Warhol was a workaholic in whose Factory misfits gathered, superstars were created, and great quantities of important art was made. The art represented Warhol’s obsessions, which mirrored the concerns of daily American life. He “was obsessed with glamour, beauty, parties, shopping and sex.’’ He was fascinated by tabloid tragedy - car wrecks, electric chair executions, and torn bodies - intimate parts, and groping bodies. He celebrated ordinary American life - Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Danto concludes, “Much of modern aesthetics is more or less a response to Warhol’s challenges, so in an important sense he really was doing philosophy by doing the art that made him famous.’’
THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD
By Chinua Achebe
Knopf, 192 pp., $24.95
In 1957, when Nigerian-born Chinua Achebe first applied for a passport, he discovered that he was defined as a “British Protected Person.’’ British protection assumed the humiliation and denial of dignity of colonialism but also allowed for the unpredictable in human affairs, “the ability to face adversity down by refusing to be defined by it, refusing to be no more than its agent or its victim.’’ In all of these essays (written between 1988 and 2008), Achebe generously locates and describes this unpredictable area.
His own missionary education, his decision to write in English and his native Igbo, his participation in international panels and ceremonies, his acceptance of literary prizes and fellowships all occupy this area.
