From Warhol to Beeple

All innovation begins with tradition. Even as each generation rejects the seemingly dated traditions of the decades before, they are dependent upon those same traditions to function as a starting block to push off from, much as a runner sprints forward using a starting block.

SXSW as a cultural movement is about discovery in technology, business, and art forms such as music and film. So, when thinking about the positioning of the next and the new for SXSW London, it may seem counterintuitive to include a historical figure such as Andy Warhol. But Warhol holds a special place in cultural history for his seemingly nonchalant destruction of the boundaries and barriers between art and commerce, high art and commercial art, art and technology. The siloed definitions that separate creative endeavors as disparate as painter, filmmaker, publisher and producer were ignored by Warhol.

The team planning SXSW London has, from the start, consistently used the word convergence as a touchstone. Convergence is a dynamic concept that brings together markedly different people, ideas, and conditions in what can be either a soft blending or a violent collision. In either situation, something new is created. This is reflected in the SXSW London show that has been curated by Alex Poots, which explores the transformative place where the arts and technology meet and converge.

Warhol personified convergence through his use of every possible means of creative expression; from the traditional realm of painting, drawing, photography and sculpture to new methods such as silkscreen printing and media. But, in perhaps his most radical and influential decision, Warhol embraced business as an integrated and unapologetic element of his creative endeavor. The artist’s business ventures - Interview Magazine, narrative film production, management of the Velvet Underground, a modeling career, celebrity endorsements, commissioned portraits and commercial advertising contracts – may not always have generated significant financial returns but they converged to build a Warhol brand that is arguably more relevant and potent than ever.

The use of technology by creatives is one of the most resonant topics in contemporary culture and a cornerstone of the SXSW London program. But this is not a new topic. One of Warhol’s first uses of technology was his adoption of the commercial process of silkscreen printing in 1962. He did not invent the commercial printing process but he did revolutionize visual culture by changing how paintings could be made in a seemingly mechanical way. (Although silkscreen printing may appear to be entirely mechanical, it requires many hand-painted elements and an artist’s eye to be successful. The same is often true of contemporary tools such as AI.) Warhol’s early silkscreen paintings such as Baseball (1962), with a repetition of the image across the canvas that resembles a film strip, form a bridge to an even greater disruption of the traditional artmaking practice.

In 1963, Andy Warhol picked up a Bolex camera and declared that he was no longer a painter but a filmmaker. In reality, he continued to paint but the use of film (and later consumer grade video) was a strategy to combat his greatest fear – becoming boring. Just as he began to achieve the success he had dreamed of with his iconic canvases of the early 1960s, Warhol intuited that he needed to break free of the strictures of painting by doing something radically different. He achieved this partially by continuously changing and juxtaposing his subject matter from celebrities and brands to car crashes and flowers. But he did so most radically through film.

Warhol’s seminal Screen Tests from the 1960s were an entirely new form of portraiture. In the Screen Tests, Warhol would leave the “sitter” staring into the lens of his camera for the length of a roll of film, often walking away after telling them to do nothing. The sitter was confronted by the camera and often began to reveal themselves through their discomfort. Small movements and poses were further exaggerated when the film was ultimately shows in a slightly slowed format.  The Screen Tests and other early films were also a business opportunity. Like any good entrepreneur, Warhol knew how to scale through recombining popular products in a way that was both familiar and new. By 1966, Warhol had created a film catalogue that had not brought him much revenue but that had more firmly positioned him in the avant garde world of experimental filmmaking in downtown New York; a scene that he much preferred to his previous milieu of shop windows and commercial art on the Upper East Side. When Warhol met and began to manage The Velvet Underground (including inserting Nico into the group, much to their dismay), he further cemented his new image replete with a leather jacket and sunglasses replacing his earlier tattered preppy look that had gained him the nickname “Raggedy Andy.”

Looking across his new assets – films, music and downtown credibility – Warhol created a product that could combine these elements.  The resulting immersive experience to be situated in a Lower East Side nightclub, The Dom, was called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable (EPI) and launched in 1966. EPI combined Warhol’s still, staring film portraits of artists and downtown beauties with shocking depictions of the underground in films like Vinyl and aimless documentation footage of the Velvet Underground rehearsing. All of these elements formed a backdrop for the Velvets themselves performing live along with denizens of Warhol’s Factory who danced with whips and other paraphernalia. Light projections added a further layer of nightlife darkness and glamour.

“Since I don’t really believe in painting anymore, I thought it would be a nice way of combining…music and art and film altogether.” (1)

In SXSW London, we focus on a selection of Warhol’ films that appeared in the EPI along with an additional Screen Test of counterculture icon Dennis Hopper, which never appeared in EPI. These films represent Warhol using the technology of the day in a way that was intentionally self-taught and rough. The films are not an attempt to make a “beautiful” film but to use the power of the camera to disorient and seduce.

From Warhol to Beeple can seem like a long journey but the connections between the two artists are significant. Beeple (Mike Winklemann) has had one of the most disruptive careers ever seen in the art world, eschewing the formal pathway to visibility via museums and galleries, and instead embracing new technology (NFTs and digital design) that could be authentically shown on social media platforms with an even greater reach than Warhol enjoyed when making his television show for MTV in the 1980s.

SXSW London presents the UK debut of Beeple’s generative artwork, The Tree of Knowledge, which is part of the Lingotto collection. The pieceuses real time data from sources such as news sites, social media and weather patterns to cause changes to the video image of a majestic tree as it thrives or decays. Beeple’s move into physical sculpture, in this case a Hirst-like box with screens on all four sides, is a significant development for an artist with a reputation for digital work, especially NFTs. The work is shown at SXSW London in a group show with Warhol and several other artists who evidence a strong interest in technology.

The connections between Beeple and Warhol are myriad. Chance plays a significant role in both The Tree of Knowledge and Warhol’s work as a whole.  The Tree of Knowledge can be altered by participants “changing the channel” of desired data input and the data itself fluctuates endlessly. The sculpture can also be altered by pressing a “doom” button that shifts the work into a dystopian landscape where the tree dies before being resurrected through a reset of the system.  Significantly, the button can only be utilized 666 times in any showing before the image shifts permanently to one of destruction.

Warhol also utilized chance throughout his production.  In particular, he was masterful in embracing the mistakes occurring in silkscreen printing where the screen often incorrectly registered due to placement or slippage. These “mistakes” created some of Warhol’s greatest works such as the double register in his Elvis paintings that transform Elvis from an idol into a distorted monster. The same effect is achieved in Warhol’s Ambulance Disaster from his car crash series. The image of a splayed body hanging from the window of a crashed ambulance is repeated twice but, in the lower image, the silkscreen does not transfer the image of the face, obliterating the figure in death. Whether these mistakes were truly an accident or somewhat intentional, Warhol was astute enough to realize that they added power to the work. 

More intentional was Warhol’s choice in presentation of his double screen film The Chelsea Girls to allow the projectionist to decide which screen’s soundtrack was turned on, meaning that there was never a fixed version of the work. The same could be said for EPI itself, which varied and continues to vary depending on the physical space and curator installing the work.

The lack of a definitive or fixed version of an artwork draws Warhol and Beeple closer together as Beeple moves into what could otherwise be seen as traditional sculptural practice. The generative aspect of these works is antithetical to the concept of an NFT that is inherently fixed because the image is built into a code that verifies authorship and value. The reluctance to make a stable object seems uniquely suited to both the optimistic chaos of America in the 1960s and the global reordering of contemporary society.

Whatever the art world’s view of Warhol (one must remember that Warhol’s critical reputation was in tatters by the 1980s and it has taken decades for his later work to be embraced) and Beeple (only now being considered in museum settings), no one can deny their work ethic. Neither artist came from a privileged background and their sheer determination has been a shared recipe for success. Warhol’s Factory was a creative community but it also represented the many mouths he had to feed.  This, paired with his terror of being forgotten, resulted in a 7 day a week work schedule. Beeple’s first commercially successful work, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, is evidence of the same relentless desire to succeed and the commitment to show up as an artist day after day. The sheer volume of work produced by both artists becomes performative, durational. This persistence is all the more laudable given much of the art world’s labeling of both artists as too commercial and their financial success as an indicator of superficiality.

There is another less apparent connection between Beeple and Warhol which is spirituality in a time of crisis. Warhol’s Catholicism, specifically Byzantine Catholicism, has been extensively explored in numerous exhibitions produced by The Andy Warhol Museum. Warhol’s return to Catholic themes such as his Last Supper series during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s was paired with apocalyptic works based on lurid handbills distributed on the streets of New York City featuring slogans such as “Heaven and Hell Are Just a Breath Away” and “Repent and Sin No More.” With Beeple, there has been a tendency to strip away deeper readings of the work because of its association with commerce and social media. However, the cycle of death and rebirth in Tree of Knowledge is readily apparent. Although Beeple does not embrace overtly Catholic imagery, The Tree of Knowledge may represent a moment of solace and renewal in a time of chaos.

Although Beeple can and does make much of his work without direct assistance, using digital tools, the very nature of digital art is collaborative. His Everydays project may seem solitary but it is the indirect collaboration with software designers and millions of followers on social media that makes the work possible. Warhol’s insistence on a mechanical way of producing art also involved constant collaboration, whether it was Gerard Melanga helping to silkscreen or Paul Morrissey behind the camera directing the later films. This tradition of assistants and assistance has a long tradition in classical art but accelerated with Warhol and reached a new level with artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. In the digital age, the absence of the artist’s hand is assumed.

There are, of course, as many points of divergence between Warhol and Beeple as there are touchpoints. The opaque nature of Warhol’s work and intentions leaves his legacy open to interpretation. But Warhol’s greatest strength is that he continues to inspire new generations of artists and, without that continuing influence, his greatest fear of becoming irrelevant might well come to pass. Many people have asked me what Warhol would have thought of social media and, in particular, Instagram. My answer is…Beeple.

(1) “USA Artists: Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein,” Goldsmith, I’ll Be Your Mirror, p. 84.