concept of ‘Work’ and ‘Female Beauty’ as manifested in the works of William Morris and Andy Warhol

concept of ‘Work’ and ‘Female Beauty’ as manifested in the works of William Morris and Andy Warhol

This essay examines the concept of ‘Work’ and ‘Female Beauty’ as manifested in the works of William Morris and Andy Warhol. The critique will evaluate the distinctions based on factors such as the zeitgeist, upbringing and social class of these artists and the influence it had on their works.

According to William Morris (1882), the thinking that summarized his philosophy revolved around utility and beauty. “If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”, he says in a lecture.

This thinking informed the works that Morris produced, with the explicit protestant connotations dominant in American culture in that era subtly influencing every art piece that came from his hand. In a sense, there was no space for non-functional implements or aesthetic hideousness, valid concepts that have found a home in the modern art world.

According to Andy Warhol (2014), art is more a function of constant productivity rather than some deep intellectual process revolving around philosophies. “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it is good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art”, he said.

This thinking is a clear expression of the spirit of the postwar era when art for art’s sake started becoming commonplace. It was no longer mandatory to base your art on specific values. This was also a result of the change in the relationship of the artist and the public. No longer were artists reliant on wealthy patrons who would fund their monolithic works. Art was now directly available to all segments of society and as per what Warhol reflects, there is definitely someone who is going to like it as the critics find words to comment.

According to Jeffrey Petts (2008), Morris and his fellows in the Art and Craft Movement in the 1870s to 1890s had a theory of art that transcended their own works and achievements. They had an underlying viewpoint that animated the spirit of their pieces, informing the messages that their products conveyed to art enthusiasts.

This stands in contrast to the postwar artists. According to Caroline Jones (), they “chose instead the symbolic space of the manufactory, with its social and political implications, to signify their activity.

Although others can be seen to express this development, the work of Andy Warhol and the construction of his studio as the “Factory” are apodictic of the change”. To them, art was no longer a function of beauty and utility, conveying a philosophy and sending out a message: a product that could convey excitement or drudgery, something, or nothing at all.

Case study 1 – Morris Frontispiece

William Morris’ Frontispiece of the book Wood beyond the World, an invention of Sir Edward Burne-Jones was made of woodcut on paper and dated 1894. It measured 20.5 centimeters in height and 14 centimeters in width.

Case study 2 – Warhol’s Suicide

Andy Warhol’s Suicide was a silkscreen on canvas painting that he did in 1962. It measured 230 cm in height and 202 cm in width.

William Morris and the Art and Craft movement shared the idea of ‘Democracy of Art’, a concept encapsulating makers and appreciators of art engaged in good work that gives pleasure in making and using. According to Petts (2008), this concept was distinctly English in as far as it demanded respect for artists and independence from patrons, as opposed to the prevalent sense in southern Europe that an artist was a servant or even employee of patrons. This idea was also typically upper middle class and protestant in the sense that it rebelled against the views prevalent in catholic Europe where artists were mostly from low-income backgrounds and in service to wealthy benefactors.

The idea dovetailed into the ethos of the 19^th century Arts & Crafts movement that sought to transform art into an everyday experience accessible and useful to everyone in society. Coming at a time when Europe was in the early throes of Marxist revolutions, a movement expressly condemned in catholic circles, it serves as a reminder of how contemporary events shape art. This discourse is best summarized in Morris’ quote, “History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created”. (1882)

In his wife Jane Morris, William found a living expression of his idea of beauty. The demure model from a low-income household somehow exemplified and stood for what William believed in but was not physically. “During the first months of their friendship, he painted her as the tragic Arthurian princess Iseult and wrote on the finished canvas, “I cannot paint you, but I love you” (2016). The maiden in the frontispiece Morris ordered for his book Wood beyond the World bears a striking resemblance to Jane; a beauty so sublime it seemed godlike. “It is female beauty, however, of a peculiarly languid sort, the beauty of the muse who reigns through submission”. This was the characteristic Pre Raphaelite depiction of female beauty: extremely intense yet indifferent.

William Morris’ Frontispiece was made of woodcut on flower paper and measured 20.5 centimeters in height and 14 centimeters in width. Sir Edward Burne-Jones came up with the design then Morris engraved it in wood before printing at the Kelmscott Press. The text font is Chaucer with shoulder notes and chapter titles colored red while the rest of the text is in black. The borders have a symmetrical flower pattern with the image of a maiden occupying the centre. She is walking barefoot in the woods, surrounded with flora and fauna. Morris intended the frontispiece to act as the cover to his book ‘Wood beyond the World’

The entire effort reflects Morris acceptance of socialism in ordinary life. He used wood, paper and ink that everyone else was employing to make hideous book covers in a way that created an aesthetically appealing work of art at no extra cost. In this effort, he successfully showed that art does not have to proceed from extravagance of tools or the coffers of rich patrons. At the same time, he used simple, repetitive and symmetrical designs to turn his work into a joyful experience pleasing to him and his following.

“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” According to Mascia-Lees (2011) “Morris’s call for a special kind of attention to the everyday was a response to the phenomenological problems endemic to modernity and the capitalist mode of production”.

Petts (2008) points out that Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement viewed the replacement of crafts with machines as a drive to commercial capitalism, which eliminated artistic autonomy in productivity. The result was generic and hideous art as what was evident in Victorian Britain.

At the same time, the frontispiece bore an uncanny resemblance to William’s wife Jane Morris. In the numerous paintings that their mutual friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti did of her, we witness an assertive expression of the Pre-Raphaelite ethos of the ambiguous woman. Morris clearly shared this ideal with Rosetti as evidenced in the maiden on the frontispiece. The lines are simple and symmetrical while the shapes are linear but natural. The rhythm in the border design, the maiden and the background evoke a sense of balance and expression without excessive conspicuousness. The testament to this amazing balance is the fact that Morris created the entire piece using only two colors. This is classic William Morris: highlighting the powerful female who is dominant but remains submissive and thoughtful.

Warhol was convinced that mass productivity in all things was an idea that had a future in the art world (2014). He says, “Everybody should be a machine. Somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me”. In this he pioneers a form of blue-collar art where he is just a thinker and there is a person or gadget that gives life to his thoughts. This idea connects with being American because this country was undergoing a postwar industrial boom that has catapulted it into the world’s factory, apposition it maintains to date. It explicitly expresses the productivity over philosophy thought that subtly engulfed the ethos of that era.

In another sense, it ties into Warhol’s family background as Slovakian immigrants who came to pursue a dream life in Pittsburg and grew up in slums full of blue-collar workers employed in factories. Their relocation to the US was informed by an industrial revolution gone wrong back home in Czechoslovakia. Their entire livelihood revolved around factories, machines and mass production.

Finally, Warhol’s idea of work intertwines with the Pop Art movement, which transcended paintings and seeped into music and other forms of expression. In this world view art becomes a commodity produced in great quantities for mass consumption.

In Edie Sedgwick, Warhol found his idea of female attractiveness. Sedgwick was a charming socialite in her 20s with a persona oozing charisma. While physically, she was as different as the numerous women who found artistic sanctuary in Warhol’s Factory studio; her personality was magnetic and mercurial. This outgoing persona was a direct result of her childhood, raised in privilege and sheltered from the outside world while constantly instilled with a superiority complex. When she became an adult, her short life became an endless rebellion against this upbringing.

The culture of freedom, expression for expression’s sake and experimentation gave her sanctuary, turning her into an overnight celebrity in 1965 when she starred in Warhol’s short films. Unfortunately, this environment and culture that gave her purpose would ultimately lead to her death in 1971 when she overdosed on barbiturates.

Andy Warhol has made the Suicide (fallen body) painting from silkscreen on canvas. He based it on a Life Magazine photo of the dead Evelyn McHale, taken after she leapt off the Empire State Building in May 1947. Photographer Robert Wiles who took the picture described it as the most beautiful suicide, a quirk that made it an iconic photo. Warhol took the simple magazine picture and turned it into a motif, reproduced 16 times on the silkscreen to create the portrait. He then gave it a grave cyan hue overlay, with the top motifs darker than the bottom motifs.

In later years, Warhol expressed the anxiety that gripped him when the subject of death became too commonplace in his life, including the death of his friend Marilyn Monroe. He found some catharsis in this kind of art.

The use of the screen printing technique to produce a new version of an iconic picture using accessible materials expresses Warhol’s approach to art as an exercise in expression and mass production. He was not just releasing whatever anxieties he may have had at the time, but he was also tapping into a popular subject and picture to create something he knew he could sell as an artist: the quintessential business artist.

In an interview, Warhol expressed his state of mind at the time, “I realized that everything I was doing must have been Death. Every time you turned on the radio, they said something like ‘Four million are going to die.’ That started it.” Here, he shows how any circumstance was enough inspiration for him to create.

While Suicide wallows in a fatalistic aura, its display of the ‘most beautiful suicide’ could have been the artistic manifestation of the personality of Edie Sedgwick, who exuded charm and woe at the same time. Sedgwick was able to contain both beauty and ugliness in her character and appearance, just as the Suicide painting. The simple and plain arrangement of what is manifest beauty at its worst, as represented in Suicide was to become a major theme in the short movies that Warhol made with Edie Sedgwick.

In summary, Morris and Warhol held almost antagonistic ideas about work and art. While Morris believed that art was a beautiful expression of work that produced something useful with an underlying philosophy to it: Warhol believed that art was the result of a mechanical reproduction of anything an artist would have captured the inspiration to produce. The only point where the two artists converged is in their desire to share their creations with the masses. A look at Morris frontispiece expresses the idea of beautiful expression as a simple work of art while a look at Warhol’s Suicide confirms his free spirited approach to art. In as far as, female beauty was concerned; Morris preferred to express it as reserved while Warhol preferred it as outgoing and conspicuous as seen in their two works.

Petts helps us identify these differences because he isolates the distinguishing force animating William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement: a theory of art. Jones helps us recognize these differences by identify the postwar society that Andy Warhol functioned in and how his background and upbringing shaped his artistic approach.

In conclusion, Morris and Warhol’s art forms speak about a modern civilization that is in constant flux while at trying to understand itself. Who are we and what do we stand for?

References

Morris, W (1882). Hopes and Fears for Art The Beauty of Life. A lecture

Warhol, A (2014). The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Petts, Jeffrey. Good Work and Aesthetic Education: William Morris, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Beyond. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 42, Number 1, Spring 2008, pp. 30 45 (Article)

Garman, E. (2016, September 1). Beauty Marks. Retrieved from https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/09/01/beauty marks/

Mascia-Lees, F (2011). A Companion to the Anthropology Of The Body and Embodiment. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, West Sussex p37

Jones, C (1990). Andy Warhol’s “Factory”: The Production Site, Its Context and Its Impact on the Work of Art. Science in Context (1990), pp. 101-131