How exactly did pop art influence the field of social media? Many think Andy Warhol predicted social media in the late 60s.
For those of you who don’t know, Andy Warhol was the leader of the Pop Art movement in the United States. It may surprise you that Andy Warhol was not a formally trained fine artist. He earned his degree in Pictorial Design (now illustration) from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1949. Upon graduation he moved to New York City to purse his dream of becoming a commercial artist. He was received with immediate success having his first worked published in Glamour magazine that same year. Over the next decade he became an award-winning illustrator, the most successful in the advertising industry.
After achieving the commercial success he always dreamed of, he turned his focus to painting. Within a couple of years, the debut of his famous Campbell Soup Can Series in Los Angeles transformed him into an overnight sensation in Hollywood, creating controversy and backlash from the art world. He later opened his studio called “The Factory,” where he massed produced his artwork—he was intentionally making a statement to his critics.
I want you to think of pop art in terms of Web 2.0, because then you will begin to see how Andy Warhol was in a position to predict social media. Pop art, just like it sounds, comes from and is inspired by the people, places, things and events happening in popular culture. Another attribute to pop art is how it’s executed. Traditional art uses techniques such as painting on canvas or chiseling out of stone, whereas in pop art commercial art techniques, like silk screening, would be used. For example, Warhol used cardboard boxes and packaging design elements in his sculpture. Utilizing commercial art techniques made it easy for pop artists to mass-produce work in assembly-line fashion, making their art affordable to own and accessible to the masses. If you wanted to own traditional artwork you would expect to pay thousands of dollars for a relatively unknown artist and millions for famous works of art. The pop artist would need to sell the same print many times to make money. If a piece of art wasn’t liked and only a few sold—the artist wasn’t going to profit.
What makes social media such a powerful medium? For one, it doesn’t require any knowledge of programming or technology. It doesn’t require a college degree or any formal training for that matter—most pop artists do not have formal fine art training. All you need to participate in social media is access to the Internet and you can post blogs, photos or videos that could be viewed by thousands and potentially millions of people from around the world. Social media makes it easy to produce and share with anyone and everyone— similar to how pop art is mass-produced making it accessible for mass consumption. And that’s just the beginning, anyone can self-publish books, start their own channel, print artwork or clothes and develop applications—just for fun or sell.
Like pop art, success in social media is gauged by likability, authority, and celebrity. On Facebook, the greater number of “Likes” acts as an endorsement of your content by fans and communities. The more people that subscribe and comment on your blog, connect with you on LinkedIn, and follow you on Twitter, the more authority you have in communities. The more views and shares of your YouTube videos and you could become a micro-celebrity within specific communities. Pop artists made money based on the likability of their work, the same is true in social media.
That’s easy to sum up because the critics of social media say very similar things as the critics of pop art did. The critics of pop art were the traditional artists and other art authorities of the 60’s and 70’s, who viewed Andy Warhol’s work as “boringly unoriginal” and “commercial.” Unfortunately for them, the public and Hollywood in particular, loved it. So what was the big objection to pop art? It’s that the artist did not have the pedigree; they were not trained in fine art and lacked proper technique. You hear the same kinds of criticisms, that blogs lack cohesive graphic design, the grammar in posts is dumbed down, video quality and editing is amateurish, and so on. If all this content is so poorly executed—then why is it so popular? First anyone can do it—the “consumers” of content are now also the “producers” of content. Secondly, while the execution might not always be perfect the content has loyal fans and followers.
Today, the advertising and branding communities hail social media on one hand and revile it on the other because it cheapens the value of their work. Advertising agencies and branding firms used be part of a select group of producers because they had specialized knowledge and “tools-of-the trade.” Let’s get a reality check, pretty much everything we all know is just a Google search away, so today its not what you know that matters—its how you apply what is known. When the creativity of Warhol’s work was criticized, he would reply that he was not a “creator” of art but a “recreator.”
You’ve probably heard Warhol’s famous quote, “In the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes,” which he’s first cited as saying in 1968. What changes was he seeing in the media landscape for 1969? The media landscape was very narrow with limited mass media channels in radio, television and print. It was the hay-day of the one-to-many advertising model—one producer of the brand message to many consumers. However, consumers weren’t accepting the status quo and the mistrust of the government and large corporations had begun. Television was exploding and gave the ordinary person doing the extraordinary a platform, whether in the news or on game shows, being a celebrity wasn’t just for the Hollywood elite anymore.
Warhol was at the center of this accelerating change sweeping across every sector of media. If we fast-forward just ten years later to 1979, the media landscape was segmenting into vertical channels, allowing advertising to focus brand messaging so it would appeal to specific target audiences. This was a major advance for the one-to-many advertising model—now one producer could tailor a brand message to different segmented consumer groups. The demand for content for these new channels was also growing at an exponential rate.
Now, fast-forward to 1996, the media landscape was so segmented it was beginning to fragment under the endless array of new choices. Simultaneously it was the beginning of the mainstream Internet. This marked the beginning of the end for the one-to-many advertising model, because the Internet gave consumers a voice and a participatory role. For instance, a banner ad placed on the web could tell you how many people clicked on it, all in real-time. Advertisers weren’t used to this kind of scrutiny but they fired back with the idea of a “dialog” with the consumer. This is an acceptable compromise for advertising agencies because they could still practice the one-to-many model and try to keep control of the “dialog.” Quite surprising this model is still used by many advertising agencies today.
Social media is nothing like that. In 2006, Web 2.0 is the major media landscape. Advertising agencies as brand ambassadors, and the brand itself, are only one voice in this very complex many-to-many model, where the “consumer” of content is now also an active “producer” of content. This is the world that we live in now and this is the world that we are going to live in the rest of our lives. And that’s what I believe that Andy Warhol was really seeing, the idea of Web 2.0. Being the leader of the pop art movement put him in a very unique position to have that perspective—which to me, mirrors the rise of social media. When you examine Andy Warhol’s own words you see pretty clearly his comments are foreshadowing, if not outright predicting, social media. See what you think.
When Andy Warhol stated, “Don’t pay attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches,” it was a commentary on the growing cult of personality fueled by the explosive of media channels at the time. What else do you think he was imagining? I think he was foreshadowing the future of media where anyone and everyone can comment, critic and question. While this ongoing commentary flows through social media, there is no greater example of this than the blog.
And then when he said, “I think everybody should like everybody,” what do you think he was he talking about? I say Facebook! This is about as blatant an example of Warhol predicting the future of media—social media.
“When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships,” perhaps a tongue and cheek comment at the time. When you look at the massive impact of the Internet as a whole, then at social media and video sites like YouTube has had on the way we communicate and relate to one another, it’s startling. YouTube has probably created more “micro-celebrities” than any other social media site.
“I never read, I just look at pictures,” is a Warhol quote that makes me smile. What social media site do you think he was predicting? What’s one of the most popular and the fastest growing social media site? It’s Pinterest, of course!
Warhol stated, “I am a deeply superficial person.” What do you think his favorite social media site would be? I’m guessing it would be Twitter! Do we really need hourly status updates? I’ll just tweet it and see what everyone thinks
“Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?” Warhol asked in a rhetorical manner. There are no more representative sites of this than Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa. Where do you catalog the “moments of your life”?
To me this is a laugh-out-loud quote from Andy, “It’s not what you are that counts, and it’s what they think you are.” Now what social media site is that?
You all know this one. It’s Linked in! Yes, Linked in, absolutely. What do you think?
To sum up this article, I submit my final piece of evidence when Andy Warhol said, “I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is ‘In 15 minutes everybody will be world famous.’”
Do you think Andy Warhol predicted social media? Yes or no? I’d love to hear what you think and start a “dialog!” It’s interesting how pop art is linked to the field of social media in today’s age.
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