Warhol's Working Class

the long version

During the 1960s, as neoliberalism perpetuated the idea that fixed classes were a mirage and status an individual achievement, Warhol's work appropriated images, techniques, and technologies that have long been described as generically "American" or "middle class." Drawing on archival and theoretical research into Warhol's contemporary cultural milieu, Grudin demonstrates that these features of Warhol's work were in fact closely associated with the American working class. The emergent technologies which Warhol conspicuously employed to make his work -home projectors, tape recorders, film and still cameras- were advertised directly to the working class as new opportunities for cultural participation. What's more, some of Warhol's most iconic subjects "Campbell's soup", "Brillo pads", "Coca-Cola" were similarly targeted, since working-class Americans, under threat from a variety of directions, were thought to desire the security and confidence offered by national brands.