More and more, Hirst’s thriving pop presence and giant market share have left him looking like the single greatest heir to Andy Warhol—and to Warhol’s pioneering collapse of art and artist and price tag into a single “social sculpture,” in the words of the American writer Jack Bankowsky. In 2009, Bankowsky helped put together a Tate show called “Pop Life,” in which he argued that, already in the 1960s, Warhol had made the leap from standard pop art, whose pictures simply showed us our commodified culture, to a new kind of art that combined marketing and buying and selling into part of the artwork itself.text: Blake Gopnik for Newsweek/The Daily Beastimage: Michael Birt for Newsweek 
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More and more, Hirst’s thriving pop presence and giant market share have left him looking like the single greatest heir to Andy Warhol—and to Warhol’s pioneering collapse of art and artist and price tag into a single “social sculpture,” in the words of the American writer Jack Bankowsky. In 2009, Bankowsky helped put together a Tate show called “Pop Life,” in which he argued that, already in the 1960s, Warhol had made the leap from standard pop art, whose pictures simply showed us our commodified culture, to a new kind of art that combined marketing and buying and selling into part of the artwork itself.

text: Blake Gopnik for Newsweek/The Daily Beast
image: Michael Birt for Newsweek 

wells of mimir (daylight no. 4 and 5)passive drawing in progress, documentation india ink and ice on paper, 5 hoursKevin Townsend  
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wells of mimir (daylight no. 4 and 5)passive drawing in progress, documentation india ink and ice on paper, 5 hoursKevin Townsend  
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wells of mimir (daylight no. 4 and 5)
passive drawing in progress, documentation 
india ink and ice on paper, 5 hours
Kevin Townsend  

I’ve been playing with these small scale maquettes / scale tests and studies for installation pieces (that my wife and I are collaborating on), and I’m really beginning to like the act of creating these things at the small scale and photographing them from inside. Initially they were not intended to be finished pieces (but rather a means to an end), nor were the photographs intended to be the end product, but there is something very satisfying about this process and the images that are emerging. I had always intended to take the pictures into photoshop and use them to mock up what the finished installation would look like in the proposed space, but I think I’ve accidentally discovered a new branch to explore— interesting new territory as much of my new work is dealing with light as an important element, I have been having to figure out how to reproduce lighting effects on a much smaller scale.Image: Kevin Townsend, mottled sensation (study III)
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I’ve been playing with these small scale maquettes / scale tests and studies for installation pieces (that my wife and I are collaborating on), and I’m really beginning to like the act of creating these things at the small scale and photographing them from inside. Initially they were not intended to be finished pieces (but rather a means to an end), nor were the photographs intended to be the end product, but there is something very satisfying about this process and the images that are emerging. I had always intended to take the pictures into photoshop and use them to mock up what the finished installation would look like in the proposed space, but I think I’ve accidentally discovered a new branch to explore— interesting new territory as much of my new work is dealing with light as an important element, I have been having to figure out how to reproduce lighting effects on a much smaller scale.

Image: Kevin Townsend, mottled sensation (study III)