How delightful and evocative a workaday piece of fruit can become when touched by the hallowed Warholian brush! Suddenly elevated above the rest, our prized banane peers behind the veil and sees life anew. Or so we would believe, struck by the breezy allure, the brazen self-assuredness, of our fruit de jour as she gives us the once over from her lofty perch.
The perch in question, of course, is the ever-delightful, and admittedly ancient, cover of the Velvet Underground’s debut record. Below are three lessons that this groundbreaking record teaches us about art. Let me tell you: this is the Aesthetic Record you need.
An educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends. A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art. – Oscar Wilde
The Ubiquity of Art
Proving there is more to this life than being edible, our banana begs the question: how does something yellow and blackened look so…appealing? One part crusty, one part enigmatic – the fruit is nothing short of a past its best by date delicacy. The album cover created shockwaves that reverberated throughout the art scene and taught the rest of us an unholy lesson: everything is art. This inchoate artistic capacity lurks behind every surface and the creative potential infuses all objects. Now whenever I look at an empty coffee cup, I think: yes, abstract, man…
The Frivolity of Art
Prior to 1967 did the world realize it needed this particular record cover? Did the art world realize it needed this addition to the postwar visual register? Undoubtedly not. Great art is born from a spontaneous gestation of sorts. We could just as easily imagine a world where this banana had not come into being. Aside from impacting a small, yet significant, corner of the cultural canon our world would likely look very similar sans album. This reminds us of the ultimate frivolity of art, and the spontaneous beauty that can be found in delightful uselessness.
The Vitality of Art
Plot twist: a contradiction. Upon closer inspection, we could also stake the claim that every piece of art is in fact vital: essential to the collective cultural consciousness of the times. Art is a lonely cry in the dark. It is an affirmation of our presence, our existence in this time, this place. It is an assertion of our autonomy. It is our resistance against cosmic pointlessness, yet it is also a negotiation with nihilism. To be alive is to find solace in art. And I, dear friends, choose to find solace in a graphic banana from two generations ago.
