Whaam!

The Design Museum, London

With my upcoming visiting to London next week looming, I have been trying to get a list together of places to visit while I'm down there. We have a few extra days to explore as we are down for 5 days, with Eco Build only occupying 3 of them.

For me, The Tate Modern is a must. I've never had the time to visit before - as the only other time I've ever been to London was for the same excursion last year, to which time was an issue. I've been looking through their extensive list of permanent pieces, along with the current exhibitions, and have come to the conclusion I may need to dedicate a whole morning or afternoon for The Tate Modern. They have 27 pages listing all their works by Andy Warhol, and house Roy Lichtenstein's Whaam! - something I am desperate to see as it's over 4m long! I remember thinking that some pieces that you have longed to see can be a let down in scale, a particular example of this was Dali's paintings I seen while visiting New York's MoMA. Some of them were post card sized - something you would never assume from images printed in books.

Ai WeiWei's Sunflower Seeds Exhibiton

Ai Weiwei's current installation piece entitled "Sunflower Seeds" is something I want to get the chance to see - as the scale of it seems like something that would be very powerful to see, and have more of an impact than mere images.

Next on my list of places to visit is The Design Museum. I'm hoping to find some kind of inspiration for my current project there, as things have taken a dip in terms of motivation. I always do this - storm into a project like a hurricane and then the calm in the middle comes, and then it's a mad dash to the finish line, but hey - it works.

The V&A is another place I'd like to visit, but I'm not sure if I will gave time to spare. I guess I can use it as an excuse to visit again during the summer - as I do need to spend some time taking in the culture from the comfort of some of Camden's finest bars.

Living in Dundee and coming from Edinburgh means I've never had a real sense of travelling times within a city - so I always assume it to be "no bother" to "pop across town" - although in reality, we could be talking about an hour or more. I suppose I will just have to see how much I can squeeze in - although I'm not in any way fussed to see BigBen or The London Eye. Actually, I'd be quite proud if I never see them, in a kind of anti-tourist type way.

"If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it" - Andy Warhol

Influence was discussed during yesterday's lecture.

Who influences us? And how? Are we born with our tastes, are they passed on genetically, or is it how we are brought up? Is it nature or nurture that causes us to have our tastes? 

Do our parents and peers influence what we like? The films we watch, the way we dress? Do we like the music we like because of the people we spend most of our time with?

Furthermore - when we look at rankings, how are these decided? Sure a lot of people may like that, but not everybody will. A majority vote is only displaying the likes and interests of a set number of people. 

Well, yesterday we did an exercise to question all of the above.  We all wrote our own personal top 5 films, bands, classical composers and designers. After that, we conferred with a small group around us to create a general consensus of our group top 5 of the above categories. We were then selected at random to create a whole class list of the same topics again. What we found were that few us agreed with what was on the final list. 

Next, people were asked to stand up if they (for example) were wearing a scarf. What was found was that groups tended to be clustered together who wore similar things. This shows us that (generally speaking) groups of people who work/socialise together, influence one and other. The interiors and jewellers wore scarfs. The interactive media students wore hoodies. Specific groups do specific things. 

Taste goes further than what you are wearing. We like to believe that someone who is considered an expert, is right - but when it comes to artwork, surely it is a matter of taste? Pierre Bourdieu took a range of work from the likes of Michelangelo, Rubens, Titian and Di Vinci and scored them based on his expertise in the likes of composition, drawing / design, colour and expression. Michelangelo was scored to have the equivalent of a 3rd class Honours Degree - something that is thought of by most to be quite preposterous. 

This however, highlights the issues that come with taste. What exactly is expertise? What makes what Bourdieu scored right?
Jonathan then brought up the debate about Andy Warhol's work. The Campbell's Soup screen prints that are world famous - are they his work? Are they Campbell's graphic designer's work? Are they the work of the screen printer who actually printed them in Warhol's "The Factory" studio? Without the soup tin, his work would not exist, however the soup tin on it's own has virtually no value. From this the conclusion was that a name can incur value.

This then lead to the debate around if Warhol was present in the building at the time of printing - does this make it an original, and therefore valuable. However, does this also mean that if he was not present, they are replicas? I however think they were all replicas, wether he was there or not. Few of his pieces are new imagines altogether - a lot is altered replicas of a already-in-cirulation image or logo. 

He's quoted to have said "I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of "work," because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep." - so for his works in particular, were the after hours pieces replicas? I would argue no, as he had commissioned them to be created at those times.

Warhol often spoke of his love for money and that he created things to make money from. He had little if not no deeper meaning in a lot of his work, and almost mocked the industry for buying it. It was just a business - or at least that is how he portrayed it. "I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money."

"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. " - Andy Warhol

This however is only true for him and his works - the previous argument about value applies to a wide variety of works from various disciplines.