Pop artist Bob and Cameron use to mark the turn from the modern search for a form to the postmodern acceptance of not finding one. Named only in passing across the early dialogues — a birth-year footnote in Dialogue 13, a beneficiary of de Menil patronage in Dialogue 29 — he becomes load-bearing in Dialogue 37, where his "indifference" to the form the abstract expressionists chased is read, through Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word, as the postmodern discovery that there is "no finish line."
Across the dialogues
Recast as an effect of patronage — the de Menils "made the whole art world of the avant-garde," Warhol included, staffing the 60s explosion McLuhan watched
Warhol appears first as an effect, not an agent — the de Menils' patronage "made the whole art world of the avant-garde," Warhol among it, staffing the 1960s art explosion McLuhan commented on.
"they made the whole art world of the avant-garde including Andy Warhol"
Promoted to the hinge of the art argument — the indifference that "cancels" the search for a form and "includes the not finding," made the case study for the postmodern and McLuhan's "no finish line"
Warhol as the artist who quit searching for a form — seeing the search as silly, he entered the process "with a great indifference," which Cameron reads as the acceptance that any form found is only a type, and a type a cliché.
"Warhol saw that that was silly. So he engaged in the process with a great indifference."
Bob's core placement — Warhol's pop "cancels" the abstract-expressionist search for the form (the Barnett Newman project) by "including the not finding," which Bob offers as a definition of the postmodern and McLuhan's "no finish line."
"the pop artists, especially Warhol, canceled the Barnett Newman project of looking for the form. They actually included the not finding."
The direction of influence reversed — where the pairing has previously run from Warhol's fame machine toward the present, the session has McLuhan supplying the insight first, which makes Warhol the demonstration of a thesis rather than its author
The fifteen-minutes formula given a source and a logic — once fame is understood as manufactured, universal fame follows as a consequence, which is what lets McLuhan then use his own as an exhibit.
"it was McLuhan that gave Warhol the idea about how you manufacture fame. So the idea that fame can be manufactured meant that anybody could do it, and eventually everybody would do it."