In Art Review: Andy Warhol & Bruce Nauman
The Meditation Upon Mortality And Responsibility In The New Era. Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych & Bruce Nauman, Self-Portrait as a Fountain
After the world has been shaken up by both World Wars, the collective understanding of the term Art has shifted. Although the political, cultural and economic contexts have always been important in relation to Art, it can be argued that before the beginning of 20th century the medium and the skills of the artist were more valued than the commentary the artist had to make. In their works Marilyn Diptych, 1962, and Self-Portrait as a Fountain, 1966-1967, Andy Warhol and Bruce Nauman respectively wanted to challenge the conventional understanding of what is vital about Art and instead use the new forms as a tool to reflect upon the roles our legacy, contemporary culture and our perception play in how the new modern world unfolds before us.
At first, it may seem that there is nothing in common between the two, but it is only if the viewer does not look beyond the apparent subject and the medium. Although both images are large enough pieces, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych's canvas is almost twice the size of the print of Nauman’s Self-Portrait as a Fountain. It is also more intense in its composition, with 50 copies of close-up portraits of arguably one of the most important pop-culture idols Marilyn Monroe put next to each other with a total of 5 rows and 10 columns. This intensity may serve as a reflection upon her enormous and unbearable fame and the consequences Ms. Monroe had to face naively diving deep into it. Nauman’s Self-Portrait depicts only one person - him standing denuded in the middle of the picture plane against a black background. His arms are raised up to a shoulder level, his palms are facing upwards, and his figure is all casted in bright red light with a few spots of blue. The posture, as well as the primary palette both, may suggest a playful tone and childlike trust granted to the world and his audience. At the same time, there is still a certain amount of caution and retained privacy because Nauman does not appear in front of the viewer fully naked - only his chest is revealed, the shoulders are slightly tilted away from the spectators, which contributes to the perky feel of the entire piece. Of course, the trickle of water coming out of artist’s mouth adds a satiric note to the melody of this work, but it still most certainly pays an homage to another iconic phenomenon of the modern culture - Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain.
That’s where the pieces start to find their similarities - in the meaning. They both reflect on the importance of what has been collectively paid attention to and how it can be transformed into something new. Both artists experiment with metaphorical depersonalization, but while Nauman turns himself into an object in a cheerful manner and celebrates the new world by playing with what came before him in a childlike way, Warhol’s underlying tone of the piece is much grimmer despite half of its color palette of vibrant pink and yellow. By making multiple copies of the painting of Marilyn through the industrial process of silk printing, Warhol suggests that demanding pop culture and mass consumption that came with it deprived Ms. Monroe of her individuality which faded gradually just like the black and white copies of the painting on the righthand side of the diptych and eventually led her humane identity to disappear and allowed for an unreachable idol to be born.
Despite deceiving bright colors on the lefthand side of the diptych, Warhol reflects upon the causes of a tragic fate of the iconic woman, and with the use of industrialized process of creation, he invites his audience to the dark side of degrading morality that came with the new postwar era of mass consumption. Bruce Nauman meets the viewer on the opposite side of it and not only courageously greets him and the era with his very own bare hands and torso, he also takes a more playful and arguably hopeful approach to the new reality while still paying respect to his artistic ancestors. Neither can be judged, but it is up to every individual in the audience to decide how deep he wants to look and what he finds there that resonates with one piece or another.