Art as a political/social platform

Jaden, I like your point on the commercialization of art. This is something that really moved the pop art movement through the 50s (when warhol would have been making art). If you dig a little deeper into his works, this process of commercialization actually is brought into the actual process of art production, which warhol had called 'the factory'. This is an idea where the artist hires low wage workers to make art in their stead and begs the question of where we draw the line of art belonging to whom. Warhol is clearly exploiting the labour of the low wage worker, sometimes physically or emotionally abusing them, but he knows that in order for these low-end artists to develop their careers, or to survive in the world of artists, the workers have to be exploited. Following that, Barbara, when thinking of commercial art I think it's really interesting in thinking about the distinction between commercial art and commercialized art. Perhaps we can discuss a certain threshold of snobbery that needs to be achieved in order to be able to profit on the surplus value of the name or the branding of the artist in itself rather than simply the object that is being sold. If you think about it, nobody would care about the art piece itself if it were a graphic print of a campbell soup can, but knowing that it is a warhol piece or any other pop or contemporary artist really changes the scope of the market of these pieces.