Last Christams I visited the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia to see their Andy Warhol exhibition. It was truly magical to see so many of Warhol's work 'in the flesh' but also to see the variety of his work, and to see some of his lesser known pieces that get overshadowed by the mass circulation of his more famous pieces. As a design student dealing with mass communication, I believe, it is important to study Warhol's work because he does something very important in a an art historical sense.
Warhol's work attacked high modernism, representing the mundane of peoples' lives as something to be valued no less than the academic ideologies of avant-garde. It questions what is worthy of art and whether or not his type of art was more real and more relevant to culture than what had gone before. He also realises the effects mass communication is having on the society, and seeks through stark representations to elicit strong responses from people, as expressionist portrayals only further overloaded people with information. He is highly aware of the power of social icons and their ability through collective social associated ideas these icons can transfer meaning into his work, something so important when dealing with mass communication.
I believe we must understand historically how people have reacted to images before us, to enable us to understand society and therfore how our design work will be understood and interpreted.
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