Abstract

This study aims to situate Andy Warhol's work from the 1960s in its cultural, material and critical context. The first chapter follows Hal Foster's influential "traumatic realist" interpretation of Warhol to identify its strengths and limits. Foster's engagement with both the cultural theory of trauma and aspects of the work of Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan are considered. In light of this assessment a case is made for the cultural studies approach to Warhol's work advocated by Douglas Crimp. The second chapter explores how Warhol's manipulation of images from Life 's archive engages the artist's work in a public discourse-- structured by the photographic codes of the illustrated press --on the issues of his day. In the framework of Allan Sekula's "archival paradigm" a measure of political agency for Warhol in the context of a public visual domain emerges. This understanding of Warhol's intervention is supported by Barthes's analyses of signifying practices in the cultural sphere and Walter Benjamin's description of the reproductive imaging technologies, on which such practices depend. The third chapter focuses on the philosophical status of Warhol's work, as discussed by Arthur Danto and his critics. Warhol's artistic description seems to issue a prescription as well, to intervene in the public sphere by means of its own communicative resources. The political stakes of this prescriptive aspect of Warhol's work are examined in the context of the artist's involvement in the gay underworld of the 1960s and its representation in the popular press