Andy Warhol and Technology

I promised you wonderful readers a post on Andy Warhol, the Pop artist who experienced the height of his fame in the 1960s. Warhol explored the ideas of Pop Culture and the ways it was changing in the time period that he was working. How was information being transferred? What was society like? It was an incredible period of change. But what's his connection to technology?

Warhol, as well as being a painter and sculptor, experimented with the form of printmaking called silkscreening. This is defined as "A method of reproducing colored artwork using a cut stencil attached to a stretched, fine-meshed silk screen."This was just one way, though, that Warhol incorporated new technology into his artwork - this would be the literal sense.

As a Pop Artist, Warhol's artwork became a social commentary. One site on Warhol put it as such:

"...that in a culture glutted with information, where most people experience most things at second or third hand through TV and print, through images that become banal and disassociated by repeated again and again and again, there is role for affectless art."

So, instead of a literal sense, Warhol shed light on the way our society was changing in reaction to technology. In his painting, Marilyn Diptych, Warhol quite literally prints Marilyn Monroe's iconic image over and over and over again, till the colors become dull and muddied. And in that way, Warhol was saying, with her image (or the Campbell's soup, or the Billow Boxes, etc) being fed to the public eye so much, is it even special anymore?

I wonder what Warhol would think of our society today?