[phaus]

>“Look! Keith! I drew a circle!”

And this was pretty much the extent of Andy Warhol's artistic ability.

It's a travesty that one of this man's photographs is one of the top ten most expensive pieces of art ever sold, when there's literally hundreds of thousands of artists who produce better work with less resources.

Good artists work hard. People like Warhol are just con men.

[jrs99]

Art isn't about copying something so that it looks realistic. Anyone with a decent amount of hand-eye coordination and patience can learn how to draw photorealistically and learn the techniques to copy a cup in front of them onto a piece of paper and make it look damn real.

But it's hard to understand that art isn't about realism, because it's hard to get out of that perspective of thinking: "I can do that."

Well, you probably could. And you probably, given enough time and patience, can learn how to paint like Leonardo da Vinci.

Any child can be taught how to play some songs by Mozart. Given enough time and patience, someone with relatively good coordination will be able to play many very difficult pieces by the greatest composers.

But no one would honestly say that a piece of music is good only if it is difficult to play. That's just ridiculous. Some of the best music is playable by anyone who has been practicing for a few years.

And no one would say that you are as good as Mozart because you could play one of his pieces on the piano.

Many artists are, however, technically good. The reason for this is because they paid their dues before reaching the higher level of talent, a real understanding of their medium. But this isn't necessarily always the case.

[dblock]

I think you shouldn't look at Warhol as some kind of technically superior artist. I like this quote from Robert Rosenblum (an art historian): "Warhol’s art is itself like a March of Time newsreel, an abbreviated visual anthology of the most conspicuous headlines, personalities, mythic creatures, edibles, tragedies, artworks, even ecological problems of recent decades. If nothing were to remain of the years from 1962 to 1987 but a Warhol retrospective, future historians and archaeologists would have a fuller time capsule to work with than that offered by any other artist of the period."

If you want to learn more, I'll shameless plug this post: http://artsy.net/post/matthew-10-reasons-why-andy-warhol-mat...

[sambeau]

This is a ridiculous, ill-educated statement that shows a lack of understanding of history, art and the facts of Andy Warhol's technical drawing ability.

1. Art and it's ability to effect people's emotion and intellect has never been (and never will be about) the technical ability of the artists alone. Art is as much about ideas and emotion as it is about craft. Especially since the advent of photography.

2. If you ever stand next one of Andy Warhol's pieces you will appreciate the skill he used. For one, they are often huge: his Chairman Mao in the Met takes up a whole wall. If you only ever see a reproduction of an Andy Warhol you will never appreciate this. Also, although he was trying to say something interesting about the mass-production of art you can see that even his prints were hand-produced and often have manual brushwork on them.

3. If you look at his early work you will see that he was a very skilled draughtsman, illustrator and pen & ink-smith. He hand-drew illustration for magazine, adverts & products so was being paid and appreciated for his skill in the tough world of graphic design before he became a renowned artist.

4. It is hard to imagine what the world was like before somebody invented something that became so prevalent that it is now seen as obvious. Every young artists with access to a screen printing machine has a go at making an Andy Warhol-esque print, most courses in screen printing will include a lesson where people make pop-art, repetitions and colourful squares. It seems obvious now. But when Andy Warhol first did it it was a revolution and a revelation. That is why people liked them so much - they were new, pretty, thought-provoking and very clever.

Go to the Met. Look at the canvases. You might be surprised.

[phaus]

I've taken quite enough art and art history classes. At one time, I was planning on attending art school. I had a modest amount of talent, but not nearly enough money.

I've also been to art museums both in the United States and in Europe. Modern art is, for the most part, a sham.

When speaking about art, it's always going to be a matter of opinion. I don't share yours, and you don't share mine. That doesn't make me ignorant or ill-educated.

In my opinion, it's a goddamn shame that people like John Singer-Sargent are relatively unknown while idiots are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on poor-quality photographs because the artist happened to be a gifted bullshitter.

Like I said, real artists work hard, Andy Warhol was known for spending the majority of his life socializing and doing narcotics.

Also, his drawings weren't terrible, but I'd rate his skill about the same level as a talented 14-year old.

[rdouble]

Andy Warhol never did narcotics. There are a few stories describing situations where he may have done coke, which he denied. The only drug he was known to have taken regularly was a precursor to adderal. He was a very prolific commercial artist and had produced thousands of illustrations, posters and ads before he started employing others to do his gallery work.

[phaus]

Being prolific doesn't make one talented, this article has quite a few of his illustrations, and they simply aren't very good. His work doesn't show unique signs of genius, they just look like the same types of drawings produced by people who are still learning to draw.

Anyone on the planet with a hand can learn to draw at a professional level. It just takes time and thousands of hours of practice. Andy Warhol didn't put in the hours, and because of that his drawings aren't very good. If you can point to a drawing or painting he did that doesn't look like it came from a middle-school art show, I'd love to see it.

http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2012/03/29/andy-warhol-co...

[rdouble]

I was responding to your claim that he spent most of his time doing narcotics and socializing. He did not do narcotics and spent most of his time doing art.

[phaus]

Perhaps he didn't do cocaine, but friends of his said he would deny it even as he was in the middle of doing it. So the only people who will ever know for sure are Andy and his friends.

He was also have said to have to take obetrol (the Adderall precursor) as frequently as one might eat tic tacs, so he was still, by your own admission, a drug addict.

Really though, the point I was trying to make is that he wasn't a very good artist, not because he wasn't capable of it, but because he didn't really try. I could produce a dozen such works an hour (his commercial illustrations), and I'm not an artist either. The difference is, I don't claim to be a professional artist.

I'm not mad at him for making a living, or doing what he loved to do. I just don't think that he was a good artist.

[sambeau]

John Singer-Sargent is exactly the kind of artist that was replaced by the Photograph.

In my book he was, at best, a second-rate Whistler. I am unsure if he ever produced anything original in his career.

Warhol, in his perverse desire to produce the unoriginal produced something truly original.