This NYTimes article prompted me to start the thread. This is not art, and that is all I have to say about that at the moment. I never liked Warhol. Prostitution ans pousership ("look, it's this commercial culture that made me like that") <> art. And, if I hear another pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-artistic, pseudo-glamorous musing out of Simon Doonan, I swear, I'm going to hang him as a prop in a Barneys window. He is such an ostenatious puppet.</p><h1>
The Selling of St. Andy
</h1>
<div class="byline">By RUTH LA FERLA</div>
Correction Appended</p>
IN 1968 Andy Warhol
placed an advertisement in The Village Voice: “I’ll endorse with my
name any of the following: clothing, AC-DC, cigarettes, small tapes,
sound equipment, ROCK ’N’ ROLL RECORDS, anything, film and film
equipment, Food, Helium, Whips, MONEY!! love and kisses ANDY WARHOL. EL
5-9941.”</p>
Warhol was not being coy. He was firming up his position as a
sociocultural commercial institution, an artist who churned out
silk-screen prints with assembly-line efficiency, a magazine publisher,
a television personality, a filmmaker, social gadabout and self-styled
prophet, who saw the erosion of the line between art and commerce. He
was intent on turning his name and mystique into a brand. </p>
“Being good in business,” he wrote in “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
(From A to B and Back Again),” newly republished by Harcourt, is “the
most fascinating kind of art.” </p>
But even the seer in Warhol could not have envisioned the degree to
which he has become commercialized. In time for the holiday season,
nearly 20 years after his death in February 1987, the marketing of Andy
Warhol is in full flood. “We’re seeing Warhol energy peeking out from
everywhere,” said Robert Lee Morris, the jewelry designer and a former
member of the artist’s circle, who has brought out a line of jewelry
with Warhol motifs like the dollar sign and the Brillo logo. “We are
witnessing all the ways that his reach has extended into the moment.” </p>
Warhol’s mercantile essence, both high and low, is distilled in
carpets and coffee mugs, calendars and greeting cards, T-shirts, tote
bags and a style of Levi’s wax-coated jeans called Warhol Factory X,
for $185. To judge by all the merchandise, Warhol is being positioned
as the next Hello Kitty. There will even be a Warhol Pez dispenser.
Imagine his jaw popping open to disgorge a mint. </p>
It is “the fulfillment of Andy’s fantasy about business art” said
Jeffrey Deitch, the art dealer and former Warhol associate. “I think he
would have been amazed to see what has developed.” </p>
Warhol-inspired wares are being sold in stores like Macy’s and
Nordstrom and in youth-oriented chains like Urban Outfitters and
high-end fashion boutiques like Fred Segal in Los Angeles. This month
Barneys New York will roll out a holiday marketing campaign around the
artist, including shopping bags with Warhol-like doodles, four store
windows and a limited edition of Campbell’s soup cans. </p>
“It’s a good moment for Andy Warhol,” said Charlotte Abbott, a
senior editor at Publishers Weekly, noting the many recent Warhol
books. “Culturally, he is still on top,” she said. “There is more of a
rebellious New Yorky underground feeling coming back into the zeitgeist
— or maybe it’s just a nostalgia for all that.”</p>
Warholiana is being pitched ever younger. People in their late teens
and early 20’s are apt to identify not just with the cool, affectless
Warhol persona, said Irma Zandl, a youth trend forecaster, but also
with Warhol the entrepreneurial go-getter. </p>
Among the new books are “Edie Factory Girl” (VH1 Press), a photo
chronicle of the artist’s relationship with his socialite muse Edie
Sedgwick, and “The Day the Factory Died” (Empire), pictures from
Warhol’s memorial service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Christophe von
Hohenberg, with text on the Warhol circle by Charlie Scheips. There is
also “Andy Warhol ‘Giant’ Size” (Phaidon), a coffee-table tribute to
the artist, packed scrapbook style with 2,000 images and documents. </p>
Why Warhol, and why now? Those thrusting him back to the cultural
and commercial forefront — if he ever left it — offer several
explanations. “There is a longing for that era in Manhattan of
self-invention and discovery, of cultural questioning,” said Simon
Doonan, the creative director of Barneys, who is orchestrating the
store’s many-pronged Warhol holiday marketing. </p>
He described the present moment as one of “trompe l’oeil grooviness, all ironed blond hair and girls wearing Blahniks.” </p>
“But Andy wasn’t pseudohip,” Mr. Doonan said. “He is the primordial mulch from which all cool in Manhattan sprang.”</p>
In a celebrity-fixated society, which often equates style with
substance, Warhol’s canny exploitation of fame and image are
particularly resonant. “He understood celebrity and branding,” said
Tobias Meyer, the worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s. “He
came from a commercial world and made it part of his art. That is why
he is so relevant.” </p>
Warhol is also the subject of “Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film” by Ric Burns, an exploration of the artist’s life broadcast on PBS last month. He is a looming presence in “Factory Girl,” the much anticipated Weinstein Company film starring Sienna Miller as Ms. Sedgwick, which is expected in theaters next spring. </p>
It is hardly surprising that Warhol, a graphic artist who first drew
notice for his wispy illustrations of rose-color court shoes and who
worked as a window dresser for Bonwit Teller in Manhattan, is the
inspiration as well for a proliferation of fashions and accessory
lines. Besides the Levi’s jeans, which are printed or embroidered with
famous Warhol art images, they include shoes by Royal Elastic and a
collection of plastic Day-Glo colored watches by Seiko.</p>
The candy-color Warhol aesthetic has spawned a makeup collection by
MAC. Introduced last August, it is inspired by Ms. Sedgwick, whose
gamine look was defined by spiky lashes, white lids, pink lips and
translucent skin.</p>
The artist’s hold on the popular imagination also stems partly from
his carefully cultivated bad boy pose. Gaunt and chalky, he disdained
the wholesomely conventional, not troubling to hide his pursuit of
young men, persistent club-crawling or pill-popping. “He was
subversive, the real thing,” Mr. Doonan said, adding, “Subversive now
is to be a hedge fund manager who owns a Warhol.” </p>
Mr. Doonan professes a special affinity with the artist, whom he
calls “the patron saint of retail,” a name that finds its way into the
Barneys holiday catalog, “Happy Andy Warholidays.” The store’s
Warhol-theme holiday marketing includes shopping bags covered in
Warhol-like doodles of shoes, doves and tree ornaments. </p>
“This is a huge deal for us,” Mr. Doonan said, pointing to a series
of Warhol windows being mocked up last week at a studio in Midtown.
They depicted periods in the artist’s life: his fashion illustrator
years, the Factory period with Ms. Sedgwick, Warhol as social butterfly
in the 1970’s and 80’s — “from Liza to Basquiat,” as Mr. Doonan put it,
“and from Studio 54 to Area.” </p>
Warhol’s compulsive collecting is represented by an enormous
shelving unit in the shape of his head. “It will be packed with the
detritus of his extreme hunting and gathering,” Mr. Doonan said.
“Everything from button-filled jars to soup cans.” </p>
Barneys wares, licensed by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual
Arts, include a denim trucker jacket with a Warhol portrait on the back
($275), a hooded sweatshirt with a banana print ($176) and limited
edition Campbell’s soup cans with reproductions of Warhol labels.</p>
Joel Wachs, the president of the foundation, said revenues from some
40 licensees have quadrupled in the last five years, generating about
$2.25 million in royalties in the current fiscal year. Proceeds go to
the Warhol endowment, which supports the arts.</p>
Retail sales of licensed merchandise in the United states are
between $40 million and $50 million, said Michael Stone, the chief
executive of the Beanstalk Group, the licensing agency for the Warhol
Foundation.</p>
Tricked out in a silver wig and signature red-rim glasses, Warhol
turned himself into a recognizable product, paving the way for other
artist brands. Art world figures like Mr. Deitch point to the success
of Damien Hirst, whose London restaurant Pharmacy reproduced his
well-known installation of the same name, and on a populist level to
Thomas Kinkade, whose charm bracelets, candles, gaudy greeting cards
and calendars are sought as collectibles. </p>
But Warhol’s chameleon personality may well make him the ideal
candidate for branding. “Licensing is all about creating a perception
and leveraging that,” said Martin Brochstein, who writes The Licensing
Letter, a trade publication. In Warhol’s case, there is so much to
chose from. “Some people see a silver-haired guy, others the Campbell’s
soup can or Andy the bon vivant,” Mr. Brochstein said. “If you play
into enough of those facets, then there is a market.” </p>
Warhol also speaks to a new generation of artists, who invoke his
spirit, marketing raincoats and sneakers as artworks. Those in Mr.
Deitch’s stable, for instance, sell skateboards, wallpaper and
figurines, most tagged at under $100. </p>
Last June, Mr. Stone of the Beanstalk Group attended a licensing
trade show in New York. Some 300 artists were represented, he recalled.
“I guess there are a lot of people looking for that pot at the end of
the rainbow.” </p>
</p>
</p>
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