The first branch of this argument is that Pop Art, while it incorporates ordinary images and commercial motifs and tropes just as does commercial design, it does so in different ways and for different reasons than does purely commercial work. It is because the motivations of the Pop Artist (and I suppose we might say of the art objects themselves) are so different from the motivations of commercial designers that Pop Art must qualify as art. Rather than simply giving his audiences pretty pictures, Warhol made them work to understand his creations -- and this seems to me to be a pretty good definition of what art is and what the artist does. And once this condition is...
But that in no way disqualifies him from being an artist. Rather, it simply makes him a clever one.
Works Cited
Davies, Stephen. The Philosophy of Art. New York: Wiley-Black, 2006.
Madoff, Stephen Henry. Pop Art: A Critical History. Berkeley: U. Of California Press, 1997.
Sandler, Irving. Abstract Expressionism and the American Experience: A Reevaluation. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2009.
Warhol, Andy. Andy Warhol: Art from Art. Berlin: Schellmann,…
