There is something contradictory about the jolt you get when you’re standing in front of an Andy Warhol original.
First of all, the whole point of Warhol’s technique of mass-producing screen prints in a “factory” in the 1960s was to dispel the myth of the original.
All the things that traditionally made art “art” were missing in his work: the uniqueness, evidence of the artist’s hand, even the originality of the image.
Especially in the early stages of his career (before people started suing him for using their images without permission), Warhol would appropriate images wherever he found them: newspapers, publicity shoots, commercial designs such as soup cans and Brillo pads.
By reproducing and altering them using the advertising medium of silkscreening (a task usually carried out by assistants), flattening them and heightening the manufactured nature of the image, Warhol turned an articulation of his disenchantment with commercial culture into the realm of high art. read more