We saw this company on TV last night. For about $250, you can order a picture of anybody you want, done in the Warhol or Lichtenstein style.
We think it's awesome, though not our personal style these days. Still, if we ever have disposable income again, might be fun to look into this retro art style.
Actually, I think Andy would have been pleased as punch to know that an entire website devoted to the mass marketing and commercialization of his art (which was of course based on commodification and the very avant-garde idea of "flattening out of aesthetics" by eliminating the distance between so-called "high" and "low" art) was usefully spreading his ideas into all corners of the world and making a buck or two as well. As with is indirect mentor Gertrude Stein (indirect mentor of 3/4s of the American avant-garde since 1950 or so) Warhol trades not in uniquness but the ever-accumulating sameness of aesthetic reception. It's impossible, by Warhol's own standards, to make a "bad" copy or imitation of a Warhol, since the very banality and repetition and flatness of his style was part of its very reason for being.
Lichtenstein is a harder nut to crack. Anyone can do a Lichtenstein, what's often missing is the more subtle idea surrounding his work about his relationship to the whole history of lithography (what he was apparently trained as). Lichtenstein doesn't quote comic-book style for the sake of Pop Art alone, he's quoting in relation to the entire history of printing. But at least he never worked for Disney doing, as it were, "period" movies...
I'll never be able to watch another Merchant-Ivory film again...
Posted by: Anthony | March 30, 2006 at 06:25 AM
I really like his soup cans.
Posted by: BB | March 30, 2006 at 11:42 AM
Sigh. No wonder I get depressed on a weekly basis.
Posted by: Anthony | April 03, 2006 at 08:09 AM