 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
I think that Warhol gets, depending on your perspective, either too much credit or too much flak for the use of repeated, appropriated images in his art work. Appropriation is as old as art itself. Early art appropriated images from nature or myth and, in doing so, started an unstoppable cycle of re-appropriation. Warhol isn't famous because he appropriated but on account of what he appropriated -the icons of his day which had previously not been viewed as suitable source material for serious art. But art has always been, in part, a product of the zeitgeist. For example, the portrayal of humans in medieval art is often distorted, not because the artists were lousy but on account of the subjugation of the body to the soul in the teaching of the Catholic church. The church frowned on the glorification of the body and as a result, figures in medieval European art tend to be unisex and drably dressed. What Warhol did was remarkable in that he realized that what Catholic Christianity was to the middle ages, mass consumerism and celebrity were to the 1950's. Donald Judd had it wrong when he talked about Warhol's art in terms of "sensitivity" and use of color. Warhol's importance lies in the innovation of his appropriations.
In thinking about this project, my initial impulse was to use images that are to the "naughts" as Warhol's images are to the 1950's. I decided we are living in a social fabric unlike any other - the individual has risen at the expense of larger units, such as the family and community. But I was stymied on how to represent this visually and decided I'd leave that project to an artist rather than some student floundering about in Photoshop. So I decided I'd look at an image that had a long and varied history of appropriation. Laocoon seemed to me a good example. The story is terrifying singular -Laocoon, a priest of Neptune, warns the Trojans against bringing the wooden horse into the city and flings a spear into the belly of the beast. Later, when he is performing sacrificial rites, two serpents creep out of the sea and attack the priest and his two young sons. In one of the most vivid scenes in the Aeneid, Virgil describes, in language filled with the 'l's and's's of slithering snakes, how the serpents approached, wrecked their havoc and retreated to Minerva's feet. If you'd like to read the passage, I like C. Day Lewis' translation. Or, if you'd like to look at the Latin, check out Book II, lines 199-233
Using such a striking scene appealed to me as I wanted to see how it held up under appropriation and mechanical reproduction. The scene is not unique to Virgil - he adapted it from the Iliad and Homer no doubt garnered it from an earlier, unrecorded tradition. The famous statue in the Vatican is believed to be a first century copy of an earlier Greek work. The later appropriations of the image are interesting with respects to the extent that they stayed true to the "original." My favorite is Blake's - he keeps the image visually the same but appropriates it into a Christian image through his notations. I also like the two most contemporary ones - they appropriate the idea of Laocoon in a very broad sense but the connections are none the less immediately apparent.
Of my versions of the images, I most liked "my" Blake and "my" muscle-Laocoon. I felt that with Photoshop I was able to follow along with what I thought the original artist was doing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
