Warhol portraits: the glory of superficiality

I'm about to leave to go the library, but I felt like writing a little entry about the Andy Warhol exhibit I went to see at the Grand Palais a few days ago.
"Non-plussed" is the word that comes to mind. I was uninterested in those portraits, uninterested in the sleekness of the faces, the lack of imperfections. And I was almost angry to see such craftsmanship wasted on superficiality. When Warhol says he's a commercial artist, I respect that. But he seems to use that tag of "commercial artist" to prevent himself from questionning his own talent and artistry.
The few paintings I almost enjoyed were the imperfect ones, the ones where something apart from the faces appeared. But that didn't happen often. And, ironically, I was much more touched by the polaroid pictures that were taken to create the paintings, because they were at least raw and real.
As I was walking from room to room, I couldn't help thinking about Richard Avedon, and the way he caught a form of truth in his portraits of the rich and beautiful people. Something that went beyond the glitter and the makeup. He also claimed his right as an artist to be commercial, and didn't apologize about it. But he nevertheless chose to delve deep into the art of photography and consider the people posing in front of him as people and not icons or objects representing modern times. Perhaps that's the way we need to read Warhol's art: a conservation of the iconic in the people he portrayed. A trace of the inhuman, the purely plastic side of humanity. Perhaps, but that is so utterly opposite to my understanding of humanity that I'm not able to understand Warhol's entreprise. There's got to be some form of compassion in a painting or in any form of art in order to be engaged with the work on a deeper level. No?

For an overview of the exhibit, see here:

http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/portfolio/2009/03/13/andy-warhol-s-installe-au-grand-palais_1167765_3246.html


And, to prove my point about Warhol and Avedon, here are both artist's depictions of a modern icon, Marilyn Monroe: (And I have to say, Warhol's Marilyn series was one of my favourites in the exhibit, because it was a fresh take on fame, but his 1980's portraits are so mecanical that the brilliance of his method is not enough to sustain the viewer and to refrain him/her from being bored and unengaged)


Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1967


Richard Avedon, Marilyn Monroe, New York city, May 6, 1957.

Paris, unassumingly

I'm sitting in my little room, half-listening to an old man talk about philosophy on the France culture radio station: ..."qui se définit par la défaite des cultures hérétiques en Occident"... A little dense for the morning, but the voice in itself is a form of music, or at least - human presence. I quite like it when I can have the radio on and zone in and out of it.

I went to a very interesting photo exhibit with Nathalie yesterday at the Fondation Cartier (extremely cool building by the way, conceived by the architect Jean Nouvel, same one who made the Musée du Quai Branly). William Eggleston is a (famous, apparently) american photographer who casts a modern and unassuming eye on Paris. That's what makes his photos so refreshing. No unecessary prettiness, but glances of what makes Paris alive with a pretty incredible use of colour.

In his own words : "I approached it (Paris) and am still approaching it as if it is just anywhere". What a great idea! Everyone should do that, instead of refer to Paris with that sickly reverence usually reserved for the dead or the almost dying.

His technique is basically "point and shoot", and he only takes one shot of each subject. So, if he missed the moment, then it's gone. You can feel that energy in his photos, especially when people are within the shot. A working black man repairing the pavement, and looking straight at the camera with a shovel in his hand, and right behind him, his colleague, also looking straight out and pointing. This very narrow perspective is created and forces us to see these people. Quite provocative, in fact. Too bad there weren't more people shots. Many still lives, some very smart and cleverly composed, tending towards abstraction. Others, glimpses of beauty in unexpected places, like the one with the green light reflected on the wet pavement.

I should probalbly also mention his paintings, or graphic work exhibited which would also be commonly referred to as "doodles" if anyone else were making them. At first, I honestly was shocked that they would exhibit doodles from anyone in a museum. But then, when looking at the frames that combined the doodles with a photograph, I changed my mind. Both mediums completed each other, since they were reactions to reality, each in their own way. The photo: an immediate reaction, point and shoot, and the doodle (I really should call it a drawing): a delayed reaction based on the photograph. Kind of cool.

I'm happy I went to see this exhibit (pure luck, it was Nat's idea), because it also tells me that people - artists - want to picture Paris in other ways than the everlasting cliché served to us all the time. They want to desacralise it, make into a stranger that can be discovered all over again.

I'm still trying to figure out where I stand about this city. I still can't figure out if I like it or if I don't. It might sound silly, but this is my home town we're talking about, which also happens to be one of the most popular places on earth. So, the question is, can I not like Paris? Very conflicting relationship.

Somewhere in a notebook, I wrote this, which still applies: "When I came back to Censier, I decided to get some bread, and as I was waiting to cross the road, I looked up at one of the buildings in front of me and there came a feeling of peace, in the sense that at that precise moment, I wasn't fighting with Paris. It was my city, and I liked it."

PS: informative review of the exhibit in the Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/apr/05/william-eggleston