disappointed when Gluck brought back boxes with elegant designs. Andy wanted something more common. Malanga intuited his needs: âThe brand names chosen consisted of two versions of Brillo, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Kelloggâs Corn Flakes, and Mottâs Apple Juice.â (He left out Delmonte Peach Halves and Campbellâs Tomato Juice.) But Warhol was not anti-aesthetic in quite the way that Duchamp was. Duchamp was trying to liberate art from having to please the eye. He was interested in an intellectual art. Warholâs motives were more political. Andy really celebrated ordinary American life. He really liked the fact that what Americans eat is always the same and tastes predictably the same. âWhatâs great about this country is that America started the traditionwhere the richest consumers buy essentially the same thing as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know itâ (
Andy Warhol: A Retrospective
, 458).
Andyâs art is, in a way, a celebration as art of what every American knows. Who knows but what his boxes were not inspired by the famous protest song âLittle Boxes,â written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962 and made popular by the folksinger Pete Seeger in 1963? It was a satire on the proliferation of housing developments in which each unit looked the same as every other unit in the development. Unquestionably, McDonaldâs is the paradigm of universal sameness in food the world over, singled out wherever globalism is protested. But as we know, Andy liked everything to be the same.
He thought that
There is not a lot of difference, in one respect, between selecting a readymade, like a snow shovel or a metal grooming combâor a bottle rack or a plumbing fixtureâand having something fabricated. In both cases the object is produced by someone else, the artist himself taking credit for the fact that it is art. On the other hand, not just any object can be a readymade. In a talk Duchamp gave at the Museum of Modern Art in 1961, he said: âThe choice of these âreadymadesâ was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste . . . in fact a complete anesthesiaâ (Duchamp, âA Propos of âReadymades,ââ 21). Duchampâs agenda was polemical, as the word âtasteâ implies. In classical aesthetics, taste, and, in particular,good taste, played a crucial role: it was connected with pleasure. And in the 1950s and the early 1960s, visual pleasureâwhat Duchamp scorned as âthe retinalââwas what art was supposed to be about. When the critic Pierre Cabanne asked Duchamp where his antiretinal attitude came from, Duchamp replied, âFrom too great an importance given to the retinal. Since Courbet, itâs been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyoneâs error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral. . . . Our whole century is completely retinal. . . . Itâs absolutely ridiculous. It has to changeâ (Cabanne, 43).
In a certain sense, Warhol was a follower of Duchamp. When he asked an assistant, Nathan Gluck, to bring some cardboard boxes from the supermarket near his house, he was disappointed when Gluck brought back boxes with elegant designs. Andy wanted something more common. Malanga intuited his needs: âThe brand names chosen consisted of two versions of Brillo, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Kelloggâs Corn Flakes, and Mottâs Apple Juice.â (He left out Delmonte Peach Halves and Campbellâs Tomato Juice.) But Warhol was not anti-aesthetic in quite the way that Duchamp was. Duchamp was trying to liberate art from having to please the eye. He was interested in an intellectual art. Warholâs motives were more political. Andy really celebrated ordinary American life. He really liked the fact that what Americans eat is always the same and tastes predictably the same. âWhatâs great about this country is that America started the traditionwhere the richest consumers buy essentially the same thing as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know itâ (
Andy Warhol: A Retrospective
, 458).
Andyâs art is, in a way, a celebration as art of what every American knows. Who knows but what his boxes were not inspired by the famous protest song âLittle Boxes,â written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962 and made popular by the folksinger Pete Seeger in 1963? It was a satire on the proliferation of housing developments in which each unit looked the same as every other unit in the development. Unquestionably, McDonaldâs is the paradigm of universal sameness in food the world over, singled out wherever globalism is protested. But as we know, Andy liked everything to be the same.
He thought that
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