Roger Fry and Andy Warhol

I found the passage on the bottom of page 115 and the top of 116 in Fry's "Art and Socialism" to be particularly intriguing. Fry describes how new ideas in art are often rejected until an intermediary takes the new idea and "disinfects" it for the masses by merging the new idea with an old idea, and then is hailed as a genius.

The artist that immediately popped into my head was Andy Warhol. Roger Fry's point applies perfectly to the art and fame of Warhol.

Warhol's art, the art that is so original for being unoriginal, actually has its roots in Marcel Duchamp's "readymades." A particularly notorious one is Duchamp's 1917 "sculpture" entitled Fountain, which is little more than a urinal. Needless to say, people were shocked and organizers of the art exhibit to which Fountain was submitted refused to show it. Duchamp also painted L.H.O.O.Q. in 1919, which features da Vinci's Mona Lisa with a mustache.

Now fast forward to 1964. Andy Warhol unveils his take on sculpture with Brillo Box. Warhol has taken Duchamp's idea, but merged it with advertising, thus sanitizing it and making it presentable to the masses. He also follows Duchamp's lead of copying Mona Lisa, only Warhol decides to copy another famous lady: Marilyn Monroe. Once again, Duchamp's concept has been sanitized and merged with pop cultural nostalgia.

Today, Warhol is considered to be a genius. I don't know about you, but the first time I heard about Marcel Duchamp was in relation to Andy Warhol, that Duchamp "was an influence." This leads fans of Warhol to go back to Duchamp, consider his work, and possibly accept it.

Roger Fry was certainly right. This leads me to wonder, what would Fry think of the boy genius Andy Warhol?

(pictured from top: Brillo Box Andy Warhol, 1964; Marilyn Andy Warhol, 1967; L.H.O.O.Q. Marcel Duchamp, 1919; Fountain Marcel Duchamp, 1917)

Art and Roger Fry Bibliography

Essay in Abstract Design Roger Fry, 1915

Bruneau, Anne-Pascale. “Fry, Roger Eliot (1866-1934).” Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography. Ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2006. 14 September 2009
http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.tcu.edu/view/article/33285.

Fry, Roger. Essay in Abstract Design. Tate Collection, Britain.

Naylor, Gillian, ed. Bloomsbury: Its Artists, Authors and Designers. Boston: Bulfinch Press,
1990.

Reed, Christopher. Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2004.

Shone, Richard. The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1999.

Tate Online. 2003. Tate. 14 September 2009. http://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/group.htm

"Notes on Virginia's Childhood"

I must say, I love to learn about people, so Vanessa Bell's portrait of her sister was right up my alley - and that is exactly what her description of Virginia Woolf felt like - a portrait.

Vanessa Bell writes in a very visual way, like the painter that she is. Her description of her sister sitting at the breakfast table (on page 331), "a very rosy chubby baby, with bright green eyes, sitting in a high chair at the nursery table, drumming impatiently for her breakfast" immediately painted a picture in my mind. Reading the description was like looking at a photograph.

The rest of Bell's biography moves on, presenting itself like a series of snapshots. Bell describes the nurseries of her childhood - "There was a lovely bright fire to go to bed by, coal, food, hot water and babies being carried up many times a day" (pg. 333), and I can see the nurse carrying the children up the stairs and feel the warmth of the "lovely bright fire."

When Bell describes her siblings and herself after a bout of whooping cough, she chooses to portray them as coming out of their illness as "four little skeletons" (333). How very vivid! While "emaciated" or even "very skinny" would have gotten the point across, Bell chooses to paint a picture of sorts - you can see the children shuffling out of their rooms, their ribs clearly visible - they are "four little skeletons."

Bell also mentions one of her classmates in a singing class as "a serious creature, with a hooked nose and a fringe," and a "fiery little Irish boy" who "burst into floods of tears because he wasn't top of the class" (335). Floods of tears!

Rather than simply present an idea, Bell chooses to paint a picture, and that is what I love about her writing!