Semiotic Analysis: Andy Warhol

There are two types of signs when talking of semiotics: the signifier is the sign which has physical form, stands for what it is. The signified is the sign that refers to something other than what it is; the referent (Branston & Stafford, 2006, p.13). Semiotics emphasizes the distinction between the signifier and signified as well as the idea of perception being a constructed and shaped opinion. The role of the denotations and connotations is to define the relationship between the signifier and it’s signified. So how does this relate to the question this essay is to answer, How can semiotic analysis deepen our understanding of Andy Warhol’s disaster pictures? This essay expects semiotic analysis to help in appreciating the message being portrayed but with the likes of Andy Warhol this may be difficult. Perhaps it will be his process of the work that will assist in deepening the understanding? This will be answered through critiques found on these paintings and Warhol’s work, through comparisons with another contemporary artist Gerard Richter and through the definitions of the Pop Art genre. Comparing Warhol with other like-minded artists may determine whether comparisons better our understanding.

To understand the art of Andy Warhol, the origins of Pop Art must be known. A group of artists in the mid 1950s focused on theoretical exploration of technology and science fiction in art. The members of the group formed in Britain; however the American Pop Art held no relation to British Pop Art and was more involved in the individual’s instinct. (Centre Pompidou. Le Pop Art. (Retrieved 2008)) Robert Rauschenberg’s work is where it merged from and is concerned with the everyday object and the effectiveness of images. Something that Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol developed on. Pop Art’s ideas of commercialism and mass culture are achieved with great irony. According to Marco Livingstone’s POP ART…a continuing history (1990, p.36) Richard Hamilton was an early icon of early Pop and had sent a letter listing characteristics to a publication in reference to the Independent Group and their theory of pop art and in suggestion of them being what made his own art. His list suggested Postmodern/ Pop art had to be: popular (designed for a mass audience), transient (a short term solution), easily forgotten, low cost, mass produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous and big business.

So how did Andy Warhol’s work fit into this genre of art? It fitted as it was all these listed characteristics and more. He took Lichtenstein’s assault on the accepted notion of good taste and art being a form of self expression motive and made his own stamp on the art world. He was so controversial in his choice of art work. He started off with replicating famous cartoon characters like Pop-eye the Sailor Man and Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Something of which was seen by most as a daring and blatant lack of originality. But he took it a step further by fixing it in some way to make it more than a copy. For one he painted them, but in the instance of the Popeye (1961) painting he had presented an ironic display of expressionism by cutting out the character and his name in white shapes so part of a crossword could be seen. It was ironic as it suggested the audience was looking through to another page of a newspaper. In a way it played on the mentality of some people who don’t care about the main subject of the news and just want to get to the crossword section. The rest of the canvas being covered in blue paint and able to dribble down the canvas was seen as an ‘Abstract Expressionist manner’ (Livingstone, 1990, p. 78)

A strong theme with Warhol was the ideas of Birth, Death, Love, and War.
His technique for his pieces was to take a series of Polaroid pictures with a big shot camera, send a large canvas over to a commercial photograph studio where the photo would be blown up and he would paint over it.

His series of mass produced images of car crashes, suicides, gangster funerals, atomic explosions, and electric chairs started after he developed a series of paintings exposing police dogs savaging blacks in Alabama. He did it when racial tension in the American South was extreme due to the black civil rights struggle in 1963 and for the rest of the year his obsession or focus was on the implications of death and disaster. “…when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have any effect.” - Warhol. One critic viewed Warhol’s painting topic as more than just an indifference. They thought the visual repetitiousness made a cultural statement about the way mass media reports tragic or horrific imagery. (Shane, 1988, p. 24) “..the fact most of us find such imagery intriguing throws back in our faces the morbidity, vicariousness or prurience of our interest in disaster.” By looking at the Optical Car Crash (1962) the deliberate abstraction, blurred and massive overlaps of the multi-copied picture (reflect the confusion and tension of the cars colliding. In a way semiotic analysis is a bit difficult to apply as the images are so abstract and blurry. It can still be carried out though, as a seriously crumpled bonnet of a car is denoted and signifies a severe car crash while connoting the ideas of trauma, physical tension, and loss of life. It can deepen our understanding of Warhol’s work as the critic has shown, but more so through the structure and technique of the art rather then just its visual image. This is backed up by a major aspect of Warhol’s work; the celebration of ‘all that is superficial, interchangeable and ordinary.’ (Luthy, 2001) With the celebration being seen as more the strategy of the work as opposed to the purpose of it.

Michael Lúthy’s contribution to Warhol Polke Richter: In the Power of Painting 1 (2001) gave in great detail his analysis of the disaster pictures. He described Warhol’s technique and the connotations and ideologies they had formed. According to him the pictures were subjected to deteriation in several stages by over exaggerating contrast. He made the pictures overlap and used colour unevenly. This was believed as being a way to moderate the shock of the image but in a way it highlighted it even more. As by distorting it in such a way it draws extra attention, arguably it would’ve done the opposite of moderate. A favourite theory that was found was the idea that through his techniques he ‘screened off trauma but manipulated it to the level of the picture itself.’ So in a sense it is the style and process of the paintings that act as a sign/signifier. The serial repetition creates an ambiguity; it softens or devalues the image. The best way to describe Andy Warhol’s technique is to say it was ‘a semiotic transfer which emptied objects of their…received meaning and re-inscribed over them a new set of significations.’ (Suarez, A., Juan .1996, p 216, para.1)

In terms of semiotics, the captioning of his paintings connoted a particular idea. He anchored and controlled the meaning of the art; he was able to guide the audience to the intended perception or understanding of the piece. Though it could be argued that the captions were on the most part obvious and unimaginative, which did deter from reaching the deeper meaning. The caption of a person falling from a high rise building read ‘Suicide.’ It may not be the most obvious of summations as the five images of a man falling down the face of tall building is bleached in parts and in a gradual manner until the final picture all that is left is the building. The jumping man is erased from the photo, signifying the implication of suicide, the idea of leaving this world. But a picture of a nuclear cloud as ‘An Atomic Explosion’ is more explicit in its literal meaning. The caption leaves nothing to the imagination; it just states what it is. But through this it links to the connotations of death and destruction through the use of red and black, and the gradual heaviness of the black wiping out the image signifying the idea of departed life, loss and extinction.

Warhol’s work can be placed in the Pop Art genre by comparing it with the likes of Gerard Richter. Since both these artists have been said to portray a prime characteristic of Pop Art, production of a ‘related conundrum of the painterly and the photographic.’ (Foster, Krauss, Bois and Buchloh. 2004, p. 445) Meaning in their own ways their art had forged a relationship between paint and photography. In non- postmodern art, the two would not have been accepted together. Whereas in the Pop Art genre, chopping and changing, crude editing, deliberate careless production works in developing an alternative meaning. Richter too used the blurring and smudging method to manipulate and control the meaning of his work. His Rokokotisch, 1964 portrayed a blurred and slightly out of focus side table, but with the same intention as some of Warhol’s work. “to make everything equally important and equally unimportant.” – Richter, 1964 (Elger 2001, p.118)

In conclusion semiotic analysis has been helpful in deepening some understanding of Andy Warhol’s work but not all. It seems the complexity of the artist’s technique can block the image being shown. Which is something Warhol has done on purpose to create an alternative view, but it has made the semiotic process have to adapt and change. In the sense of having the way the image has been changed being the signifier of the ideologies of death and distress in his Disaster Pictures.
The images were not as clear; words had to be relied on for signs. However by placing Warhol’s work alongside Richter’s work, and therefore in the pop art genre did better the understanding of what the artist intended.



No. words 1650


Reference List:

Books:

Branston, G. & Stafford, R. (1996, 1999, 2003, 2006) the Media Student’s Book. (4th ed.). New York: Routledge

Fischer, P., Luthy, M., Hentschel, M. & Elger, D. (2001). Warhol’s Calisthenics, or, Reproducing Reproductions. In Warhol Polke Richter- In the Power of Painting 1, (p. 30) Zurich: Scalo

Livingstone, M. (1990). Just What is It? In POP ART…a continuing history. New York: Harry N. Abrams

Shane, E. (1988) Warhol. London: Studio Editions

Electronic Media.
Online Internet Document.
Centre Pompidou. Le Pop Art. Retrieved 18 March, 2008, from http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-Popart-EN/ENS-PopArt-En.htm