Hello, my name is Masato Yamaguchi.
I am a contemporary artist and making pictures and sculptures.
I'd like to post about my works, or something I'm curious about.
Especially, I like to analize and study about other artists either famous or not.
And have done some on my own.
So I would like to introduce some of them so that I could make improvement as well.
That's why I started this series.
Ok, so this is a very beginning, and I would like to go through on googling and recording at the same time.
The first theme should be Andy Warhol who is so famous as you know.
Actially, he was the one who gave me an impetus to start artworks.
It was in 1996, when I was 16 years old.
I went to see his exhibition at Museum of Comtemporary Art Tokyo,
which knocked me down, and made me start artworks.
Andy Warhol was born in 1928, and he was a flagman of pop arts.
Silver wig was his trademark and he did a band...which means Velvet Underground.
Thus, he made long minimal films.
What is remarkable is that he was a commercial designer at first.
He had succeeded in designing and illustrations as well,
Then he transferd his career from commercial design to fine arts.
Actually, though now Andy Warhol is the most famous one in pop arts,
pop illustrations of Roy Lichtenstein were before him.
Then he created famouse illustrations such as Campbell's Soup Cans,
or the one made dollar bills motif of afterwards.
What is unique in his work was to use silk screen to draw with.
I need to check which was the first one to do that
because Lichtenstein also used silk screens on his works,
but at least, before it was considered that the only one way to draw paints is by brushes,
Ah, but there was some other ways like dripping by Jackson Pollock or some collaged works before them,
but still, it was remarkable that he challenged the very new way of painting
by using industrial products like silk screen.
Another remarkable point of him is here. He had his own studio named "Fctory",
and he made a kind of community to gather various creators
such as underground artists, musicians, or models.
Besides, he produced band named "Velvet Underground".
By creating magazine, or to say media, and networking with celebrities through it,
he made them into models of his works or clients,
which was remarkable of him that to make not only artworks itself
but also kind of platforms surrounding his art performances.
I'm always afraid that the greatness of Andy Warhol is not known enough
through art fans or those who are interested in arts in Japan.
So I'd like to explain about it.
Ok, let's begin.
Firstly, let me remark the uniqueness of the artworks of Andy Warhol.
Let's see his motifs. Like this, Marilyn Monroe, Campbell's soup cans, Mao Zedong,
Michael Jackson, or arranged banana...it's different, maybe... and this flower.
His pop style itself is of cause great expression of art,
but those simplicity of his motifs hides his innovativeness on artworks,
Or makes it misunderstood, I'm afraid.
To understand it correctly, you need to understand the changes of motifs.
So, what I'd like to say the most is like this.
The greatness of Andy Warhol, or the core of pop arts,
is to make the popularity, which is phenomenons spread whole society into artworks.
In other words, he sublimated ideas which is well spread socially into motifs of artworks, which is so radical.
Speaking about motifs of arts, it was always something like portraits, for example Mona Lisa.
Or Renoir, who is an impressionist,
who were so radical in meaning of drawing people in so subjective way.
Then comes Picasso who drew disordered faces like this,
but this is just a style of art and still draws kind of portraits.
Motifs could be either people,  still-lives, or landscapes. It used to be mainly this three.
After this, the stream to change the motifs came into western arts.
In my opinion, the biggest trigger was Surrealism.
Surrealist...I think Dali shouldn't be counted,
they drew something which can be called abstract world, or mental world.
Since then, the movement that to have abstract motifs started to spread.
Dada is something different. He contains essence of design, as you know.
I think the most ultimate one, which I'd like to make one independent program with,
is Marcel Duchamp who just put a ready-made toilet bowl as his artwork.
Mondrian is one of the famous artists on this stream.
He was influenced by Cubists such as Picasso or Braque and created his own new style.
Which describes the simple structure of artworks like this,
or this, titled "Composition", which describes literally composition of red, blue and yellow.
He performed that the structure or composition of the artwork itself can be a motif of paints.
Then after that, before Andy Warhol, there was an important painter.
Jasper Johns.
His art performance was quite remarkable.
It was from 1930. What was remarkable of him was this artwork titled "Target".
It's quite ordinal target, for darts, I mean, the one to shoot arrows.
He made it into motif of an artwork.
Or this one is also famous, American flag.
And what is ultimate is this. It's number. He took number itself as a motif.
He liked number itself, so do I, and created many artworks whose motifs are numbers.
This is my opinion that to make ordinal stuff such as numbers, targets, or American flags into artworks is so remarkable.
Before that motifs were limited.
People, or their mentalities, or mentarilies in abstract way, natures, or inside of human being.
Jasper Johns showed the possibility of things which designers call icons
to be motifs of artworks. As we saw, like numbers, targets, or flags.
Symbols are originally functional for communicating informations,
but he took it as it seems, completely nonfunctional,
as much as things in the nature like flowers or landscapes,
and he sublimated them into motifs of artworks.
Which was quite remarkable.
As we went through, motifs of artworks has been slowly changing.
And Andy Warhol drew some events with popularity,
or motifs with those events through that stream.
For example, this, Marilyn Monroe. This can be a portrait as well,
but for this, I dearly say that he described her as a social phenomenon as its motif.
In the same way, he turned Campbell Soup's can into motif.
They lined up so many on the shelf in a super market, which was a continuous image.
Or dollar bills as well. Currency is a kind of symbol, but he made it into a motif.
This is quite remarkable point of him.
You can find a common point with Takashi Murakami.
His motifs are mainly flowers, or characters.
But if you find it like "This kind of characters are not special in Japan."
or "Even I can paint it", there is a difficulty to understand the core of his artworks.
He describes that character itself whose root is animation which is so Japanese will be motifs.
He is performing to show that those motifs themselves are the art of this time,
which has strong meaning.
Judging based on the quality of the paintings is surely one thing,
but not necessarily the core.
Andy Warhol is, as I have been explaining, in the view of my analysis,
Andy Warhol is great because he took social phenomenons as motifs,
However there is an argument if he did it on purpose or not.
But as a result, it is certain that the influence that he made on art history was huge.
Though you may know that one of the artworks of Jeff Koons valued more than 91million dollars,
I still believe that there may be no one who is superior to Andy Warhol after Marcel Duchamp.
He is such a influential person to the art history.
By the way, Andy Warhol was quite unique not only in his performance
but also in his kind of scandals or abnormal side.
The most famous story is that one of the models who came onto the film he directed
shot him.
This story was made into film titled "I Shot Andy Warhol".
I don't completely understand why she shot him,
somehow the hatred toward Andy Worhol raised so high,
and she, her name was Solanas, shot him
because "He controlled my life too much".
Or another famous thing is that he was always doing parties, I guess at studio 54.
Like this, what he had done is not only painting,
but also controlling entire industry
by creating the social system that everything circulates into his painting works, in his word, "business".
But, as it is written here, his purpose was to observe.
I know someone, he is older than me, who has been living in NYC for long
and has been to the party of Andy Warhol's.
He told me that it was so unusual.
There were Andy and his followers, and they were always carrying video cameras.
And continuously recorded the surroundings.
It's a kind of madness, right?
Of cause there is one side that he did great things strategically,
but the other side which is his strangeness or abnormality also the reason why he became so famous, I think.
I'm sorry that I explained so fast,
I wish I could mention about some more details,
but for now, for the begining, it should be like this.
I'd like to mention about Andy Warhol again someday because he is such a great one,
but there is a fact that it is kind of difficult to understand how he was great
without knowing the history of arts or inventions before him.
That's why...that's not only why, but anyway,
from next time I'd like to mention about people
who are essential to explain about Andy Warhol
For example, Jasper Johns, Mondrian, André Breton from surrealists,
Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons
...oh, already a huge amount, right?
Besides, I myself don't know quite enough,
so I'd like to explain about those by learning some more by my self as well.
I hope you'll enjoy them. Thank you very much for watching.
