Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Clark, Maribeth

Keywords

Warhol, Andy, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable Show, Postmodern Art, Aesthetics

Area of Concentration

Humanities

Abstract

Andy Warhol’s remarkable work, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable Show (EPI), serves as an insight into the complex nature of postmodern art. It is a recursive guide, a mise en abyme, of present-day multi-media aesthetics. The show was a progenitor of postmodernist art-production and theory, and explored emerging technology’s role in mediating the sensory and intellectual relationship between art and audience. The EPI show is a conceptual schematic; through its aesthetic juxtapositions it expresses quite elegantly manifold ideas of the meaning of art, life, and culture. I prefer to see the piece as every bit the double entendre – it is the embodiment of inter- (a Latin prefix meaning “between,” “among,” “in the midst of,” “mutually,” or “reciprocally”) and media (the Latin plural of medium, or “an intervening agency, means, or instrument”). The EPI show is literally an inter-media piece in its aesthetics, as well as an intermediary agent poised between modernity and postmodernity. This thesis, in addition to providing historical and critical engagement with the aesthetics, ideologies and cultural climate surrounding the EPI show, is an effort to understand more broadly the ramifications of its underlying structure and message per se. It is my hope that my analysis enriches not only the understanding of this particular work, but also encourages you to apply a more sensitive and methodical approach to contemporary art in general.

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