Why Andy Matters

Andy Warhol wasn’t an artist, writes Terry Teachout. He was “a preternaturally shrewd operator who transformed Marcel Duchamp’s anti-art into glossy gewgaws suitable for mail-order merchandising. He silk-screened money. Why should those who do care about art bother to take note of the 75th birthday of an anti-artist whose works were purposefully forgettable? Because Warhol did as much as anyone to shape the culture of pure, accomplishment-free celebrity in which we now live. He envisioned it far more clearly than most of his contemporaries, and this clarity helped make him the best-known artist of the postwar era.”