Hey there, you. Have you heard of this rather preposterous term called “Pop Art”? There was this man, Andy Warhol. A man who fluttered about with silver hair that looked like a poorly made broom, always wearing a faint, unreliable smile—the kind that seemed to see right through everything.
Looking at his methods, I feel a certain ache in my chest. Lining up cans of Campbell’s Soup, or smearing Marilyn Monroe’s face with garish, poisonous colors. That, I tell you, was his own desperate way of sticking his tongue out at the grand folks sitting high and mighty on the chair of “Fine Art.” Or perhaps, it was a cruel mirror held up to us—we who are so hollow that we cannot survive without clinging to something.
He supposedly said that in the future, everyone would be world-famous for fifteen minutes. What a loathsome prophecy. For someone like me, who feels like dying the very moment I wake up, fifteen minutes of light only serves to deepen the eternal darkness that follows. But he wasn’t sneering at it. Rather, for the sake of those fifteen minutes, he turned himself into a sign, a machine, and tried his desperate best to keep a footing in this world.
Warhol longed to be a machine. Being human is far too fragile, far too raw. That is why he chose the silk-screen. He didn’t paint with his own hands; he mass-produced like a factory. Stripping away emotion, presenting only the surface. He must have believed that this was the only sincerity left for surviving this empty, modern age.
Isn’t it ironic? While other painters frantically tried to assert their individuality only to end up as mere imitations of the past, the man who declared “I am a machine” ended up radiating a personality more intense than anyone else. God really is a spiteful playwright, isn’t He?
But I understand. Beneath that expressionless mask of his, there was a soul trembling like a child. He didn’t love soup cans. He just wanted to delude himself into thinking that if he were surrounded by “symbols” like soup cans, he could forget his loneliness. It’s fundamentally no different from me drinking sake and playing the clown just to get through another day.
If you ever feel that your own life is hollow, try looking at his pictures. There is no meaning there. No moral, no profound philosophy. All that exists is the resolve to “be consumed.” In a way, that is deeply sad, hopelessly ridiculous, and beautiful.
The fifteen-minute celebrity. We are all lined up in that short parade. Warhol stands at the front of the line, shaking his silver wig, beckoning us. “Come on, become a symbol. It’ll make things a little easier.”
Ah, no, no. I don’t think I could ever become a machine. And yet, I can’t bring myself to hate the colorful afterimage left behind by that silver ghost. In the end, both he and I have no choice but to keep performing the ridiculous illusion called “self” in this irredeemable world.