DAY 118: Fifteen Minutes

It is a phenomenon today that almost everyone in a first world environment can potentially be famous. From internet applications like MySpace and YouTube, Facebook and a myriad of other social networking sites and applications, people can put themselves in their own spotlight for almost anyone to have a look at.

Then there is the almost unbelievable obsession with reality shows. Watching ordinary people and washed-up, has-been celebrities living together in a house, actively participating in their obsessive search for fame. Was this what Andy Warhol, Pop Art genius and guru was talking about when he famously stated that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes?”

As an artist, there is no denying that Warhol revolutionised the previously rather stuffy canvas of creativity and production. Here was a man who was born the son of a working class Czech immigrant, who grew up without a father from the age of thirteen because he died in an accident and instead of turning into a dependable, stoic man as is perhaps what usually happens when disaster strikes, Warhol turned to the world of commercial art. He was openly obsessed with making money, (he famously said “Making money is art and working is art and the good business is the best art”) and perhaps most famously took the mystique out of the previous upper-class domain of art.

Artistically, Warhol studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and after graduating in 1949, went to New York where he worked as a magazine illustrator for big names like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and very soon established himself as one of the city’s most sought after commercial illustrators. It was in the 1960’s however that he started his glorification of mass-produced items like Coca Cola and Campbell Soup Cans, going on to produce his iconic silk-screens of contemporary legends like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.

According to critics, it was Warhol’s ability and his vital talent to remove the difference between fine arts and the commercial art world, using media like magazine illustrations, comic books, record albums and advertising campaigns that best defined his contribution; and also established Pop Art, the genre best associated with him and his followers.

It would perhaps be easy to forget just how influential Andy Warhol really was in his time; commercially he was a huge success as people clamoured to get a piece of his creative pie – in fact the latest amount one of his Marilyn pictures fetched at auction was for a record seventeen million dollars.

We should never forget however that it is not only the world of art, but the business and commercial impact and influence that Andy Warhol had on an otherwise rather intellectual environment that marks his greatest success. If a man who said that “when you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums,” who took art down to everyday life, could best be described today, would it be appropriate to think that he has extended his own fifteen minutes and given it substance and longevity?

Quite unlike the media and attention-hungry people who demand our attention today without really adding anything of value.

Weight for me tomorrow. Paul

Paul Lambis is the author of “Where is Home?” – A journey of hilarious contrasts. 
For more information on Paul Lambis, and to order his book online,
visit www.paul-lambis.com