Unboring Boring

Throughout my exploration of conceptual art, music, and literature this semester, the concept of unboring boring introduced by Kenneth Goldsmith has transcended different mediums and resonated in everything we have studied.  Unboring boring can be seen in Goldsmith’s work when he uses process and procedure to take the mundane to a different level.  In his piece entitled “Day,” Goldsmith turns an unexceptional household item, the daily newspaper, into a 900 page book by simply transcribing every word.  The change of context of the newspaper alters the work without modifying the text.  In an analogous example, Andy Warhol elevates simple items such as soup cans past their ordinary aesthetic appeal as he transforms everyday images into art.  In their original form, newspapers and cans of soup are boring boring, but when the context changes to that of a gallery or a book, the soup cans and newspapers become unboring boring.

  

Andy Warhol in front of his Campbell’s soup collection (https://historyherstoryblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/warhols-campbells-soup-cans-debuts-in-la-1962/)

Marilyn Monroe by Warhol 1961 (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-marilyn-diptych-t03093)

In the ‘60s, Andy Warhol was part of the Pop art movement.  He took inspiration from existing items or images and transformed them into colorful, stylized, and unique works of art.  One of Warhol’s most famous paintings is an image of Marilyn Monroe that he altered with bright colors in his distinctive pop art, comic book-like technique.  The vast majority of viewers of the painting would not hesitate to accept the image as a unique, creative work of art by Warhol.  However when Warhol first made his Campbell’s soup can paintings, other artists and critics mocked him.  So why are people willing to accept some of his paintings whole-heartedly and dismiss others as plagiarism?  A stylized portrait of Marilyn Monroe is not that different from a stylized illustration of a Coca Cola bottle or a soup can.  The essence of Warhol’s work is elevating the ordinary world surrounding us to an imaginative, colorful, and playful world that exists in Warhol’s head.  In “Popism: The Warhol ‘60s,” Andy Warhol said, "Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you ‘thought’ Pop, you could never see America the same way again."  This quote shows the similarities between Warhol’s view of pop art and Goldsmith’s context over content paradigm.  In Warhol’s pop art ‘thought,’ everything is art.  Goldsmith views all existing pieces of text in the same way.  However the process of recontextualization that Warhol and Goldsmith share, raises concern amongst some people who encounter their work.  Can works like “Day” and Warhol’s soup paintings be considered unique works of art, or does the uncreative method used make these pieces nothing more than celebrated plagiarism?

This question is one that Goldsmith has faced with every piece of text he has ever worked with.  At a book reading, Goldsmith was approached by another author who said, “You didn’t write a word of what you read.”  In his piece “Being Boring,” Goldsmith acknowledges that in a traditional sense of what it means to be a writer, he did not write the piece himself.  But he goes on to explain that in the “expanded field of appropriation, uncreativity, sampling, and language management in which we all habit today,” the accusing author was wrong.  As writing and art and other forms of expression change with society, people need to accept the new and sometimes crazy results of the shift.

Despite initial opposition to their works, both Andy Warhol and Kenneth Goldsmith are respected as artists and leaders of their movements.  Warhol took the ‘60s by storm with his bright pop art and Goldsmith has extended the world of conceptual and found poetry.  Both artists use the ordinary and sometimes mundane world around them to create interesting and ‘unboring’ works of art and literature.