[Exclusive] Is Madonna The New Warhol?

From its beginnings, pop art had a large number of admirers, especially among those who looked at art outside the established framework. Recognizable, vibrant and close to everyday life, it was interesting even to a wider audience, which was not primarily artistically oriented. In contrast, conservative art connoisseurs did not share the enthusiasm of the “plebs” for Pop Art, but contested its artistic value and called it “recycled trash.”

What is particularly important for pop art is the fact that it did not cover only one artistic field, but was a multimedia creation, which found its affirmation in music, film, performance, fashion, design, photography, painting.

Numerous names are apostrophized as representatives of pop art, from Roy Lichtenstein to David Hockney to Keith Herring. But only one can be called the undisputed “father” of pop art, and that is the legendary Andy Warhol. Actually, the question is how pop art would look and in which direction it would develop if there were no ingenious ideas of the famous and no less eccentric Warhol.

Who today are the authentic bearers of the idea made famous by Andy Warhol? Are there any at all? And why is Madonna the new Warhol?

Andy Warhol’s creativity was endless, and his artistic visions were authentic, eccentric, sometimes strange, just like himself. Warhol was his own opposite. Very withdrawn, at times autistic, but fascinated by everything that is explicit and public. He developed his fascination with American iconography, as well as movie stars, already in his childhood, so he later transferred it to his creativity. No one but him managed to make a work of art out of an ordinary Campbell soup can or Coca-Cola can. However, what will forever remain the first association with Warhol will be his pop art portraits of stars, above all, the famous Marilyn Monroe, which today reaches a staggering value of 200 million dollars.

Andy Warhol was a “pop” star, of the same caliber as the stars he hung out with. His friends were David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Grace Jones. He spent stormy nights with them in the famous “Studio 54” disco, but he enjoyed observing more than “crazy partying”. It was there that he developed his passion for Polaroid photography, recording the heated atmosphere and the craziest styled guests. He did a similar thing, only on film, in his art laboratory called “Factory”, where he gathered various artists, celebrities, porn stars, transvestites, drug addicts… Among them he found his muses, and from some of them he also made stars, such as Eddie Sedgwick, Nico, Viva, Holly Woodlawn and others.

Warhol was an obsessive-commercial pop artist, a man ahead of his time, who sought event and sensation in everything. He believed in the concept of “reality” television and a future where everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame. He considered the art of business to be the most fascinating kind of art, and he paid his homage to the American dollar through his works.

Privately, he remained inscrutable until the very end. He cultivated a shy, bohemian eccentricity and, in contrast to a controversial public life, was a committed Catholic and often volunteered at homeless shelters. He never hid his homosexuality, but he didn’t talk about it much either. Through his artistic work, he often placed motifs of homo eroticism. It was rumored that his mentoring relationship with the young Jean-Michel Basquiat was more than friendship, but there are far more who characterized Warhall as an asexual person or just an ordinary voyeur.  

If we switch to the sphere of contemporary (pop) music, one of the most authentic pop art phenomena and “Warhol’s counterpart”, which happened in the last few decades, could certainly be the legendary Madonna. Challenged and praised, like the artistic direction itself, Madonna is a “child” of pop art, a close friend of Andy Warhol, the former girlfriend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Herring’s muse. The beginnings of her life in New York, as well as the first days of fame, are related precisely to pop art aesthetics. The image that the designer Maripol created for her at the time, her stage performances, but also the music she created, stemmed from the idea of ​​pop art. During the years that followed, she successfully created her own artistic direction – new pop art – with her appearance, music, conceptuality, performance, chameleon transformation, advocacy, as well as the courage to be different. Along the way, she was often challenged, even called “a performer who drove talent off the stage.” In spite of everything, she did not give up, but continued to follow her idea even more “insolently”.

Similar to Warhol, she was burning with creativity and was new and different every time. She was not afraid of changes and experiments. She changed and progressed, as a person and as an artist. She found inspiration in popular culture and different artistic trends. It is enough to remember her video for the song “Vogue”, which is a tribute to the stars of golden Hollywood, or the video “Express Yourself”, which was inspired by the famous film “Metropolis” by Fritz Lang.

Unlike Warhol, Madonna was free of shame and very conscious of her body and sexuality. Sex was often her leitmotif. She spoke openly about him and even flirted with bisexuality, wanting to break (un)necessary taboos. She knew that she was provoking the puritans, but instead of softening her attitude, she shocked them further with her book “Sex”, which was full of explicit and no less artistic photographs, signed by the famous Steven Meisel. If he were alive, Warhol would probably have congratulated her on such a move, and perhaps he would have been the author of the mentioned photographs.

The overlap between Madonna and Warhol is also reflected in deeply embedded religious norms. Strict Catholic upbringing left a deep touch on Madonna to this day. Although she often provoked the church with her views, she never renounced the cross, i.e. the crucifixion, which has been part of her iconography since the very beginning of her career. Even when she burned crosses and kissed a black saint in the music video for “Like a Prayer,” her goal was not blasphemy, but rebellion, as a critique of society.

As with pop art itself, Madonna was and remains a controversy, adored and contested, “art (and deception) for the masses”, a modern-day “Andy Warhol”, or at least his extended arm. Unlike Warhol, her work is not taught in schools and her art is not part of a museum display, at least not yet, but Madonna is an authentic product of “contemporary art” and one of the greatest planetary stars that ever existed. In addition, she is still a promoter of the pop art philosophy of life, as well as the trends that arose from it. On her current “Celebration” tour, which marks the fortieth year of her career, Madonna pays a visual and scenic tribute to the idea of ​​pop art, as well as to her friends, artists, who marked this direction. Is all that enough to qualify her as a new pop art icon and “heir” to the famous Warhol…um, remains to be seen.