«MASS ART IS HIGH ART»

Warhol didn’t upgrade low culture into high art, the way Roy Lichtenstein did. And he didn’t insist, abracadabra, that the humble must count as fine, as Marcel Duchamp did with his urinal Fountain. Warhol kept the low low and dared high folk to swim in it—and to count their baptism as art. That’s what this posh show at the Met can’t quite get across.

Remember that from his earliest days as an artist, Warhol was and wanted to be a true icon of popular culture, not merely its recorder. He was at least as well known—and maybe as genuinely important—for the antics at his silver-walled Factory, or later at Studio 54, as for any artwork he made. That means that Warhol doesn’t merely use art to convey the sadness of Marilyn, the desperation of Elvis, the superficiality of a socialite such as Nan Kempner, the way a great photographer might. (The way Richard Avedon does, for instance, in his Truman Capote portrait in this show.) Warhol shares his celebrities’ sadness, their striving, their superficiality. He’s got none of the safe distance that most makers—including all the clever Warholians now at the Met—keep from their subjects; he’s in the thick of things with them. It’s said Warhol genuinely liked Campbell’s soup. I doubt Lichtenstein kept up with Donald Duck.

-Newsweek