Is Andy Warhol the Art World’s Housing Bubble?

When Elizabeth Taylor passed away this past March, the nostalgia for all things “Liz” seemed inevitable. The brass ring of this Lizapalooza, however, seems to be Andy Warhol’s painting Liz #5, which sold earlier this month for $26.9 million USD. As art critic Jerry Saltz points out in a recent issue of New York Magazine, it seems as if every millionaire wants to own a Warhol. Thanks to his amazingly prolific career (and with a little help from "The Factory"), Warhol created enough art seemingly to go around, at least to those with enough cash to travel in the right circles. But, just like everyone once believed that it was a good thing that everyone owned a house in those days before the housing bubble burst, are rich collectors setting themselves up for a fall in lifting Warhol to the highest rank of artists, at least in terms of sales? Is Andy Warhol the art world’s housing bubble? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Andy Warhol the Art World’s Housing Bubble?"

[Image: Andy Warhol. Self-Portrait, 1986.]

Born Again: Beading the World Anew with Liza Lou

“You fall backward and you’re moved by the spirit of God and you get up and go forth and you’re a different person,” artist Liza Lou says in an interview of her “born again” Christian upbringing. “Later, as an artist, I realized I was redeeming objects with my material. There was the process of applying beads with tweezers, a very careful and attentive act—and then over time, the transformation; a kind of hallucinogenic quality, like the object was ‘saved’ or spirit-filled.” In Liza Lou, the first monograph examining the artist’s career, we see how Lou takes the craft of beading to a mind-boggling and soul-expanding extreme in works such as Man (from 2002; shown above), in which a man falls backward in epiphanal ecstasy with a dove, the classic symbol of the Holy Spirit, emerging from his mouth—all done as a fiberglass sculpture festooned with glittering glass beads. Through over 200 color photographs showing in fine detail the meticulous magic of Lou’s beads and a series of thought-provoking essays, Liza Lou will have you seeing and believing that this sometimes ugly world can be born again in beauty. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Born Again."

[Image: Liza Lou. Man, 2002. Glass beads on fiberglass. 68 x 71 x 16 inches (172.7 x 180.3 x 40.6 cm).]

[Many thanks to Rizzoli for providing me with the image above and a review copy of Liza Lou, with text by Eleanor Heartney, Lawrence Weschler, Arthur Lubow, and Peter Schjeldahl.]

Junk Man: Revolution, Complicity, and Art

In Death of the Liberal Class, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges argues that liberals have “conceded too much to the power elite.” In other words, traditional liberal institutions such as education, religion, labor, and the arts have stopped challenging corporate powers and, instead, joined them. It’s a powerful and often depressing argument, especially when Hedges probes fields usually condemned for their “liberal” and “revolutionary” tendencies, such as art. Hedges raises the old question of what is art in a different way, asking if art is creative expressions that free the mind, what do we call creative works that support the status quo? Junk, Hedges would most likely answer, giving some surprising examples of famous “junk men” in American art. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Junk Man."