Not only did Andy Warhol miss out on the inter­net, but the inter­net missed out on Andy Warhol. Sure­ly, these days he would be pro­lif­i­cal­ly post­ing to his Insta­gram and YouTube from home, indulging mul­ti­ple celebri­ty and pop cul­ture obses­sions. Warhol’s Polaroid aes­thet­ic and pio­neer­ing of the self-as-brand helped cre­ate 21st cen­tu­ry online cul­ture. Maybe he was the orig­i­nal “influ­encer,” though Warhol was more of an insti­ga­tor. But he’s become too famil­iar for us to appre­ci­ate his unique­ness, sug­gest Gre­gor Muir and Fion­tán Moran, cura­tors of an exten­sive Tate Mod­ern Warhol exhib­it fea­tur­ing 100 works, which is now only acces­si­ble via the 7‑minute video tour above.

“Every­one owns Warhol” (though few own a Warhol), argue Muir and Moran. “He is one of those rare artists who tran­scends the art world, hav­ing become wide­ly known as one of America’s most famous artists, if not one of America’s most famous Amer­i­cans.

Over time, Warhol became—and still is—a big brand, which is just how he want­ed it.” Warhol showed how indi­vid­ual artists could cir­cum­vent the star-mak­ing sys­tem, cre­ate their own brand­ing, and com­man­deer the cul­ture with man­u­fac­tured fame. He “helped shape a century’s worth of pop cul­ture,” writes Luke Abra­hams at Harper’s Bazaar, “and helped launch the cult of celebri­ty.”

Whether that lega­cy deserves more praise or blame I leave to you to decide. In either case, our posthu­mous judg­ments can­not dimin­ish Warhol’s sin­gu­lar achieve­ments in graph­ic art or his rad­i­cal approach­es to film, pho­tog­ra­phy, and—through his pro­mo­tion of the Vel­vet Under­ground—music. Behind the aloof, eccen­tric per­sona is a per­son­al sto­ry the Tate exhib­it explores as well, through Warhol’s immi­grant and queer iden­ti­ty and his con­cerns with death and reli­gion. Archi­tec­tur­al Digest reports on the addi­tion­al resources the online exhib­it offers:

For vis­i­tors look­ing to dive deep­er into the exhi­bi­tion and the artist dur­ing the lock­down, there’s also the room-by-room exhi­bi­tion guide; arti­cles about Warhol, from an inves­ti­ga­tion into his rela­tion­ship with his moth­er to a per­son­al tale writ­ten by his friend Bob Colachel­lo; a pod­cast about per­sonas; and even how-to videos demon­strat­ing Warhol’s print­mak­ing process. 

Tate dig­i­tal direc­tor Hilary Knight knows there’s no sub­sti­tute for the orig­i­nal, which is maybe an iron­ic idea when it comes to Warhol. “We are not try­ing to repli­cate a muse­um vis­it,” Knight says, but “we can still offer a rich, deep, and inspir­ing expe­ri­ence of Tate online.” Though abbre­vi­at­ed and vir­tu­al, this deep­er dive into Warhol’s life and work does that indeed. Find more detailed on the exhi­bi­tion, and each room, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fied: Four Videos Explain His Ground­break­ing Art and Its Cul­tur­al Impact

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

Lou Reed’s Mix­tape for Andy Warhol Dis­cov­ered by Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor: Fea­tures 12 Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Songs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“Who is Banksy?” asked an Art­net roundup of pos­si­ble sus­pects in 2016. One might well respond, “who cares?”—a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion Artnet’s Hen­ri Neuen­dorf answers. At least a few years ago, before some oth­er things got seri­ous­ly out of hand, the iden­ti­ty of the noto­ri­ous gueril­la street artist turned inter­na­tion­al man of mys­tery was “an obses­sion that seems to have gripped the world.”

One answer, assessed by cura­tor and street art expert Car­lo McCormick, was arrived at through the use of geo­graph­ic pro­fil­ing, a “sophis­ti­cat­ed sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis tech­nique used in crim­i­nol­o­gy to locate repeat offend­ers.” McCormick rates its con­clu­sion as prob­a­ble, but also finds it “scary” to bend such meth­ods to such ends, an anx­i­ety res­o­nant with con­cerns over sur­veil­lance tech used to track COVID-19 vec­tors.

Anoth­er ques­tion is whether it mat­ters who Banksy is. “The improb­a­bly ornate fic­tion is always going to be more com­pelling than the sim­ple mun­dane truth.” Do we real­ly need to ruin the illu­sion? If those who want to remain anony­mous can be tracked with algorithms—while the rest of us vol­un­teer our per­son­al data dai­ly in a cul­ture of com­pet­i­tive oversharing—is there any room left for pri­va­cy? Now that we’re trapped inside for days on end with fam­i­lies, room­mates, part­ners, pets, maybe our only per­son­al space is in the loo (where we’re still inclined to bring our phones).

 

View this post on Insta­gram

 

. . My wife hates it when I work from home.

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy) on Apr 15, 2020 at 10:45am PDT

Banksy’s lat­est work, post­ed on Insta­gram, plays with all of these themes and shows he doesn’t have a prob­lem defac­ing his own prop­er­ty, and shar­ing an inti­mate por­trait with his mil­lions of fol­low­ers. Hell, it’s almost a self­ie, minus the preen­ing, duck-faced self.

As Daria Harp­er writes at Art­sy:

The noto­ri­ous­ly elu­sive street artist Banksy debuted his lat­est work in a rather pecu­liar place: his bath­room. With much of the world on lock­down due to the COVID-19 cri­sis, artists like Banksy have been forced to get inno­v­a­tive with their artis­tic prac­tices. The artist post­ed pho­tos of the new art­work on his Insta­gram page yes­ter­day with the cap­tion: “My wife hates it when I work from home.”

Is this real­ly Banksy work­ing from home? (“One par­tic­u­lar­ly baf­fled com­menter,” notes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “wrote: ‘You are one of the world’s most famous artists… and THAT’S YOUR shit­ty lit­tle BATHROOM????’”)

Is there real­ly a Mrs. Banksy? Lit­tle Banksies run­ning around the yard, wear­ing coro­n­avirus face­masks and hood­ies? Is he on the verge of out­ing him­self? At least we know he’s still got toi­let paper.

Maybe you find this tan­ta­liz­ing win­dow on the artist’s inner sanc­tum cred­i­ble evi­dence of his mun­dane real life. Maybe the sig­na­ture rats destroy­ing his crap­per are his cab­in-fever dream. Or maybe, as usu­al, he’s just tak­ing the piss with this cre­ative instal­la­tion. We await com­ment from Mrs. Banksy.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

Banksy Paints a Grim Hol­i­day Mur­al: Season’s Greet­ings to All

Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Break­down of the Artist’s Self-Shred­ding Paint­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

So, you’ve had to put off a trip to Paris, and a long-await­ed vis­it to the Lou­vre, which “will remain closed until fur­ther notice,” has been pushed into the indef­i­nite hori­zon. It could be worse, but the loss of engag­ing up close with cul­tur­al trea­sures is some­thing we should all grieve in lock­down. Art is so impor­tant to human well-being that UK Sec­re­tary of Health Matt Han­cock argued all doc­tors in the NHS should pre­scribe gallery vis­its and oth­er art activ­i­ties for every­thing from men­tal issues to lung dis­eases.

As you know from plan­ning your trip (ide­al­ly sev­er­al trips) to the famous museum—first opened to the pub­lic in 1793 on the first anniver­sary of Louis XVI’s imprisonment—you can lux­u­ri­ate in art for days on end once there, pro­vid­ed you can evade the mas­sive crowds.

The Lou­vre is immense, with 60,500 square meters of floor space and around 35,000 paint­ings, sculp­tures, and oth­er arti­facts. But with rough­ly 10 mil­lion vis­i­tors per year, who make it the world’s most vis­it­ed muse­um, it isn’t easy to find space for con­tem­pla­tion.

Video vis­its are no sub­sti­tute, but these days they’re the best we’ve got. If you’re eager to see what you’re missing—or what you could nev­er get to in per­son even with­out a pandemic—take a look at the 4K vir­tu­al tours here from Wan­der­lust Trav­el Videos. Yes, you’ll see the hero­ic mas­ter­works of Jacques-Louis David, Eugene Delacroix, and Théodore Géri­cault. You’ll see the famous glass pyra­mid, the trea­sures of Napoleon’s Apart­ments, and, yes, the Mona Lisa.

But you’ll also see hun­dreds and hun­dreds of works that don’t get the same kind of press, each one named in a time­stamped list on the YouTube pages. The expe­ri­ence is admit­ted­ly like vis­it­ing the muse­um in per­son, rush­ing through each gallery, peer­ing over and around the backs of heads to get a glimpse of the Fra Fil­ip­po Lip­pis, Cimabues, and Man­teg­nas. But you can mute the con­stant back­ground chat­ter and pause and rewind as much as you like.

After tour­ing a good bit of the muse­um, stroll around the Car­rousel Arc de Tri­om­phe, Jardin de l’infante, and the Pont Neuf, above. Judg­ing by the com­ments, these videos are prov­ing a balm to the psy­ches of home­bound art lovers around the world, whether they’ve been to the Lou­vre before, just scrapped their trav­el plans, or know they’ll prob­a­bly nev­er get the chance to vis­it.

The vir­tu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to tour this mag­nif­i­cent col­lec­tion, or part of it, may refresh our exhaust­ed imag­i­na­tions. It may also soothe the part of us that real­ly miss­es huge crowds of peo­ple all talk­ing at once. Some­thing about the expe­ri­ence, even on the screen, feels so strange­ly com­pelling right now you might find your­self hop­ing if and when you final­ly get to the Lou­vre, it’s sim­ply mobbed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mona Lisa Self­ie: A Mon­tage of Social Media Pho­tos Tak­en at the Lou­vre and Put on Insta­gram

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Vis­it The Muse­um of Online Muse­ums (MoOM): A Mega Col­lec­tion of 220 Online Exhi­bi­tions

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness