I recently attended a friend’s wedding in Pittsburgh and had the fortunate opportunity to visit the Andy Warhol Museum located there. Pittsburgh was Warhol’s home town, and the museum does a fine job of celebrating Warhol’s legacy and contributions to the world of art and culture.
I have always been a fan of Warhol’s Art but not very deeply studied in it. The museum gave me a much deeper appreciation of his significance and the technical expertise of his art. For me Warhol has always been an artist of ideas (15 minutes of fame, celebrity, pop art, etc) but the museum also gave me a better sense of Warhol the technical print maker. Walter Benjamin is famous for his comments about how mechanical reproduction eliminates the “aura” of traditional art (paintings, etc), and Warhol was certainly all about mechanical reproduction. And in a certain sense Benjamin’s discussion of aura and mechanical reproduction is true. I walked into the museum not seeking aura or some primary essence of Warhol, but instead expecting a rather lifeless, mechanical and entirely homogenous experience. This is afterall what mechanical reproduction of art is all about, things are transparently replicated and universally disseminated. Warhol took this to extreme levels and made representation more farce than gravity. But I must admit there was something unexpected about viewing the prints on the wall. I was particularly delighted by the Mao room. The prints were absolutely amazing to me. Lots of subtle details and texture. This is what Warhol did, he had ideas but there is still a material substrate to his art. The splotches of paint, the texture of canvas, and the predictability of print making used to convey the multiplicity and variances of icons. This was Warhol’s craft and it was very captivating to see up close.
Most interesting to me was a placard on Fascism on the wall near this room.
This definition of fascism seems really stunning in its parallels to contemporary society. So obvious in fact that it really doesn’t need any direct comment. However, it is most useful in that it provides us with good working definition of the phenomenon of fascism. So often the word gets bandied around that it loses its coin. Worst yet fascism is typically defined narrowly within the realm of nazi death camps. This is certainly the most historically salient outcome of fascist regimes but the emotive force of the label “Fascist!” and the narrow association of fascism with death camps seems to elide the more subtle ways in which fascism operates and furthermore confuses how we get to death camps in the first place. In this sense we are benefitted by a more concise definition of what fascism is and how it operates. Deaths camps are definitely a particular outcome but the process through which a society gets to that point is not always clearly understood. This is why I found the definition of fascism in the Warhol museum so forceful and useful in its presentation. Once you read it it becomes perfectly obvious, so much so that it is highly disquieting.
Here is the text from the placard:
Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism
Dr. Lawrence Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. He found fourteen defining characteristics common to each.
- Powerful and Continuing Expressions of Nationalism — Fascism makes constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Military pride and unity are encouraged. Flags are everywhere, as are flag symbols in public displays, or pinned to clothing.
- Disdain for Human Rights — These are viewed as a hinderance to achieving their goals. Through propaganda, the population is made to accept this abuse by marginalizing and demonizing those being targeted. Tactics include secrect, denial, and disinformation. The people ignore or approve of torture, assassination, incarceration without formal charges, etc.
- Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause — The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic, sexual or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
- Supremacy of the Military — Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of funding, while domestic needs are neglected. The military is glamorized, and used to assert national goals and intimidate other nations.
- Rampant Sexism — The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion, and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
- Controlled Mass Media — Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by subtler government regulation: the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. Censorship is very common.
- Obsession with National Security — Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses, and questioning its activities is portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.
- Religion and Government are Intertwined — Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
- Corporate Power is Protected — The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are those who put the government leaders in power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite, especially in the repression of the poor.
- Labor Power is Suppressed — Because the organizing power of labor is a threat to fascism, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. The working poor form an underclass, and are viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor is considered a vice.
- Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts — Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. Professors and other academics espousing unorthodox ideas are censored, harassed, or arrested. Free expression is the arts and letters is openly attacked. Art and literature serve the national interest, or they don’t exist.
- Obsession with Crime and Punishment — Fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
- Rampant Cronyism and Corruption — Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in facist regimes for national resources to be appropriated or even stolen by government leaders.
- Fraudulent Elections — Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Others times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, disenfranchising oppositions voters, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascism uses the judiciary to manipulate or control elections.
Source: Adapted from Fascism Anyone? in Free Inquiry, Spring 2003
My other favorite exhibit was the “Silver Cloud” room.
This exhibit is better experienced than described. But basically it was a room full of silver pillows filled with helium and air. The pillows seemed perfectly suspended in the space but would gently float around on air currents created by two fans in the room. You could walk around the room and interact with the pillows however you like. The lightness of it and the easy glide of the pillows really made this a fun and playful experience. It was exhibits like this that I think really showcase Warhol’s fun light hearted side and his respect for the creative and open interaction of others with his art or art in general. This trend of inclusiveness and active participation with art also highlights the very unfascistic way the museum was organized. For starters the museum had a very progressive policy towards photographers. You were allowed to photograph anything you liked in the museum. This was unexpected because the only other time I had seen a Warhol exhibit was a few years ago at the Henry Art gallery at the University of Washington. At the time I was doing some work as a videographer for the university and it was my job to take a video camera down to the exhibit and film stuff in the exhibit. After a few minutes with the video camera I was quickly flagged down by the museum guards and told I was not allowed. I tried explaining that I was doing this for the university and after some deliberation I was finally allowed to continue filming but under specific conditions such as no close ups of the exhbits. So when I got to the Warhol museum being able to bring my camera and basically shoot anything thing in the museum (flash or no flash) I was pleasantly surprised. I think this is how Warhol would have preferred it anyway and it was nice to see that the people managing his legacy are tuned in. After all, in my mind Warhol’s efforts helped democratize art and also made it participatory and inclusive in his “factory”. The openness and participatory nature of art is actively encouraged at the museum. On the bottom floor they have a special room where you can go in and make prints, collages, and others kinds of art. I think this is what I like most about Warhol. His rejection of fascism and encouragement of participation in art. There was an inspired intellectual rigour to his ideas but a playful and enlightened inclusiveness to his practice. The themes of his art celebrate celebrity in a way that we all can appreciate. He like most of us was a watcher of celebrities and was able to make art through his obsession and fascinations with it. And in this process gained notoriety and became himself a kind of celebrity. But through all this Warhol never seemed to have lost connection with the importance of fighting elistist fascisms of society and in a certain sense his museum does justice to that legacy.
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