Walt Disney’s EPCOT, Steve Jobs & Andy Warhol: How Kanye West is Building A Better World

It was William Shakespeare who said Life is a Stage & it was Steve Jobs who revolutionized the medium when he premiered the iPhone. Steve Jobs expanded human consciousness & democratized information.

Our lives have become an expression. We are the most creatively productive generation in human history. We all express ourselves through our aesthetic online, we curate the highlights of our lives and try to direct the movie of our life. We take pictures of our food, we curate ourselves through our favourite music & movies, we take pictures of our clothes, we take pictures of ourselves, our friends & our family, we record our conversations.

We grew up consuming & creating various forms of media, videos, imagery, paintings, poems, and all of the greatest music since the beginning of time literally at the tip of our fingers.

Any one of us could be the greatest photographer in the world if we could take a Delorean to the 1890s, just by virtue of having used a smartphone. My friends who aren't trained photographers instagram posts are way better than many photographers I learned about in high school photography class, just because we've had a wider access to technology for our whole lives.

Everyone’s a poet, everyone is a film director, everyone is a multidisciplinary artist, everyone is a celebrity by virtue of having a smartphone, even if they aren’t aware of it.

Andy Warhol was mocked as unoriginal & lazy when he first came on the scene. Andy, much like Steve Jobs, was a uniquely American artist. Andy just wanted to make stuff. He saw that America was the first civilization where regardless of class or status, you could be sure that the most glamorous celebrity would be buying the same things as the average person living check to check. As a person from humble beginnings, after coming of age and seeing the bourgeouis circles & what was kept away from him his whole life, Warhol was on a mission to democratize fine art.

Andy decided to highlight the mundane everyday items like Campbell soup cans, Coca Cola bottles & celebrity tabloids in his art, he was mocked for his self portraits & films of himself eating Whoppers, he was mocked for revolutionizing our approach and ideologies behind consumerism, and calling his studio 'The Factory.' His stylistic approach to silk screen printing, product design, photography & branding that was originally mocked has since been emulated by virtually every brand & artist.

Andy was mocked when he said in the future everyone would be famous for at least 15 minutes and yet, if you look at the world today in 2022, Andy’s influence is hard not to see all around us.

Steve Jobs took Andy's words & work and made them an accessible reality. We are all multidisciplinary artists, we all take selfies, we take pictures of our food, we can all become world famous celebrities for 15 minutes by using our phones, the world has become Warholian since his passing in 1987.

Andy Warhol's vision was to democratize fine art and allow the average person to be able to see the art & glamour in their everyday life. Andy’s movement was very much American and very much dedicated to making beauty accessible to everyone regardless of financial or social status by redefining what was deemed glamorous & worthy of being percieved as Art. Steve Jobs mission was to democratize information & enhance taste. Andy & Steve both created the conditions necessary for Kanye West.

Earlier this week Ye, the Artist formerly known as Kanye West, dropped his music video for Heaven & Hell that perfectly encapsulated this opening of the floodgates. The video doubles as a commercial for his Yeezy x Gap x Balenciaga collaboration. The video depicts an urban area of people dressed in all black, possibly denoting the absence of class systems & various forms of division. The visuals emulate various renaissance paintings like The Fall of Babylon. Kanye believes we are at that Fall of Babylon where elites have hoarded knowledge & beauty from the masses and we are at that phase where we are reclaiming it.

Kanye said “ I really do believe that the world can be saved through design, and everything needs to actually be “architected.” And this is the reason why even some of the first DONDA employees were architects that started designing t-shirts instead of buildings. But just to see the work actually be actualized. I believe that utopia is actually possible–but we’re led by the least noble, the least dignified, the least tasteful, the dumbest, and the most political. So in no way am I a politician–I’m usually at my best politically incorrect and very direct. I really appreciate you guys’ willingness to learn and hone your craft, and not be lazy about creation.”

For the past 2 decades Ye has been on the same mission as Warhol, trying to democratize beauty & art, but through using Steve Jobs technology, instead of urging people to see the art in their everyday lives, Ye urges people to educate themselves and enhance their taste so they can enhance the quality of their life & expression.

Ye just like Warhol & Jobs came from humble Middle Class beginnings in America, the land of opportunity. Ye always loved art, design & fashion since he was a child but when he wanted certain shoes & clothes, his mother would tell him they were too expensive. When he became a successful rapper, much like Andy, he began indulging in the world of bourgeouis culture and was shocked to find out how much had been kept away from him in his life due to his social & financial status.