Andy Warhol and his Influence on Media and Culture

On the occasion of a new enormous Andy Warhol retrospective at the Whitney Museum, artists, curators, and cultural figures were asked to talk about his influence on our culture, some 60 years after the beginnings of the Pop Art movement. It’s hard to separate how deeply insightful Warhol was about how we think about art, brands, and fame from the influence he had on shaping those conceptions. His stated desire to be more like a machine, his creation of instant “superstars“, and his relentless cataloging of every object and moment of his life all seem much more in tune with our current reality television- and Instagram-driven culture than his own times. Was Warhol a reflection of the desires that have led us to this or a force pushing us in this direction?

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion

2 Thoughts on "Andy Warhol and his Influence on Media and Culture"

As quoted at the MoMA website, “Warhol said of Campbell’s soup, ‘I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.'”
Artists aren’t that different from the rest of us.

By Scott Pope
Nov 30, 2018, 12:22 PM

As Warhol also said:
https://kottke.org/10/10/andy-warhol-on-coca-cola

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you 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 one 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 it.