From Man Ray to Andy Warhol. Self-identification code

Abstract

Throughout the 1960s, artists of pop art and of similar tendencies used a number of photomechanical techniques in their work. of course, post-war pop art, both American and French, called “new realism”, used the methods of collage and photomontage, but then it had no relevance neither to the issues that were raised by modernism in relation to the aesthetic autonomy of avant-garde art, nor to the need of establishing links with a new mass audience, forms of distribution and promotion. Man Ray – the main practitioner of American Dadaism, French photographer and Surrealist painter, remaining a marginal figure in his homeland, however, served as a little-studied example to one of the most famous and odious artists of America in the revival period of Dada and the formation of pop art. In response to Ray’s entropic repetition strategy, Andy Warhol creates a systemic artistic principle that has become the anthem of “mass culture”. His art is located at the intersection of a number of cultural and historical trends, and is usually considered in the context of fundamental changes that drew a line between the practices of the post-war neo-avant-garde and pre-war avant-garde. one of the most striking intersections is related to the question of how closely the work of both was connected with the emerging “culture of the spectacle”. When the artists of the 1920s caused scandals and shocked the public, their actions were always perceived as social or political provocations. Ray was one of the first artists who did not resist the conditions of a new society, but on the contrary, tried to suit his modernism into its cultural and economic practice. In the future, Warhol built his art work in accordance with the growing demand for the “value” of mass production. The true degree of Man Ray’s influence on Andy Warhol ultimately remains ambiguous. The article is devoted to some aspects of these issues.