Mr Whalen: I’d like you to consider the following:

You say, “Warhol is a third rate Art Director and first rate Marketing Man.” “Third rate” is hardly the term I’d choose to describe a man who changed the face of American art (love it or hate it) and made millions doing it. Maybe you’d like to clarify what you mean by this, because I don’t find much clarity in calling Warhol “third rate” anything.

Then, more to to substance of your post, you say, “one of the purposes of philosophy is to untangle antinomies and the errors of reason.” Here, you’re trying to refute those who maintain that Warhol did make art, which will always have some philosophical element. But then, “untangling antinomies and the errors of reason” somehow doesn’t seem like the purview of an artist. Art isn’t about reasoning, it’s about beauty. Isn’t that true? Isn’t the philosophy of the beautiful called “esthetics”? Doesn’t Warhol have a lot to say (so to speak) about what’s beautiful and what’s not? Wouldn’t this be called “esthetics” by a fair-minded observer, independently of whether he or she likes the work or not? Therefore, here I think you’re confusing your personal taste with esthetics, which is the philosophy of the beautiful. You may not like Warhol, but that doesn’t give you any basis at all for calling him a bunch of ridiculous names. For that, you’d have to do some philosophy yourself, like Warhol himself did. If you did that, maybe you’d start to see the beauty in his work. This would be a good thing for you. You’d grow and change. You’d really become a better person for it by not reflexively rejecting an artist like Warhol simply because he refused to follow the rest and created something new. He was certainly taking a big risk with this–it was his life and career that were on the line; he wasn’t in some sterile debate, like we are. Before you begin to read up on esthetics, I suggest that you get a little respect for those, like Warhol, who risked everything to simply (of course, it’s anything but simple) give people pleasure and earn a living by it. It’s undeniable that Warhol achieved his goal: he still gives people a lot of pleasure, years after his death. I’m one of them.