According to Walter Benjamin, the 20th century is defined as the era without ‘aura". American pop artists including Andy Warhol were active in this era of reproduction or copy. They have taken all provisions such as artistic material and technique, ways of exhibition and advertisement, and art marketing and private life, from this reproduction culture. They produced their own works which seem to be the copy of this period itself. Their works show quite different characteristics from traditional work of art made before the 19th century.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences between the works before and after reproduction era from the viewpoint of material, and further to illuminate the specific character of Warhol. In general, the material could be divided into two, the medium as means of representation and the subject of representation. The two kinds of material for Warhol are correspond to the photographic image as medium and the environmental world as subject. We encounter the circumstance here that the material elements are emphasized and their properties are jutting in the front. For Warhol, material is no longer on retreat and not merely paly the role of means and mediation.
Previous studies on Andy Warhol were mainly occurred from the viewpoint of post-capitalism society and its cultural logic. On the contrary, in this paper, I have tried to analyze the structural strata of works of art, especially the material side, in terms of Warhol"s series of ordinary images made in mechanical technique of silk-screen of 1960"s. Thus, I illuminated the specific strata of Warhol"s work differentiated from the past works of art and read the new aesthetic idea not in accordance with the traditional aesthetics. I examined that Warhol"s works show notably the specific qualities of medium as reproduction or copy, and emphasize the traits of subject, the other side of material, which is considered as specific environmental world today.
In Warhol"s works, only material properties are presented strongly instead of artistic formation. There is no existence of author as the subject of artistic formation in the meaning of traditional aesthetics. There are neither any idea of the essence behind works nor the area of spiritual self which is isolated alone and filled with inner personality. There exist merely the distinctive qualities of reproduction by machine and of human being related intimately with it. There exist only the presentation of signal world that is appeared as surface and sensual play.