I can't help my fascination with Andy Warhol. It started when I watched the PBS documentary about him a couple of years ago, which made me think of him as more than a very weird artist who went out of his way to draw attention to himself.
Of course he did also give that impression, but for me, studying Warhol has given unexpected positive consequences. Right now I'm in a kind of drought in terms of ideas and inspiration (That is to say, I have no idea what I'm doing or why). But looking at early Warhol works, from his commercial art years and the coke bottle pictures for instance, helps to remind me that a little playfulness and sense of freedom in sketching is a very good thing - I often tend to take myself too seriously and put pressure on myself to create nothing short of masterpieces and in general be very result oriented, but here the other night I sat down and just played with a bottle of all-purpose ink and cheap sketching paper.
Some of them are not even ideas as such but just plain splashing of ink, which may not look like much but felt amazing to do just because I wasn't thinking about what I was doing.
On the subject of Warhol I've also volunteered to write a summary of Benjamin Buchloh's article "Andy Warhol's One-Dimensional Art" to present in the modern art class next week. (As much as I admire Warhol, right now I don't understand why I did that - I'm terrible at speaking in front of people) It's not a huge task and there's not that much at stake really - no grades or direct evaluation, but my chief concern is if I have actually understood Mr Buchloh's arguments right (Good thoughts/prayers on Wednesday gratefully accepted).
On an off-topic note; in terms of web site updates, I'm planning on updating the site within a few days, however the photos are not the best quality and I will replace them with better ones later.
