Cayla Delardi

Commodity Fetishism and the Proliferation of the Media in the Works of Andy Warhol and Roy
Lichtenstein

In its newest exhibition called Pop Art Design, Londons Barbican Art Gallery asserts that

Pop Artists sought to comment on the cult of celebrity, commodity fetishism, and the
proliferation in the media that permeated everyday life in America and in the United Kingdom
after The Second World War 1, and rightly so. The end of the Second World War marked the
beginning of the age of masses in the western world; mass consumerism, mass production, and
mass media all entered the public consciousness as economies began exceeding their prewar
levels, creating an influx of disposable income and the desire to exercise purchasing power, and
industrialization continued paving the way for new technological advances. The pop art
movement which began in the 1950s reflected the social, cultural, and political changes that
characterized countries like England and the United States at the time, highlighting a wide range
of domestic, everyday objects and cultural icons that people of all ages would have recognized,
and often contained ironic messages or critical social commentaries. Although every pop artist
dealt with aspects of popular culture in one way or another, two artists in particular stand out as
providing the most blatant commentary on commodity fetishism and the proliferation of the
media respectively in their works: Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
!

Although it is a rather complicated concept, it is firstly important to understand the

original definition of commodity fetishism as outlined by Karl Marx in his seminal work, Das
Kapital, before unpacking the ways in which artists like Andy Warhol utilized its themes in their
artwork. In Volume One, Section 4 of Kapital, a chapter titled The Fetishism of Commodities
and the Secret Thereof, Marx discusses the origins of fetishism in ancient religions, where

Barbican Pop Art Design Gallery Guide p. 1

inanimate objects were believed to hold divine power capable of providing safety and prosperity
for the worshipper, and uses this concept to explain the fetishism of consumer products in
capitalist society. He says,
As against this, the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour
within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the
commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite
social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic
form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take
flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as
autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with
each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the
products of men's hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of
labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from
the production of commodities. 2
Essentially, capitalism breeds the notion that it is not the labor necessary to produce an object
that gives it value, but that the commodities themselves have intrinsic value and desirability.
This is due to the relationship between the exchange of money and consumer products in the
capitalist system; the labor that goes into creating commodities is largely hidden from the people
who are purchasing them, and causes a disconnect not only between the consumer and the
laborer, but the laborer and themselves and their product as well.3 The results of commodity
fetishism are by no means limited to economics, in fact they are felt all throughout modern
society. The perceived value of commodities creates a relationship between consumer and
product that is strikingly similar to that of a worshipper and their religious idol, and the desire for

Marx, Karl. Capital. (London: Penguin Classics, 1990). p.165.

Fine, Ben; Saad-Filho, Alfredo. Marx's Capital (4th ed.). (London: Pluto Press, 2004.) pp.2526.

or consumption of these products becomes dangerously intwined with individuality and the
definition of self. In the 20th century, these concepts became increasingly relevant with the
period of affluence enjoyed by much of the West after World War II and the subsequent move
towards mass consumerism.
!

Whether or not one believes in the genius of Andy Warhol, his influence on pop art and

status as a countercultural icon are undeniable. From the space where he worked to his
mechanized techniques to the subjects he focused on, Warhol took the commercialism and
commodity fetishism that ran rampant in the 20th century and put it on display for all to see. His
ability to illustrate so cleverly the extent to which modern society as a whole is consumed with
celebrity, brand names, and excessive consumption remains relevant almost 3 decades after his
death.
!

One of Warhols most famous works, and perhaps the most blatant display of commodity

fetishism in all of pop art, is his 1962 series titled Cambpells Soup Cans. Composing of 32 cans
on separate canvases, the silkscreened paintings were originally displayed on shelves mounted
to the wall similar to the way the actual product would be kept in a supermarket, and
differentiated only in the type of soup emblazoned on the infamous label.4 With Campbells
Soup Cans, Warhol is essentially elevating the status of a cheap, domestic object by making it
art, and thusly blurring the lines between high and low culture. By taking such a mundane yet
iconic image like the Campbells label and making it the piece of art with very little manipulation,
Warhol put it at the forefront and made people rethink its value in society without having to make
an additional statement of his own. More importantly, though, the work is a summation of the
American obsession with brand names and a comment on the homogenization of modern
society. The repetition of this particularly iconic brand of soup characterizes the way in which
Americans assign value to consumer products not necessarily based on their quality, but on

Warhol, Andy. Campbells Soup Cans. (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1962)

their ubiquitousness, which is due in part to the combination of mass production and mass
advertising that characterized the 20th century.
!

Another one of Warhols many works which focused on a popular domestic object was

Brillo Boxes. First displayed in 1964, the sculptural piece was a replica of the still commonly
used brand of steel wool cleaning pads packaging, making it almost completely
indistinguishable from the real thing.5 For art critic and Warhol biographer Arthur Danto, this
piece was a turning point for art and an even more obvious blending of high and low culture, art
and commodity than Campbells Soup Cans. In Beyond Brillo the Box, he writes
What Warhol taught was that there is no way of telling the difference [between art and
non-art] merely by looking. The eye, so prized an aesthetic organ when it was felt that the
difference between art and non-art was visible, was philosophically of no use whatever
when the differences proved instead to be invisible.6
The significance of Brillo Box beyond appropriating another mass consumer product was that
this time, the only thing that separated it from the real product was its practical use and
perceived value. Because it was made of plywood and contained none of the steel pads that it
advertised, Warhols work could not have had the same intended function as the product it, yet it
would have been worth a significant amount more than an actual box of Brillo pads which
served a practical function in society. It is with this piece in particular that the extent to which
consumer products and brand names had permeated their way into everyday life was revealed;
now, they could not even be distinguishable from pieces in an art gallery.
!

Even Warhols technique can be seen as a critique of modern production and the mass

industry that could not even be escaped by the art world. Employing several assistants to help

"Andy Warhols Brillo Boxes: A Series Index." (Artnet, Web.)

Danto, Arthur. Warhol: Collaboration: Arthur Danto, Brillo Boxes and the End of Art. <http://www.warhol.org/
education/resourceslessons/Aesthetics--Arthur-Danto/>.
6

move production of his silkscreens and various other projects along, Warhols studio, called The
Factory, operated in the same mechanical way that would have been necessary to create the
domestic objects he depicted in his work, like Campbells soup cans or Coca-Cola bottles. In a
1963 interview with Gene Swenson of Art News, Warhol says,
That's probably one reason I'm using silk screens now. I think somebody should be able
to do all my paintings for me. I haven't been able to make every image clear and simple
and the same as the first one. I think it would be so great if more people took up silk
screens so that no one would know whether my picture was mine or somebody else's.
[...] The reason I'm painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that
whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.7
Although Warhol was not the first to employ assistants in his studio, he was perhaps more
unabashed about it than any other artist before him, going so far as to turn these otherwise
unimportant characters into influential superstars and well-known personalities like himself.
This redefinition of the artist as a thinker, a manager and not merely a struggling singular creator
was a controversial one, particularly because it became increasingly difficult to quantify how
much of an artists work was actually created by his or her own hands. The concept of hiding
the labor and means of production in the art world is an important one when discussing Marxs
idea of commodity fetishism, because since there is no way of knowing the amount of labor or,
in this case, the laborer who creates a piece of art, so it becomes the object itself and the brand
attached to it that gives it value. That is, although Warhol believed in the star quality of those
who he employed and associated with, it is his signature alone that went on each of his works,
that is the only reason why his artwork is perceived as having such a high cultural as well as
monetary value, regardless of whether he ever even touched the canvas,.

Warhol, Andy, and Gene Swenson. "Andy Warhol: Interview with Gene Swenson." Art News, 1963.

One of the most compelling things about Warhols use of commodity fetishism in his art

is the way it moved beyond simply what was on the canvas and turned into commercialization of
self. Not only did his self portraits put an intrinsic, exchangeable value on himself a person, but
he also adopted a strange, mysterious personality throughout his career which is talked about
almost as much as his art, and makes himself, not just his wares, a brand in its own right.
Although it was clear that his paintings and silkscreens were often satirizing mass consumerism
and media, he always spoke cryptically about his work, and never truly took a stance on the
effects of consumer culture in interviews. On one hand, he seemed to condemn societys
obsession with fame and practicing such excessive consumption, but on the other, he was
seemingly obsessed with fame and constantly surrounded himself with celebrities and
socialites. These contradictions make it almost impossible to decide which of his many
statements about his work were disingenuous, or to gain an accurate sense of the real Andy
Warhol judging only on his public appearances, which led Truman Capote to famously call him
a sphinx without a secret. 8 Nonetheless, in the creation of an eccentric and enigmatic persona
with a recognizable, striking appearance, he is not attempting to separate himself from his art,
but to make himself as much a part of it, and in turn commodity culture, as humanly possible.
!

Another pop artist who certainly fits the Barbicans description of commenting on the

proliferation of the media in their work is Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein is most famously known
for isolating images from mass produced advertisements or pop cultural images and portraying
them in a bold, comic book style. Although the exact subject of his works vary, he often
depicted them in an ironic or satyrical manner, commenting on the prevalence of advertising,
consumer culture and media representation.

De, Villiers Nicholas. Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2012.) p. 135

In one of his most famous works, Look Mickey! (1961), Lichtenstein took an image of

Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse from a Little Golden Book series and reproduced it himself,
with slight manipulations including the use of primary color and the repositioning of the
characters on the dock where they were fishing. Although it may have been a playful,
allegorical reference to abstract expressionism, it was also clearly a representation of mass
media imagery, and demonstrates these ideas even in the paintings technique. The use of
Ben-Day dots which Lichtenstein soon became famous for make the painting look like a
mechanical or industrial print, although it was actually painted meticulously by hand. Employing
this technique in painting was seen as controversial and radical at the time, because it hid
Lichtensteins technical skill that was revered in high art in an attempt to make it look like a
comic strip, which would have been considered low culture. It also raised questions of
originality in Lichtensteins work, because not only was he directly copying images from comic
strips or media advertisements, but he was also painting them in the same style they were
originally produced in. Lichtenstein dismissed criticisms of appropriation by asserting that the
closer his paintings were to their source material, the harsher the critique they made.9 Coupled
with the mass produced aesthetic, the decision to depict this particular image of Mickey Mouse
and Donald Duck makes the painting a deliberate and striking commentary on the mass age as
a whole. In Hall of Mirrors: Roy Lichtenstein and the Face of Painting in the 1960s, author
Graham Bader writes,
There is little question that Lichtenstein, in 1958, would have understood Donald Duck
and Mickey Mouse as emblematic of just the sort of modern mechanized life
excoriated by Schaefer-Simmern and others. Both charactersalong with the rest of the
Disney crewwere widely discussed symbols of the crass industrialization of American
culture in the late 1950s, due in large part to the dual sensations of the Disneyland

9Coplans,

John. Roy Lichtenstein (New York: Praeger, 1972.) p. 52

amusement park (opened in 1955) and televisions Mickey Mouse Club (debuting the
same year) on ABC.10
Much like Warhol, Lichtenstein was essentially immortalizing a cultural phenomenon on canvas,
opening it up for reevaluation by the viewer as to its significance and value in modern society.
!

Another one of Lichtensteins signature concepts was exploiting the stereotypical

representation of gender roles in media. Much like the way they were presented in the media at
the time, his women are frankly pathetic and hopeless, often yearning for or crying over a man.
By replicating the cliches of women as being meek, submissive, and hopelessly romantic
instead of making a direct statement against them, Lichtenstein is perhaps more effective in
creating a platform for criticism, especially when paintings like Oh Jeff are viewed in conjunction
with ones like Torpedo...Los!, where men are seen as strong, powerful, and in charge. Two
paintings in particular that exemplify the cliches in the medias portrayal of women are Sponge II
and Drowning Girl. Sponge II is interestingly not only a display of stereotypical gender roles, but
it is also the portrayal of an everyday domestic object, which was a common theme in pop art.
Although an object like a sponge could theoretically be used by anyone, it is important to note
that here, it has been depicted with a very feminine hand, and asserts rather simply but
effectively that it is the role of a woman to be cleaning and using this product. Perhaps his most
famous painting, Drowning Girl is an even more obvious display of the medias portrayal of
gender roles. Here, a woman is depicted in his trademark comic book style drowning in a wave
that looks like it could be a potential reference to Hokusais The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and
melodramatically laments that she would rather die than call Brad for help.11 Author Sarah K.
Rich succinctly describes the piece as a [satirization of] the melodrama of soap operas and

10

Bader, Graham. Hall of Mirrors: Roy Lichtenstein and the Face of Painting in the 1960s. (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2010.) p. 11.
11

Rondeau, James, and Sheena Wagstaff. Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective. (London: Tate, 2012). p.
48.

serial comics. 12 Because this painting only shows one frame of a larger comic book series, it is
almost as engaging and suspenseful as the comic books or soap opera that it satirizes, because
not only does it put on display an uncomfortable portrayal of women that is worth contemplating,
but it also does leave the viewer wondering how the story might end.
!

The end of the Second World War marked the beginning of the mass age, filled with

excessive consumption, obsession with celebrity, and the prevalence of media and brand
advertising. Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein responded to these cultural
phenomena in their work by making the commodity fetish objects and cliche advertisements that
defined the century into art in and of themselves, sometimes so much so that they were virtually
indistinguishable from the real thing. Although they are both criticized for a lack of originality in
their works, their commentary on increasingly capitalist and consumerist society that has
prevailed through the 21st century has allowed them both to maintain a legacy well beyond their
respective deaths, and it is a wonder whether even they could have predicted how far the West
would become entrenched in these values today.

Word Count: 2,830

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