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Andy Warhol

Last week I bought Lou Reed & John Cale’s musical portrait Songs for Drella, and it’s brought back memories of a time in my life — before I was in college — when I was obsessed with Warhol and his work. The thought of using the techniques and aesthetic of the media to comment on the media has always appealed to me. Warhol was the first artist that I was aware of that would dare take on the vulgar and the mass-produced using the tools of the vulgar and the mass-produced, all the while producing beautiful things. Things that managed to be deep because they were superficial.

When I first started producing websites (10 years ago this month!), I was fascinated by the thought of having this medium to work with which was a blank slate — no grammar, no language, no set ways of doing things. We now have navigation bars, standardized site structures (“Contact us”, “About us”, etc.), standardized labels (“Home page”), and such, to the point where these things are starting to become clichés. When do we start applying our medium on itself? Are we there yet? What would Andy do with our non-mass-produced mass-produced medium?

Why don’t you sit right over there, we’ll do a movie portrait
I’ll turn the camera on and I won’t even be there
A portrait that moves, you look great I think
I’ll put the Empire State Building on your wall
For 24 hours glowing on your wall
Watch the sun rise above it in your room
Wallpaper art, a great view
I’ve got a Brillo box and I say it’s art
It’s the same one you can buy at any supermarket
‘Cause I’ve got the style it takes

John Cale & Lou Reed

December 5, 2004 | Archived in Design, Music