Art in its Time: Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Andy Warhol himself once explained, in words close to Wilde’s, “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.” 1 This remark, whether
taken as all too true or as coyly misleading, is itself generally judged in a superficial
way. Wilde’s aphorism may help us remember that it is a mode of
shallowness to be unable or unwilling to explore the structure and content of
appearances. From this point of view, much of the consideration critics, art theorists,
and philosophers have given Warhol’s work is superficial. Finding that
work’s surfaces insufficient, such thinkers either condemn it as evidence of cultural
decline or seek to give it significance by setting it within a framework of
theory that possesses depths invisible in the work itself.
This essay examines accounts of Warhol’s work, by a philosopher and three
art historians, that seek significance for it in this way. I will argue that despite
their differences and their many interesting features, they are all flawed in being
critically shallow—I mean, shallow as criticism. I will suggest that we can do
better, in some respects at least, by paying close attention to Warhol’s surfaces.
To begin with an eminent example, the issue of the relation between surface
and deep meaning lies at the heart of the lesson the critic-philosopher Arthur
Danto drew from Brillo Boxes, which Warhol exhibited at the Stable Gallery in
New York in 1964. Twenty-five years later, reviewing Warhol’s postmortem retrospective
at the Museum of Modern Art, Danto called him “the nearest thing
to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced.” This is because
1 Gretchen Berg, “Andy: my true story,” Los Angeles Free Press (March 17, 1967), p. 3.
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THE ANDY WARHOL OF
PHILOSOPHY AND THE
PHILOSOPHY OF
ANDY WARHOL
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