Higgins and Smith Readings Response

Within Higgins' Statement on Intermedia and Smith's Without Borders VII , there is mention of artists changing their media to suit the change in communication to being primarily through television and radio.  Artists create works that criticize or point reference to how society is now communicating as of the 1950s.  An example of this would be Andy Warhol.  Warhol used imagery classified as low culture from everyday life, such as the Campbell's soup can and celebrities, and created iconic screenprints (classified as fine art) which in turn elevated these mundane images to being of a 'higher culture'.  He also created video works such as his Screen Tests and installations such as his supermarket containing Brillo Boxes, showing the new meshing of art and advertising.  Much like Duchamp, Warhol's work challenged the notions fine art.  He comments on how mass production is the root to iconicity and how viewers consume his work no differently than they would consumer goods.  The reading states "a composer is a dead man unless he composes for all the media and for his world." Despite that Warhol did not necessarily create Marilyn Monroe, Campbell's soup cans, Coke bottles or Brillo Boxes, he most definitely popularized them and in turn created the iconic imagery of the 50s and 60s in America.  Warhol's work exemplifies intermedia exactly when Smith's article states "works cease to be located in terms of media or materiality - and instead takes a position somewhere between - between thought and deed, between process and product, and between subject and object.