Warhol's Brillo Boxes made out of foam and sold as furniture

At $425 each, this set of 3 will run you 3 X $425.

(I suspect Warhol wouldn't have created his boxes had he been exposed to this design travesty instead of James Harvey's masterpiece.)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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bo1n6bo1n6

I used cardboard boxes as furniture when I was broke as hell, now some hipster is gonna shell out $1275 to make their Williamsburg apartment look like the rent might not get paid. Irony….(But, its a Warhol… sorry kids that’s not even a box of brillo pads.)
peregrinus

I’ve got a little shindig turning out much the same, but with much edgier “Imiquimod” logos. I take $1,274.99 for each. Drop me a line.
chaopoiesis

That the pads in the design travesty resemble pink flocked Weetabix probably has a lot to do with the box resembling breakfast cereal. Yum!
Rob Bray

With apologies to Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American hipster
http://pocketprogressive.org Uncle Geo

Who did these guys actually copy -Warhol or Brillo?
- bardfinn
  
  Yes.
Mark_Frauenfelder

I trying to find hi-res photos of all six sides so I can make my own out of wood. Can anyone help?
- EeyoreX
  
  here you go: http://www.dn.se/blogg/wp-content/migratedmedia/pastan/blog/02/20/58/100/20101018/Brillo.pdf
  - Mark_Frauenfelder
    
    Wow — thanks!
PhasmaFelis

There’s so many levels of empty pretentiousness embodied in these things that I don’t know where to begin. From the notion that ordinary items are transubstantiated into Art essentially because a famous artist touched them one time, to the uncomfortable realization that art is thereby reduced to nothing but fawning, content-free celebrity worship, and then backwards as the effect retroactively transforms the history of its subject until Mark Frauenfelder can straight-facedly call an utterly banal and undistinguished product logo a “masterpiece” because it would later be touched by a celebrity, and finally a general reflection on how the stark necessities of living poor (e.g. cardboard box furniture) inevitably get commodified and gentrified by rich idiots trying to look street…

After all that, it hardly even seems noteworthy that someone would be cynical and greedy enough to charge $425 for a foam replica of a cardboard box, and that someone else would be faux-ironic and celebrity-obsessed enough to buy it.
- EeyoreX
  
  There’s so many levels of empty pretentiousness embodied in your comment that I don’t know where to begin. From the presumption that Warhol was unaware of the scathing irony inherit in the art markets commodification of already commodified objects, down to the (deliberate?) misinterpetation of Marks appraisal for Harveys design work. I’d go on, but why bother. I’d have to explain why the whole joke is on you, and that kinda ruins it.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    He’s just compensating for not having a GIANT SIZE PKG.
- Mark_Frauenfelder
  
  I wore an idiot’s grin while reading this, Phasma. Please write more comments like this on Boing Boing. They are fantastic.
Paul Renault

Just wait a year or two, you’ll be able to pick ‘em up at Homesense for $50.

I picked up some keycap (Ctrl, Alt, Del) side tables for $45…
blueelm

I saw these on fab.com and was sort of amazed. I mean really amazed. But then again this is the place that sells desks like the one currently in my dad’s garage for 1500, complete with added paint splatter (because getting your own paint splattered on something you paid that much for is out of the question).

Fun tip: You can find them at the Sav-on down the road from me for 20-30 bucks fresh out of other dads’ garages. No free shipping though.
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

“Warhol” Brillo Boxes made out of foam.

A truly unique combination of irony, crass commercialism and pathetically obvious crass commercialism.

And that’s just SO Warhol. If he was alive, he would probably show up at HomeGoods and sign them.
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

“. . . made of foam, with a little compartment filled with enough gold to make it actually worth $425.”
howaboutthisdangit

Should’ve been made of wood or cardboard, so you could at least use them for storage. That probably wouldn’t be ironic enough, though.