OUGD406 - Andy Warhol

OUGD406 - Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was one of the most seminal modern artists of the 20th century, and when simply creating art started to bore him, he turned his attention to other ideas, one of which was managing and producing then debut album for The Velvet Underground with Nico. Warhol’s lack of music recording and production knowledge meant the band were pretty much left with free reins when it came to the music, except for Warhols addition of German model and singer Nico to the band. More of Warhol’s ideas included an intentional crack on each vinyl record where the song ‘I’ll be Your Mirror’ played, causing the words to be repeated until the arm of the record player was lifted. This idea ultimately did not happen. Warhol also designed the iconic Banana design for the record sleeve and suggested it be a sticker with the directions ‘Peel Slowly and See’, revealing a pink unpeeled banana design below it.

Peel Slowly and See works well as the title for this art rock cassette tape because it references this research well but also the sentence suggests there is something underneath to be revealed, applying to art rocks tendency towards intellectual and intricate songwriting and the idea of listeners trying to figure out what certain songs or lyrics mean. 

It’s not only Warhol’s input into the Velvet Undergrounds album which makes him relevant to this micro genre, but some of his modernist sensibilities. Warhol’s principles for some of his work are very similar to the songs of art rock artists who took on a more modernist and minimal approach. This is effectively the idea of challenging the boundaries of art/music and creating something completely out of context of what it should be, for example Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, which for all intents and purposes were simply an everyday household object, on the opening night of their exhibition, one reporter even remarked - “Am I in an art gallery or a supermarket?” Effectively Warhol put something seemingly random in the context of art, and in doing so it became art, an idea first revolutionised by Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Water Fountain’. This idea is seen in art rock when artists such as the Beatles or the Beach Boys create sounds on their songs using non instrumental objects like coke cans, tin baths or even Brian Wilson’s dogs. It is more so seen in modernist art rock records like the Velvet Underground’s were sounds are created on conventional instruments like the guitar which subject the musical convention so much that they don’t even sound like instruments anymore, an ideas that John Cale and Lou Reed reportedly wanted to achieve.

Ultimately these modernist sensibilities could be applied very well to the creation of an object to represent the Art Rock genre. I like the idea of taking a household object or something you’d buy in a supermarket and redesigning the label. This could be done with a cereal box because it links to how John Lennon got the inspiration for a song by watching a cornflakes advert. It could also be done to a coke bottle/can linking to not only Andy Warhol but The Beach Boy’s use of coke cans when recording to create unusual sounds on one of their songs.