Andy Warhol held a mirror so that society could see their consumer-selves. His background as a commercial artist, and his fascination with advertising, lead him to create refined artwork. In Campbell’s Canned Soup, he took a banal, mass-produced item and put it centre-stage. The process he used to create the work reflected a production line. Finally, in using an assembly line artistic process, and in using other people’s ideas?
Andy Warhol held a mirror so that society could see their consumer-selves. His background as a commercial artist, and his fascination with advertising, lead him to create refined artwork. In Campbell’s Canned Soup, he took a banal, mass-produced item and put it centre-stage. The process he used to create the work reflected a production line. Finally, in using an assembly line artistic process, and in using other people’s ideas, Warhol asks society to question the value of his art. Through these ideas Warhol forces society to reflect on the theme of consumerism.
Andy Warhol’s background in context of 1950s America is important to understand, as it gives one an idea of why he was so fascinated with consumer culture. He grew up in Oakland, Pittsburgh and had two older brothers. He left school in 1945, and started his career as a commercial artist . He did artwork in this setting, looking at consumer products, until late 1959 (Shanes, 2011). Due to the middle classes’ strengthened financial position in the 1950s, American Society, through mass production, had become conformist, consumerist and banal. As a commercial artist, Andy Warhol was involved in this consumerist drive directly, through producing marketing materials. His attention turned to showing us this when he moved into fine art, from 1960 onward (Shanes, 2011). With the Pop Art movement taking shape, it allowed him to explore these ideas.
Choirs come in all shapes and sizes. They could include a handful of voices or a hundred, comprising of men, women, children. Pretty much any choir you can imagine exists and they all have one thing in common. They make music and they want that music to be heard. And that leads us to the subject of choir formation – in what order should the singers in a choir stand to make the best sound?
