Assess this statement with reference to specific examples
Andy Warhol and Xu Zhen challenged the conventions and art authorities of their respective pop art and postmodern periods. Their non-traditional art creations represented new pictorial conventions and a new approach to art (e.g. as seen through Warhols iconographic works like “Campbell’s Soup Cans” 1962) and led to the consideration that contemporary art should be viewed as a global cultural phenomenon that pervades both culture and society alike. It is fair to say that the game has changed forever for both artists and audiences, as radical strategies of art creationism and production are steadily growing. The practices of Art Critics and Art Historians are being sporadically distorted with the rise and fall of contemporary art techniques and we as audiences need to began to see are and commodity as two not necessarily opposing forces. Once we are able to view art as both a spectacle and a culmination of hybrid practices we will be able to properly interpret the value of contemporary art making. These statements are supported by Warhol (“Campbell’s Soup Cans” and “Gold Marilyn Munroe”) and Xu Zhen (“Play” and “Calm”) physical artwork, as discussed further below.
Xu Zhen and Warhol are commonly considered two of the most significant artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as they keenly explore modern and contemporary art, life and cultural politics despite their cultural differences. Warhol represents twentieth century modernity and the ‘American century’ while Xu Zhen identifies contemporary life in the twenty-first century and what has been signaled as the ‘Chinese century’ to come. Take Xu Zhen 2009 work “Calm” located in the White Rabbit Gallery, and compare it to Warhol’s 1962 work “Campbell’s Soup Cans” found in the Museum of Modern Art. Xu Zhen uses an installation detritus form consisting of a waterbed, a carpet of detritus and building rubble that is intriguing in its audience interactive state – a culmination of highly contemporary techniques and concepts that circle back to Chinese tradition and the great immigration debate. On the other hand, Warhol’s work consists of synthetic polymer paint, is a central work of the pop art period and takes the consumer market item of a simple “Campbells Soup” and transforms it into an iconographic artwork. The work is now distributed in the modern age through mass producing the pattern onto all manner of commodities (dresses, journals, mugs) all a praise to the influence of Warhol’s innovative art making process that “changed the game for both artists and audiences”. In the prime of his career, Warhol once stated that an artist was “somebody who produced things that people didn't need to have” … but perhaps it was exactly his production of the new face of contemporary art, melding “the game of art practice” with ideas of consumer society and capital, which audiences needed. Without it, contemporary artists like Ai Wei Wei and Xu Zhen who continually seek to challenge and commodify the art scene, would be hindered.
Xu Zhen founded his ‘MadeIn Company’ in 2009 and it now functions as a contemporary art-creation corporation, taking simulation directly from Andy Warhols ‘Silver Factory’ that was active between 1962 and 1984. Andy Warhol and Xu Zhen have both transformed audience understanding of the role of ‘studio’ and artistic production in their respective eras.
Apart from being a curator and artist, Xu Zhen works collaboratively with other artists and designers to organise various art activities and events. These events recognise a new reality whereby contemporary art is becoming a global cultural phenomenon where both artists and audiences alike must play the game of consumerism and fabrication in order to keep up with the modern art scene. For instance, this is seen through his artwork “Play” as it is a sculpture formed from non-typical, somewhat shunned, consumer products – leather (real/artificial), BDSM accessories, foam, metal, wood and ropes; a shocking and controversial work in just the materials themselves. It is clear that many contemporary artists, such as the above mentioned, no longer work alone in their studios making works with their own hands. Warhol's 'Silver Factory' was renowned for bringing together artist and poet, filmmaker and musician, drag queen and socialite; all within the ongoing production of silkscreen paintings, films, video, music and publications. It was an artistic space, but also of social and sexual freedom. In Warhol’s work Eight Elvises, Elvis Presley is holding a gun and dressed as a cowboy. The same image was produced in the studio by Warhol’s assistants and overlapped eight times, making it seem as if Elvis was moving. In 2008, this silk-screen was sold for $100 million, making it the most valuable painting in world history. Where are the lines of artist and manufacturer blurred and how can we expect to simply credit the “master” behind the ideas of the work, when they don’t always contribute to material artistic practice? Like Warhol, Zhen plays with teams of researchers and craftspeople, activists and assistants, a differentiator being that Xu Zhen now uses social media strategically. Xu Zhen and MadeIn are attempting to redefine the word ‘artist’ much in the same strain that Warhol and The Factory attempted to experiment and bend the boundaries between consumer culture and art practice. This supports the statement that contemporary art is “a global cultural phenomenon”, an ever-changing game for both artists and audiences.
It is crucial to consider why these two artists choose to appropriate and re-contextualise significant historical themes, and what the impact of this plundering of art historical imagery is on the contemporary art scene. Is it to make a statement on consumer culture; the rise of capital re-contextualisation. Take Zhen’s 2009 work “Calm” for instance; this work created in conjunction with MadeIn appeals to contemporary audiences through the breathing effect created by the underlying waterbed. As it's title implies, it is a calming piece, but bizarrely so since a room full of rubble should hint at ideas of demolition and war and yet it is almost viewed as a life form of its own – what is the significance of such a conceptually diverse work?
In an extension of this, it is clear that Xu Zhen and Andy Warhol both find common ground in the idea of the dialectic; posing crucial questions for audiences to ponder through their works. These ideas surround the idea that artists of today sacrifice their identities as a “unique artists” in order to transform how we view material commercialization of life and wealth. Take Warhol’s “Gold Marilyn Munroe” (1962) for illustration. In Gold Marilyn Munroe, Warhol uses a gold background and showcases the celebrity in her 1953 film, Niagara. Note that part of Warhol’s iconic works was his satirical celebrity portraits. With his rising fame, he became a regular at socialite parties and built close relationships with stars, but in this work we seen none of this, merely a well recognised face of fame and a gold background to match the status – Warhol himself acts as a completely reserved entity.
The state of artworks themselves (temporal and static) is also fast changing. As seen in Xu’s “Action of Consciousness” installation and performance piece, objects created by the artist are hurled into the air from an enclosed white box. “The audience will see artwork flying overhead,” he says. “Every 30 seconds there will be something new… an artwork seen only in a moment’s time, then immediately disappears.” As can be gathered, the nature of a contemporary artists role is no longer a black and white division, more rather a collision of concept and practice. If large commercial structures back an artist, does their name become a brand? If artists buy into the global capitalist system to make increased profit from their work, are they still making art for the right purposes? Are they still an artist at all? As Warhol himself once stated, “being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art... Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”.
As you can see, the game of Contemporary Art is truly changing for both artists and audiences concurrently.
Contemporary art requires a change in perspective and technique for artists and audiences alike. The artists of Xu Zhen and Warhol engross with this concept through their engagement in self-portraiture and self-representation, and through some of their most iconic, performative and iconoclastic works. The perfect example of this is Warhol’s extended single take films he produced just after opening his Factory space, including his earliest productions Sleep (1963), Blow Job (1964), Empire (1963), and Kiss (1963-64). We pay admiration to their works as they encapsulate what it means to “move with the game” of modern art. For instance Xu Zhen’s paintings from Under Heaven (2014) series, amalgams of dizzying cake icing, work with ideas of the mundane and overlooked. The painting title is a literal translation of a Chinese word meaning "the whole world" and a jokingly gives reference to the saying "have one's cake and eat it too."
Both artists' transformation of aesthetic value through artistic innovation and experimentation is commendable, but so are their references to shared interest in cultural heritage and vernacular expression in the US and China. The way we interpret the signs and iconography of any contemporary art is an ever-changing global cultural phenomenon; meanings are not static, they are malleable concepts in the eyes of audiences and art critics likewise.
Xu Zhen is able to mould concepts into solidarity, of ideas that were not expressed and things that weren’t generally done in the 70’s/80’s into approachable and plausible modern art. While in this time period, Warhol believed that "once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again", Xu Zhen has stated that “the 90s art scene to now is like comparing a young girl to a married woman”. It is clear the market of contemporary art in terms of material, conceptual, structural and cultural practice is a changing game and that contemporary at as we know it is altering decade by decade, sparking a commoditized global phenomenon.
In a conversation with the curator Philip Tinari, Xu Zhen stated that he has “considered that in the future, art items and projects are growing bigger, to even abnormal sizes that stretch beyond the experience of just one individual. So what we need is not only rich experience and powerful ability to execute works, but also abundant curiosity and courage to remain independent”. In light of this, where can we say that commercial advertising and artmaking overlap and hold benefit? Are artists like Xu Zhen who use this and similar practices, perverting what it means to make and sell art? Should things like advertising and social media just be considered an extension of past practice, or are they unnecessarily turning the creative form into an explosion of commodity and contemporary services? We as audiences need to come to an informed understanding of what the answers to such considerations may be and reflect on contemporary art as a global cultural phenomenon that is fated to similarly pervert the roles of artists and audiences.
The “production of creativity” in art making acts as an almost double entendre in the modern age compared to by gone eras. Some critics have even gone so far as to say that artists of Xu and Warhol’s calibre have mourned the end of an artist and the birth of a CEO. Does a distinction between the artist and commercial enterprise, the individual and collective truly exist anymore? In Xu Zhen’s case, between 2009 and 2013 MadeIn replaced his artistic identity altogether, with all works attributed to MadeIn. Xu Zhen has been since reincarnated, relaunched and rebranded as a ‘product’ of MadeIn Company, but at what cost? Where does artistic passion falter and money become a true ‘means to an end’?
The interconnections that they aim to mould between patronage, commerce and cultural production are simultaneously being interpreted as an effective use of creative platform for wider social statements, and also negatively as a means of destroying what it traditionally meant to make art from the ‘soul and mind’. Painted in 1962, 100 Cans is an early example of Warhol's repeated image of a mass produced consumer good – but isn’t it in the end just a soup can, and how much creativity and imagination could truly have gone into the creation of a work readapted from a common consumer symbol?
Contemporary art is a global cultural phenomenon that is not necessarily full of benefit – it is altering the process of artists and audiences in a way that not all parties may wish to partake in.
Xu Zhen and the MadeIn Company in comparison to Andy Warhol’s art making methods which include his ‘Factory’ in New york in the 1960’s and his radical strategy of incorporating previously commercial processes such as screen printing into the world of ‘high art’. The two artists while alike in many respects retain great variants in their conceptual and material practices as shown through the works by Warhol (“Campbell’s Soup Cans” and “Gold Marilyn Munroe”) and Ai Wei Wei’s (“Play” and “Calm”). Andy Warhol and the Factory established a connection between art and commerce. They wanted to make art into commerce, and Xu Zhen and his company ‘MadeIn’ are no different. ‘We have already established the idea that art is commerce, what we are doing is making commerce into art.’ (Xu Zhen). Warhol created some of the most defining iconography of the late twentieth century through his exploration of consumer society, fame and celebrity, media and advertising, politics and capital. Now we see, Ai's practice addressing some of the most critical global issues of the early twenty-first century such as the relationship between tradition and modernity, the role of the individual and the state, human rights and freedom of expression. It is clear to see that while the commercialization of modern art is not always a valued progression, the contemporary art scene is most definitely an ever-changing game for both artists and audiences alike. As perfectly encapsulated by the words of Xu Zhen himself, “the significance of a creative work is in saying goodbye to the pre-established frame of meaning”. And so artists in time to come shall do so.
~
Andy Warhol and Xu Zhen challenged the conventions and art authorities of their respective pop art and postmodern periods. Their non-traditional art creations represented new pictorial conventions and a new approach to art (e.g. as seen through Warhols iconographic works like “Campbell’s Soup Cans” 1962) and led to the consideration that contemporary art should be viewed as a global cultural phenomenon that pervades both culture and society alike. It is fair to say that the game has changed forever for both artists and audiences, as radical strategies of art creationism and production are steadily growing. The practices of Art Critics and Art Historians are being sporadically distorted with the rise and fall of contemporary art techniques and we as audiences need to began to see are and commodity as two not necessarily opposing forces. Once we are able to view art as both a spectacle and a culmination of hybrid practices we will be able to properly interpret the value of contemporary art making. These statements are supported by Warhol (“Campbell’s Soup Cans” and “Gold Marilyn Munroe”) and Xu Zhen (“Play” and “Calm”) physical artwork, as discussed further below.
Xu Zhen and Warhol are commonly considered two of the most significant artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as they keenly explore modern and contemporary art, life and cultural politics despite their cultural differences. Warhol represents twentieth century modernity and the ‘American century’ while Xu Zhen identifies contemporary life in the twenty-first century and what has been signaled as the ‘Chinese century’ to come. Take Xu Zhen 2009 work “Calm” located in the White Rabbit Gallery, and compare it to Warhol’s 1962 work “Campbell’s Soup Cans” found in the Museum of Modern Art. Xu Zhen uses an installation detritus form consisting of a waterbed, a carpet of detritus and building rubble that is intriguing in its audience interactive state – a culmination of highly contemporary techniques and concepts that circle back to Chinese tradition and the great immigration debate. On the other hand, Warhol’s work consists of synthetic polymer paint, is a central work of the pop art period and takes the consumer market item of a simple “Campbells Soup” and transforms it into an iconographic artwork. The work is now distributed in the modern age through mass producing the pattern onto all manner of commodities (dresses, journals, mugs) all a praise to the influence of Warhol’s innovative art making process that “changed the game for both artists and audiences”. In the prime of his career, Warhol once stated that an artist was “somebody who produced things that people didn't need to have” … but perhaps it was exactly his production of the new face of contemporary art, melding “the game of art practice” with ideas of consumer society and capital, which audiences needed. Without it, contemporary artists like Ai Wei Wei and Xu Zhen who continually seek to challenge and commodify the art scene, would be hindered.
Xu Zhen founded his ‘MadeIn Company’ in 2009 and it now functions as a contemporary art-creation corporation, taking simulation directly from Andy Warhols ‘Silver Factory’ that was active between 1962 and 1984. Andy Warhol and Xu Zhen have both transformed audience understanding of the role of ‘studio’ and artistic production in their respective eras.
Apart from being a curator and artist, Xu Zhen works collaboratively with other artists and designers to organise various art activities and events. These events recognise a new reality whereby contemporary art is becoming a global cultural phenomenon where both artists and audiences alike must play the game of consumerism and fabrication in order to keep up with the modern art scene. For instance, this is seen through his artwork “Play” as it is a sculpture formed from non-typical, somewhat shunned, consumer products – leather (real/artificial), BDSM accessories, foam, metal, wood and ropes; a shocking and controversial work in just the materials themselves. It is clear that many contemporary artists, such as the above mentioned, no longer work alone in their studios making works with their own hands. Warhol's 'Silver Factory' was renowned for bringing together artist and poet, filmmaker and musician, drag queen and socialite; all within the ongoing production of silkscreen paintings, films, video, music and publications. It was an artistic space, but also of social and sexual freedom. In Warhol’s work Eight Elvises, Elvis Presley is holding a gun and dressed as a cowboy. The same image was produced in the studio by Warhol’s assistants and overlapped eight times, making it seem as if Elvis was moving. In 2008, this silk-screen was sold for $100 million, making it the most valuable painting in world history. Where are the lines of artist and manufacturer blurred and how can we expect to simply credit the “master” behind the ideas of the work, when they don’t always contribute to material artistic practice? Like Warhol, Zhen plays with teams of researchers and craftspeople, activists and assistants, a differentiator being that Xu Zhen now uses social media strategically. Xu Zhen and MadeIn are attempting to redefine the word ‘artist’ much in the same strain that Warhol and The Factory attempted to experiment and bend the boundaries between consumer culture and art practice. This supports the statement that contemporary art is “a global cultural phenomenon”, an ever-changing game for both artists and audiences.
It is crucial to consider why these two artists choose to appropriate and re-contextualise significant historical themes, and what the impact of this plundering of art historical imagery is on the contemporary art scene. Is it to make a statement on consumer culture; the rise of capital re-contextualisation. Take Zhen’s 2009 work “Calm” for instance; this work created in conjunction with MadeIn appeals to contemporary audiences through the breathing effect created by the underlying waterbed. As it's title implies, it is a calming piece, but bizarrely so since a room full of rubble should hint at ideas of demolition and war and yet it is almost viewed as a life form of its own – what is the significance of such a conceptually diverse work?
In an extension of this, it is clear that Xu Zhen and Andy Warhol both find common ground in the idea of the dialectic; posing crucial questions for audiences to ponder through their works. These ideas surround the idea that artists of today sacrifice their identities as a “unique artists” in order to transform how we view material commercialization of life and wealth. Take Warhol’s “Gold Marilyn Munroe” (1962) for illustration. In Gold Marilyn Munroe, Warhol uses a gold background and showcases the celebrity in her 1953 film, Niagara. Note that part of Warhol’s iconic works was his satirical celebrity portraits. With his rising fame, he became a regular at socialite parties and built close relationships with stars, but in this work we seen none of this, merely a well recognised face of fame and a gold background to match the status – Warhol himself acts as a completely reserved entity.
The state of artworks themselves (temporal and static) is also fast changing. As seen in Xu’s “Action of Consciousness” installation and performance piece, objects created by the artist are hurled into the air from an enclosed white box. “The audience will see artwork flying overhead,” he says. “Every 30 seconds there will be something new… an artwork seen only in a moment’s time, then immediately disappears.” As can be gathered, the nature of a contemporary artists role is no longer a black and white division, more rather a collision of concept and practice. If large commercial structures back an artist, does their name become a brand? If artists buy into the global capitalist system to make increased profit from their work, are they still making art for the right purposes? Are they still an artist at all? As Warhol himself once stated, “being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art... Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”.
As you can see, the game of Contemporary Art is truly changing for both artists and audiences concurrently.
Contemporary art requires a change in perspective and technique for artists and audiences alike. The artists of Xu Zhen and Warhol engross with this concept through their engagement in self-portraiture and self-representation, and through some of their most iconic, performative and iconoclastic works. The perfect example of this is Warhol’s extended single take films he produced just after opening his Factory space, including his earliest productions Sleep (1963), Blow Job (1964), Empire (1963), and Kiss (1963-64). We pay admiration to their works as they encapsulate what it means to “move with the game” of modern art. For instance Xu Zhen’s paintings from Under Heaven (2014) series, amalgams of dizzying cake icing, work with ideas of the mundane and overlooked. The painting title is a literal translation of a Chinese word meaning "the whole world" and a jokingly gives reference to the saying "have one's cake and eat it too."
Both artists' transformation of aesthetic value through artistic innovation and experimentation is commendable, but so are their references to shared interest in cultural heritage and vernacular expression in the US and China. The way we interpret the signs and iconography of any contemporary art is an ever-changing global cultural phenomenon; meanings are not static, they are malleable concepts in the eyes of audiences and art critics likewise.
Xu Zhen is able to mould concepts into solidarity, of ideas that were not expressed and things that weren’t generally done in the 70’s/80’s into approachable and plausible modern art. While in this time period, Warhol believed that "once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again", Xu Zhen has stated that “the 90s art scene to now is like comparing a young girl to a married woman”. It is clear the market of contemporary art in terms of material, conceptual, structural and cultural practice is a changing game and that contemporary at as we know it is altering decade by decade, sparking a commoditized global phenomenon.
In a conversation with the curator Philip Tinari, Xu Zhen stated that he has “considered that in the future, art items and projects are growing bigger, to even abnormal sizes that stretch beyond the experience of just one individual. So what we need is not only rich experience and powerful ability to execute works, but also abundant curiosity and courage to remain independent”. In light of this, where can we say that commercial advertising and artmaking overlap and hold benefit? Are artists like Xu Zhen who use this and similar practices, perverting what it means to make and sell art? Should things like advertising and social media just be considered an extension of past practice, or are they unnecessarily turning the creative form into an explosion of commodity and contemporary services? We as audiences need to come to an informed understanding of what the answers to such considerations may be and reflect on contemporary art as a global cultural phenomenon that is fated to similarly pervert the roles of artists and audiences.
The “production of creativity” in art making acts as an almost double entendre in the modern age compared to by gone eras. Some critics have even gone so far as to say that artists of Xu and Warhol’s calibre have mourned the end of an artist and the birth of a CEO. Does a distinction between the artist and commercial enterprise, the individual and collective truly exist anymore? In Xu Zhen’s case, between 2009 and 2013 MadeIn replaced his artistic identity altogether, with all works attributed to MadeIn. Xu Zhen has been since reincarnated, relaunched and rebranded as a ‘product’ of MadeIn Company, but at what cost? Where does artistic passion falter and money become a true ‘means to an end’?
The interconnections that they aim to mould between patronage, commerce and cultural production are simultaneously being interpreted as an effective use of creative platform for wider social statements, and also negatively as a means of destroying what it traditionally meant to make art from the ‘soul and mind’. Painted in 1962, 100 Cans is an early example of Warhol's repeated image of a mass produced consumer good – but isn’t it in the end just a soup can, and how much creativity and imagination could truly have gone into the creation of a work readapted from a common consumer symbol?
Contemporary art is a global cultural phenomenon that is not necessarily full of benefit – it is altering the process of artists and audiences in a way that not all parties may wish to partake in.
Xu Zhen and the MadeIn Company in comparison to Andy Warhol’s art making methods which include his ‘Factory’ in New york in the 1960’s and his radical strategy of incorporating previously commercial processes such as screen printing into the world of ‘high art’. The two artists while alike in many respects retain great variants in their conceptual and material practices as shown through the works by Warhol (“Campbell’s Soup Cans” and “Gold Marilyn Munroe”) and Ai Wei Wei’s (“Play” and “Calm”). Andy Warhol and the Factory established a connection between art and commerce. They wanted to make art into commerce, and Xu Zhen and his company ‘MadeIn’ are no different. ‘We have already established the idea that art is commerce, what we are doing is making commerce into art.’ (Xu Zhen). Warhol created some of the most defining iconography of the late twentieth century through his exploration of consumer society, fame and celebrity, media and advertising, politics and capital. Now we see, Ai's practice addressing some of the most critical global issues of the early twenty-first century such as the relationship between tradition and modernity, the role of the individual and the state, human rights and freedom of expression. It is clear to see that while the commercialization of modern art is not always a valued progression, the contemporary art scene is most definitely an ever-changing game for both artists and audiences alike. As perfectly encapsulated by the words of Xu Zhen himself, “the significance of a creative work is in saying goodbye to the pre-established frame of meaning”. And so artists in time to come shall do so.
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