Instagram is not a continuation of Andy Warhol’s Polaroids. Instagram destroys the context and cultural value of Warhol’s Polaroids. When Andy Warhol was deciding who to photograph it was to state that I will decide who is important in our culture.
What Instagram does is destroy the very context of who is important. Andy was just acting on the part of the establishment as any court artist has to institutionalize and immortalize those who believe they are in power. Andy Warhol’s Polaroids and
his commissioned portraits are just part of what his circle was in awe of CONTROL, the control of an irrelevant European royal salon. Karl Lagerfeld was part of this circle that operated between New York and Paris and was in retrospect delusional. They lived in the 1970’s but were pretending to be living in the 18th century Andy’s obsession with Hollywood which continues today especially within FASHIONWORLD was also based on a fantasy that Hollywood « royalty » is truly royalty. Many strategies of societal control are based on this worthless intellectual model. This is a perfect example* of this stratagem. Karl Lagerfeld who from the moment Warhol died in 1987 began to appropriate Warhol’s pivotal role in perpetuating this outmoded system. KL has
with the financial muscle of his employer’s CHANEL and FENDI spent hundreds of millions of dollars to continually support collection after collection and myriad marketing campaigns and projects to keep alive completely trivial ideas about style and power. Since the social revolutions of the 1960’s selfhood is a personal choice but that was a scary proposition for Warhol’s portrait clients and Karl’s European fashion house employers. Andy with the guidance of his enablers Fred Hughes and
Bob Colacello constructed a powerful conceit with the addictive power of the drugs that were ever present during those years. Aging European royals and aging American movie stars, Middle Eastern dictators plus the new monied fashion designers were
eager to pay in some cases to establish their place in society and others to reclaim a place that was now completely insignificant after the societal revolutions of the 1960’s.
As the world was exploring Punk supported by Situationist theory Andy with Karl in many instances in attendance and observing, built a narrative of style and glamour on the ruins of 18th French aristocracy and 1930’s Hollywood studio stages and backlots.