The Lost "Works" of Andy Warhol - an Exercise in Quotation Marks

An interesting forensic project was completed late last year, culminating in the release of a documentary and exhibition this year at the Warhol Museum.  It involved the recovery of a number of items saved on Amiga 1000 discs by Andy Warhol.  A few of them had been thought to be lost, and the rest weren't even known until they were pulled off the discs and viewed.  When I say "interesting," I don't mean it in the sense that I believe these are newly-recovered works of genius.  Rather, I believe that this recovery has only further shown what a tremendous sham Warhol was, and that the public reaction to what has been found shows how fully modern society continues to hoodwink themselves into believing they've seen genius.

My interest was piqued by three of these files; a portrait of Debbie Harry (a perennial favorite subject of Warhol's), a detail from Botticelli's Venus Rising, and a pastiche of color that's more or less a self-portrait.

Debbie Harry's Portrait

 

Debbie Harry, courtesy Warhol Museum

This file was created on July 23rd, 1985 as part of a live demonstration of the capabilities of the then-just-released Amiga 1000.  Out of necessity (and wisdom) it was a fairly simple setup, consisting of the Amiga with a camera connected to it, and the software Graphicraft (or by some reports, its big brother ProPaint) loaded on the computer. During the demo, all that occurred to create this portrait was that a still frame was taken of Ms. Harry and transferred automatically into Graphicraft, where Warhol used a fill tool to create some color regions.

The entire process took about a minute, from capture, through fill, to completion.  There are many written accounts of this particular "work," as putative as the BBC and Salon, along with many others, with one word in common: Painting.  Even though I'm not a painter, I find the use of this word offensive for two reasons.  Obviously it wasn't physically painted, but that's not what really offends me.  First, and the more obvious, there weren't any strokes of color using the mouse, no shading technique, no practice of any drawing craft, indeed not a single action or thought that could even remotely be construed as painting of any kind. There are many fine artists working in the computer medium whose work could, even in 1985, be considered "painting." Their practiced techniques and use of the tools available are in complete harmony with the word, despite not using real paint.  I'm offended on their behalf. 

Second, because pressing the term "painted" into use implies a practiced skill that doesn't exist in this case, its evocation unnecessarily elevates a simple sequence of steps into the lofty world of fine art, and drags its alleged perpetrator along for the ride, into a realm he is unworthy of populating.  Continuing a charade that Warhol himself admitted to using, readers with only a passing familiarity with his work are haplessly deluded into thinking he was a painter.

A commentator during the Amiga unveiling proudly exclaimed that this type of thing had "never been done before."  Except perhaps by the programmer, who built the flood fill tool for precisely that purpose, and undoubtedly used it precisely as Warhol did hundreds of times in testing and recreation.

The Three-Eyed Venus

 

Warhol's Venus, courtesy Warhol Museum

Botticelli's Venus, detail, in common use

 At some point during his foray into the computer world, Warhol also saved an image of a detail of Botticelli's Venus.  This was another piece found during the digital excavation process, and indeed it had never before been seen, as exclaimed by the archaeologists.  (Skip ahead to the 14 minute mark.)  But even more interesting is the original of the image.  When I first saw it, prior to the release of the documentary, I immediately thought that he had scanned the image and done a simple copy and paste to get the extra eye.  But overlaying Warhol's file onto other scans of Venus only proved that scanning or photography were not the techniques used. Regardless of any scaling, skewing or warping, there was simply no way this was a scan, or even an off-axis photograph .  Wait just a minute - had I underestimated Warhol's talent after all?  Had he gone so far as to reinterpret the image in his own painting hand, making some of the hairs different colors, and mutating the scale in each axis, actually creating a new work?

No.  As was casually revealed in the above-referenced clip, Warhol simply took a piece of clipart from the existing Amiga library, copied and pasted an extra eye onto it, and is hailed as a genius and visionary.  Sure, he never released it, or even signed it, and that's to his credit, even though some of his works are unsigned.  The truly irksome facet of the entire exercise is the fashion in which the people viewing the file are so enamored by it.  All credit is given to the person who used someone else's image, without so much as a fleeting thought about the person who actually painted it in the first place for the clipart collection.  This is really the heart of the Warhol facade, as this same process is repeated over and over throughout his catalogue, giving praise to prints that are not only not one-of-a-kind works of art, but that are at their heart stolen from other people who took the time to create an image.  If an image is re-purposed or appropriated, that's part of art, and always has been.  But the process should be transformative, not imitative.  Taking an image and passing it off as your own creation, when all you've done is a slight and simple modification, is dishonest.

A quick aside here: United States copyright law has held interesting exceptions for works of art under the umbrella of fair use, as opposed to those items meant for mass consumption, such as a poster.  If a work is created that is either substantially similar to, or based substantially on, another work, then it is a copyright infringement, particularly if used for said mass consumption, and thus is not considered to be "fair use."  However, if only a single work is made, and is thus a work of art, then a blanket exception is often granted, since the market for the original would not be affected, unless it is reasonably indistinguishable from the original.  This partial reading of the concept of fair use is quite subject to the judge hearing the case, as in Cariou v. Prince, which was initially found in favor of the photographer whose work was appropriated.  Upon appeal, the Second Circuit found in favor of the artist who "borrowed" Cariou's photographs.  Cariou appealed, but was rejected.  As many artists have found, trying to blur these lines will land you in some legal trouble in the modern world.  Warhol wasn't particularly fond of one-of-a-kind originals, which he eschewed in favor of prints, each designed to be sold for a profit.  That makes his works of that type much more infringing than they would have been had he made only a single work of art from each one.

Self-Portrait

 

Andy Warhol, courtesy Warhol Museum

This file was also never released in Warhol's lifetime, though unlike the preceding two, it is signed.  I include this item as a juxtaposition to the previous two, because it displays an interesting curiosity and willingness to work with new ideas and textures, even if it is somewhat primitive.  The background texture fills also give an odd 3-d effect to Warhol's face, enhancing the power of the image.  To me, this is unquestionably the most important, and most interesting, work found in the Warhol Amiga archive.

Even at its most interesting, and most evocative of what Warhol would have tried to do with physical media if he could, this file is still primitive enough that it can only be considered noodling.  That's not an insult to this piece - Warhol was indeed noodling with the Amiga, and was not able to spend enough time with it to bring out a technique that would have been very lasting.  Instead, something was created that reflected the banality of the 1980's, though that was probably not his intent.

Some would say that the primitive nature of this piece was due to the primitive nature of the Amiga itself.  After all, computer graphics were in their infancy, not yet having developed even to the point where the rest of the art world could even deride them.  But that's a copout, as the tools cannot define the artist.  If one wishes to see what a real artist did with Graphicraft, look no further than Jim Sachs, whose graphics work on the games Defender of the Crown and Centurion, Defender of Rome were done entirely with that program.  Video gaming pioneer and creator RJ Mical (who also helped invent the Amiga computer) said of Sachs, "Jim Sachs, what a God he is," marvels Mical. "Jim Sachs is amazing. These days everyone sees graphics like that because there are a lot of really good computer graphics artists now, but back then, 20 years ago, it was astonishing to have someone that good."

The Enduring Mystery

 

There seems to be no end to the willing group hypnosis of the Warhol Effect.  Even mainstay art critics can't seem to fathom the monster they've created.  For example, Jonathan Jones, in his overview of the Amiga project, said these two things, in the very same article:  "[Warhol] was our greatest visual prophet" and "[Warhol] made paintings on a production line, with assistants silkscreening found photographs onto canvas."  The irony of those two statements juxtaposed together seems lost not only on Jones, but on the entire rest of the art world.