Andy Warhol Bio - American Pop Art Painter & Printmaker Movement, Style, School or Type of Art: Pop Date and Place of Birth: (disputed) August 6, 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Life and Work: Warhol was trained as a commercial artist, and is best known for founding (or claiming to found) the Pop Art Movement in American art. He developed the technique of projecting photographic images to a silk screen, a process that enabled him to produce repetitive patterns within the same piece relatively quickly. Typical works are of famous people, everyday objects (soup cans, dollar bills) and macabre scenes of car wrecks and electric chairs. Warhol also produced experimental films, helped found the band Velvet Underground and was an integral part of making performance art acceptable, if not understood. His studio, "The Factory", was a social hub in New York City. Date and Place of Death: February 27, 1987, New York City Warhol died of complications following gall bladder surgery, which was, perhaps, a fitting way for an artist who championed the mundane and claimed to love "boring things" to go.

continue reading below our video Profile of Andy Warhol Still, afterwards he got a spectacular send-off as some 2,000 people attended his memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City . Quotes From Andy Warhol: "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." "An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them." "Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again." "I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks." "It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger." Sources and Further Reading Feldman, Frayda (ed.), et al. Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné. New York : Abbeville Press, 1989 (revised 4th edition). Hackett, Pat (ed.).

The Andy Warhol Diaries New York : Warner Books, 1991. Livingstone, Marco. "Warhol, Andy" Andy Warhol Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story Like The Art Story on Facebook Follow The Art Story on Google+ "How can you say one style is better than another? You ought to be able to be an Abstract Expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling you've given up something.. I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that's what's is going to happen, that's going to be the whole new scene." Synopsis Andy Warhol was the most successful and highly paid commercial illustrator in New York even before he began to make art destined for galleries. Nevertheless, his screen-printed images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans, and sensational newspaper stories, quickly became synonymous with Pop art. He emerged from the poverty and obscurity of an Eastern European immigrant family in Pittsburgh, to become a charismatic magnet for bohemian New York, and to ultimately find a place in the circles of High Society.

For many his ascent echoes one of Pop art's ambitions, to bring popular styles and subjects into the exclusive salons of high art. His elevation to the status of a popular icon represented a new kind of fame and celebrity for a fine artist. Key Ideas Warhol's early work in commercial illustration was all about elevating an ordinary product into a more glamorous light for the purpose of selling it as an object of desire to the masses. His drawings of women’s shoes were decorative and whimsical examples of this where a high heel might be festooned with flowers and birds, lending it an ephemeral female connotation. This early experience in manipulating popular taste would come to inform his original Pop works, which placed everyday objects on a pedestal in their stark and unadorned simplicity. Unlike the commercial work, designed to seduce, this new art would produce the opposite effect by lending a more dispassionate and impersonal mood. Much debate still surrounds the iconic screen-printed images with which Warhol established his reputation as a Pop artist in the early 1960s. Some view his Death and Disaster series, along with his Marilyn pictures, as frank expressions of our universal sorrow surrounding public events.

Others view them as some of the first expressions of 'compassion fatigue' – reflecting the way we lose the ability to sympathize with events from which we feel removed. Still others think of these pictures as screens, which buffer us from horrifying circumstances while we personally register and process shock. Although artists had been influenced by popular culture throughout the twentieth century, Pop art marked an important new stage in the breakdown between fine art, celebrity culture, and commercial art forms. Although Warhol's paintings from the early 1960s were important in pioneering these developments, he would soon take Pop off the canvas and become a leading example of blurring the lines between physical life and art. His lifestyle as an artist and eccentric personality was elevated to star status, his very existence in the social whir of New York City as iconic as the notables whose faces would appear on his eponymous silkscreens. As ringmaster of his silver walled studio coined The Factory, he would create art, film, and host parties populated by a roving cast of larger than life characters where life imitated art and art imitated life. It is arguable that these diverse activities were just as influential in expanding the implications of Pop art.

Although Warhol would continue to create paintings intermittently throughout his career, in 1965 he "retired" from the medium to concentrate on making experimental films. The films furthered Warhol’s obsessions with the mundane, oftentimes taking a subject such as Sleep or Eat and painstakingly presenting it in real time, reflecting our droll-like obsessions with ourselves. Despite years of neglect, these films have recently attracted widespread interest, and Warhol is now seen as one of the most important filmmakers of the period, a forefather of independent film. Critics have traditionally seen Warhol's career as going into decline after a deranged fan shot him in the side of his stomach. Valuing his early paintings above all, they have ignored the activities that absorbed his attention in later years - films, parties, collecting, publishing, and painting commissioned portraits. Yet some have begun to think that all these ventures make up Warhol's most important legacy because they prefigure the diverse interests, activities, and interventions that occupy artists today. In fact, Warhol’s posthumously published diaries remain one of the most decisive time capsule in evidence, documenting his role in that legacy. Our Sponsor: Musart Boutique.

Article Continues Below Andy Warhol in your home - own a piece of the museum Most Important Art Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) By the 1960s, the New York art world was in a rut as Abstract Expressionism’s explosion of the 1940s and '50s had grown stale. Warhol was one of the artists hungry to reintroduce imagery to his work. The gallery owner and interior designer Muriel Latow presented Warhol with the idea of painting soup cans, when she suggested to him that he should paint objects that people use every day. (It is rumoured that Warhol ate the soup for lunch on a daily basis). Because Warhol was already an extremely successful consumer ad designer, he used the techniques of his trade to create an image that was both easily recognizable and visually stimulating. He was well versed in the concepts of the advertising industry, which was currently invading the American psyche with its promise of happiness through abundant consumerism. He mirrored this by painting soup cans on thirty-two canvases aligned on a wall to denote the experience of being in a well-lit supermarket.

With this installation, Warhol became credited with envisioning a new type of art that glorified (and also criticized) the nation’s impetus toward consumption. Warhol would go on to say about his ethos of putting ordinary items front and center, "I just paint things I always thought were beautiful, things you use every day and never think about." Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases - The Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York Like The Art Story on Facebook Biography Childhood Andy was the third child born to Czechoslovakian immigrant parents, Ondrej and Ulja (Julia) Warhola, in a working class neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He had two older brothers, John and Paul. As a child, Andy was smart and creative. His mother, a casual artist herself, encouraged his artistic urges by giving him his first camera at nine years old. Warhol was known to suffer from a nervous disorder that would frequently keep him at home, and, during these long periods, he would listen to the radio and collect pictures of movie stars around his bed. It was this exposure to current events at a young age that he later said shaped his obsession with pop culture and celebrities.

When he was 14, his father passed away, leaving the family money to be specifically used towards higher learning for one of the boys. It was decided by the family that Andy would benefit the most from a college education. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Early Training After graduating from high school at the age of 16, in 1945, Warhol attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), where he received formal training in pictorial design. Shortly after graduating, in 1949, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a commercial illustrator. His first project was for Glamour magazine for an article entitled, "Success is a Job in New York." Throughout the 1950s Warhol continued his successful career in commercial illustration, working for several well-known magazines, such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and The New Yorker. He also produced advertising and window displays for local New York retailers. His work with I.

Miller & Sons, for which his whimsical blotted line advertisements were particularly noticed, gained him some local notoriety, even winning several awards from the Art Director's Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. In the early 1950s, Andy shortened his name from Warhola to Warhol, and decided to strike out on his own as a serious artist. His experience and expertise in commercial art, combined with his immersion in American popular culture, influenced his most notable work. In 1952, he exhibited Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote in his first individual show at the Hugo Gallery in New York. While exhibiting work in several venues around New York City, he most notably exhibited at MoMA, where he participated in his first group show in 1956. Warhol took notice of new emerging artists, greatly admiring the work of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, which inspired him to expand his own artistic experimentation. In 1960, Warhol began using advertisements and comic strips in his paintings.

These works, examples of early Pop art, were characterized by more expressive and painterly styles that included clearly recognizable brushstrokes, and were loosely influenced by Abstract Expressionism. However, subsequent works, such his Brillo Boxes (1964), would mark a direct rebellion against Abstract Expressionism, by almost completely removing any evidence of the artist's hand. Mature Period Andy Warhol worked across many media as a painter, printmaker, illustrator, filmmaker and writer. In September 1960, after moving to a townhouse at 1342 Lexington Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he began his most prolific period. From having no dedicated studio space in his previous apartment, where he lived with his mother, he now had plenty of room to work. In 1962 he offered the Department of Real Estate $150 a month to rent a nearby obsolete fire house on East 87th Street. He was granted permission and used this space in conjunction with his Lexington Avenue space until 1964. Continuing with the theme of advertisements and comic strips, his paintings throughout the early part of the 1960s were based primarily on illustrated images from printed media and graphic design.

To create his large-scale graphic canvases, Warhol used an opaque projector to enlarge the images onto a large canvas on the wall. Then, working freehand, he would trace the image with paint directly onto the canvas without a pencil tracing underneath. As a result, Warhol's works from early 1961 are generally more painterly. Late in 1961, Warhol started on his Campbell's Soup Can paintings. The series employed many different techniques, but most were created by projecting source images on to canvas, tracing them with a pencil, and then applying paint. In this way Warhol removed most signs of the artist's hand. In 1962 Warhol started to explore silkscreening. This stencil process involved transferring an image on to a porous screen, then applying paint or ink with a rubber squeegee. This marked another means of painting while removing traces of his hand; like the stencil processes he had used to create the Campbell's Soup Can pictures, this also enabled him to repeat the motif multiple times across the same image, producing a serial image suggestive of mass production. Often, he would first set down a layer of colors which would compliment the stencilled image after it was applied.

His first silkscreened paintings were based on the front and back faces of dollar bills, and he went on to create several series of images of various consumer goods and commercial items using this method. He depicted shipping and handling labels, Coca-Cola bottles, coffee can labels, Brillo Soap box labels, matchbook covers, and cars. From autumn 1962 he also started to produce photo-silkscreen works, which involved transferring a photographic image on the porous silkscreens. His first was Baseball (1962), and those that followed often employed banal or shocking imagery derived from tabloid newspaper photographs of car crashes and civil rights riots, money and consumer household products. In 1964 Warhol moved to 231 East 47th Street, calling it "The Factory." Having achieved moderate success as an artist by this point, he was able to employ several assistants to help him execute his work. This marked a turning point in his career.

Now, with the help of his assistants, he could more decisively remove his hand from the canvas and create repetitive, mass-produced images that would appear empty of meaning and beg the question, "What makes art, art?" This was an idea first introduced by Marcel Duchamp, whom Warhol admired. Warhol had a lifelong fascination with Hollywood, demonstrated by his series of iconic images of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. He also expanded his medium into installations, most notably at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1964, replicating Brillo boxes in their actual size and then screenprinting their label designs onto blocks made of plywood. Wanting to continue his exploration of different mediums, Warhol began experimenting with film in 1963. Two years later, after a trip to Paris for an exhibition of his work, he announced that he would be retiring from painting to focus exclusively on film. Although he never completely followed through with this intention, he did produce many films, most starring those whom he called the Warholstars, an eccentric and eclectic group of friends who frequented the Factory and were known for their unconventional lifestyle.

He created approximately 600 films between 1963 and 1976, films ranging in length from a few minutes to 24 hours. He also developed a project called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, or EPI, in 1967. The EPI was a multi-media production combining The Velvet Underground rock band with projections of film, light and dance, culminating in a sensory experience of performance art. Warhol had also been self-publishing artist's books since the 1950s, but his first mass produced book, Andy Warhol's Index, was published in 1967. He later published several other books, and founded Interview Magazine with his friend Gerard Malanga in 1969. The magazine is dedicated to celebrities and is still in production today. After an attempt on his life in 1968, by acquaintance and radical feminist, Valerie Solanas, he decided to distance himself from his unconventional entourage. This marked the end of the 1960s Factory scene.

Warhol subsequently sought out companionship in New York high society, and throughout most of the 1970s his work consisted of commissioned portraits derived from printed Polaroid photographs. The most notable exception to this is his famous Mao series, which was done as a comment on President Richard Nixon's visit to China. Lacking the glamour and commercial appeal of his earlier portraits, critics saw Warhol as prostituting his artistic talent, and viewed this later period as one of decline. However, Warhol saw financial success as an important goal. He had made the shift from commercial artist to business artist. Late Years and Death Ironically, in the late 1970s and 1980s, Warhol made a return to painting, and produced works that frequently verged on abstraction. His Oxidation Painting series, which were made by urinating on a canvas of copper paint, echoed the immediacy of the Abstract Expressionists and the rawness of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings. By the 1980s, Warhol had regained much of his critical notoriety, due in part to his collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente, two much younger and more cutting-edge artists.

In the final years of Warhol's life, he turned to religious subjects; his version of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper is particularly renowned. In these works, Warhol melded the sacred and the irreverent by juxtaposing enlarged logos of brands against images of Christ and his Apostles. After suffering postoperative complications from a routine gall bladder procedure, Warhol died on February 22, 1987. He was buried in his hometown of Pittsburgh. His memorial service was held in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and attended by more than 2,000 people. Legacy Andy Warhol was one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century, creating some of the most recognizable images ever produced. Challenging the idealist visions and personal emotions conveyed by abstraction, Warhol embraced popular culture and commercial processes to produce work that appealed to the general public. He was one of the founding fathers of the Pop art movement, expanding the ideas of Duchamp by challenging the very definition of art. His artistic risks and constant experimentation with subjects and media made him a pioneer in almost all forms of visual art.

His unconventional sense of style and his celebrity entourage helped him reach the mega-star status to which he aspired. Warhol's will dictated that his estate fund the Warhol Foundation for the advancement of the visual arts, which was subsequently created later that year. Through the joint efforts of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Dia Center for the Arts, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., the Warhol Museum was opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1994, housing a large collection of his work. Influences and Connections Andy Warhol, Posters and Prints at Art.com Andy Warhol Get notified about special offers and save on your next order. Please enter a valid email address (603 Items) SWITCH TO VISUAL MODE What's this?You are browsing art in Classic Mode. To try our new experience where you can expore categories visually and discover art using advanced color searching, switch to Visual Mode. $75 - $150 More than $150 Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame has lasted 25 years.

Born in 1928, he left a huge legacy behind when he passed away in 1987 after routine gall bladder surgery. From drawings, paintings and prints to videography, publishing and performance, he produced more than art -- he was essentially his own brand. From haunting black and white self-portraits to Polaroid snapshots of celebrities, many of the photos in the collection later became the inspiration for Warhol's most well-known Pop Art pieces. Shop By Product Types Andy Warhol - Biography - IMDb Andy Warhol Jump to: Overview (5) | Mini Bio (2) | Trade Mark (4) | Trivia (22) | Personal Quotes (17) Overview (5) 5' 11" (1.8 m) Mini Bio (2) Andrew Warhol's father, Ondrej, came from the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia) in 1912, and sent for his mother, Julia Zavacky Warhola, in 1921. His father worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. Around some time, the family moved to Pittsburgh. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns.

Overcoming this, he graduated from Schenley High School in Pittsburgh in 1945, and enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University), graduating in June 1949. During college, he met Philip Pearlstein , a fellow student. After graduation, Andy Warhol (having dropped the letter 'a' from his last name) moved to New York City, and shared an apartment with Pearlstein at St. Mark's Place off of Avenue A for a couple months. During this time, he moved in and out of several Manhattan apartments. In New York, he met Tina Fredericks , art editor of Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York, and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, Harper's Bazzar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards. During the 1950s, he moved to an apartment on East 75th Street. His mother moved in with him, and Fritizie Miller become his agent.

In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at Hugo Gallery, New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote . He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. Around 1953-1955, he worked for a theater group on the Lower East Side, and designs sets. It is around that time that he dyed his hair silver. Warhol published several books, including Twenty Five Cats Named Sam, and One Blue Pussy. In 1956, he traveled around the world with Charles Lisanby , a television-set designer. In April of this year, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He began receiving accolades for his work, with the 35th Annual Art Directors Club Award for Distinctive Merit, for an I.Miller shoe advertisement. He published In The Bottom Of My Garden later that year.

In 1957, received 36th Annual Art Directors Club Medal and Award of Distinctive Merit, for the I.Miller show advertisements, and Life Magazine published his illustrations for an article, "Crazy Golden Slippers". In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, Superman, and two of Coca-Cola bottles. In 1961, using the Dick Tracy comic strip, he designed a window display for Lord & Taylor, at this time, major art galleries around the nation begin noticing his work. In 1962, Warhol made paintings of dollar bills and Campbell soup cans, and his work was included in an important exhibition of pop art, The New Realists, held at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York. In November of this year, Elanor Ward showed his paintings at Stable Gallery, and the exhibition began a sensation. In 1963, he rented a studio in a firehouse on East 87th Street. He met his assistant, Gerard Malanga , and started making his first film, Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964).

Later, he drove to Los Angeles for his second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery. In November of that year, he found a loft at 231 East 47th Street, which became his main studio, The Factory. In December, he began production of Red Jackie, the first of the Jackie series. In 1964, his first solo exhibition in Europe, held at the Galerie Ileana Sonnebend in Paris, featured the Flower series. He received a commission from architect Philip Johnson to make a mural, entitled Thirteen Most Wanted Men for the New York State Pavilion in the New York World's Fair. In April, he received an Independent Film Award from Film Culture magazine. In November, his first solo exhibition in the US was held at Leo Castelli Gallery. And at this time, he began his self portrait series. In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey , who became his advisor and collaborator. His first solo museum exhibition was held at the Institute of Contempary Art, at the University of Pennsylvania. During this year, he made a surprise announcement of his retirement from painting, but it was to be short lived.

He would resume painting again in 1972. It was around this time that he met Lou Reed , John Cale , Sterling Morrison , and Maureen Tucker (collectively known as The Velvet Underground ), and a German-born model turned chanteuse called Nico . He paired Nico with the Velvets, and they developed a close bond with Warhol. This was an alliance that forever changed the face of world culture. Warhol produced the group's first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, which has been called "the most influential record ever" by many critics. Later, a multimedia show developed (called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable), managed, and produced by Warhol, featuring the Velvet Underground. In the summer of 1966, Warhol's film Chelsea Girls (1966) became the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theater. In 1967, Chelsea Girls opened in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and six of his Self Portraits were shown at Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

In August of this year, he gave a lecture at various colleges in the Los Angeles area, his persona is so popular that some colleges hire Allen Midgette to impersonate him for lectures. Later, Warhol moved The Factory to 33 Union Square West, and met Fred Hughes , who later became President of Enterprises, and Interview Magazine. In 1968, Warhol's first solo European museum exhibition was held at Moderna Museet, Stockholm. But later that year on June 3, 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas , an ultra-radical and member of the entourage surrounding Warhol. Solanis was the founder of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Fortunately, Warhol survived the assassination attempt after spending two months in a hospital. This incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). Afterwards, Andy Warhol dropped out of the filmmaking business, but now and then continued his contribution to film and art. He never emotionally recovered from his brush with death.

During the 1970s and 80s, Andy Warhol's status as a media icon skyrocketed, and he used his influence to back many younger artists. He began publishing of Interview magazine, with the first issue being released in fall of 1969. In 1971, his play, entitled Pork, opened at London at the Round House Theatre. He resumed painting in 1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. The Factory was moved to 860 Broadway, and in 1975, he bought a house on Lexington Street. A major retrospective of his work is held in Zurich. In 1976, he did the Skulls, and Hammer and Sickle series. Throughout the late 70s and 80s, a retrospective exhibition was held, as Warhol began work on the Reversals, Retrospectives, and Shadows series. The Myths series, Endangered Species series, and Ads series followed through the early and mid 1980s.

On 22 February 1987, a "day of medical infamy", as quoted by one biographer, Andy Warhol died following complications from gall bladder surgery. He was 58 years old. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk> Trade Mark (4) Wore a wig most of the time in public Blond, spiky hair, black leather and white shirts. Always had a camera and a tape recorder whenever he talked to someone. Dark sunglasses Trivia (22) 1984: He and Don Monroe directed music video "Hello Again" for The Cars . He also appeared in it, playing The Bartender. Interred at St. John the Baptist Catholic Cemetery, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1990, Lou Reed and John Cale made a CD album called "Songs for Drella" as a tribute to Warhol with 15 songs about Warhol's life. Pictured on a USA 37¢ commemorative postage stamp issued 9 August 2002. Produced The Velvet Underground 's first album.

He essentially lent his name to their work and observed them in the recording studio, while Lou Reed and later Tom Wilson (who had worked earlier with Bob Dylan ) mostly called the shots. The cover of the band's first album (with Nico ) was Warhol's design: a banana with a peel that was actually a peelable sticker. Is credited with coining the term "superstar." When guesting on The Love Boat (1977), he was nervous about the experience and turned to his castmate (and muse for the particular episode) Marion Ross , who calmed him down and offered some advice on how to act. Was a frequent guest at the infamous "Studio 54" Avoided the subject of death, except in his paintings (the Disaster series). He did not attend the funerals of his superstars nor did he attend his mother's funeral when she died in November 1972. After she passed away he continued to give the impression that she was still alive to people who would ask about her. Warhol did not mention his mother's death to any of his close friends. As late as 1976, when friends asked about his mother, Andy said, 'Oh, she's great.

But she doesn't get out of bed much." His father, who traveled much on business trips, died when Warhol was 13. Son of immigrants from the town Miková, located in today's northeastern Slovakia. His original name was "Warhola". Warhol's "A: A Novel," published in 1968, is based on 24 hours of tape recordings (24 one-hour tapes) of Ondine speaking. His tape-recorded musings were transcribed and typed up and serve as the basis of the novel, which was disingenuously presented as one day in the life of Ondine. The book is one of the premier artifacts of the Pop art movement/Pop culture. Warhol followed Ondine around New York City with a tape recorder, recording their conversations. Ondine was addicted to amphetamines and was prone to wild verbal flights that covered many subjects. To type up the tapes, Warhol hired teenage girls, some of whom were barely literate and made many errors.

Warhol "edited" the resulting manuscript during a series of concerts given by The Velvet Underground ( Lou Reed is one of the "characters" in the novel), sitting in the rear of the theater in the dark, reading proof sheets with a flashlight. Like James Joyce when confronted with transcription errors made by the French printers/compositors of the first edition of "Ulysses" (1922), Warhol loved the mistakes and decided to keep them in. He thought the mistakes improved the book as it made it worse, more of a Pop manifesto, and insisted that all the errata be left in the final draft, which he fancied as a Pop "Finnegans Wake." In his later book/memoir "Popism," Warhol explained, "I wanted to do a 'bad book' just the way I'd done 'bad movies' and 'bad art,' because when you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something." Warhol, the author, refused to filter out the "background noise" or "static," thus preventing the reader from following a coherent narrative thread. The book intentionally is boring, as are many of Warhol's films.

Of his films Warhold said that talking about them was more interesting than actually viewing them, and this likely was his intent with "A: A Novel" -- to create an artifact that made people talk about it -- and think. Influenced the movement of 'The New Russian Classicism'. Visited St. Petersburg, Russia and presented his 'tomato cans' to Timur Novikov and Sergei Bugayev . Was among the guests at Madonna 's and Sean Penn 's wedding. Godfather of Bijou Phillips . An astute businessman in the art world, he left an estate worth $500 million when he died. Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 873-876. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. He bequeathed his wig to singer David Bowie , who later wore it to portray Warhol in Basquiat (1996). Bowie had written the song "Andy Warhol" in tribute to him, which featured on his 1971 album "Hunky Dory".

His nephew, James Warhola, wrote and illustrated a children's book titled "Uncle Andy's." It is about a little boy who visits his famous uncle in New York City. His brother owned a junkyard in upstate New York. Periodically his brother would bring him odd scraps of junk, which Warhol would use in his art. Was good friends with Charles Lisanby . Gore Vidal once described Andy Warhol as "The only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60". Personal Quotes (17) Warhol, Marilyn Diptych | Pop (article) | Khan Academy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych Email Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, acrylic on canvas, 2054x 1448 mm (Tate) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 2015 Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, acrylic on canvas, 2054 x 1448 mm (Tate) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

2015 Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych is made of two silver canvases on which the artist silkscreened a photograph of Marilyn Monroe fifty times. At first glance, the work—which explicitly references a form of Christian painting (see below) in its title—invites us to worship the legendary icon, whose image Warhol plucked from popular culture and immortalized as art. Diptych with the Virgin and Child Enthroned and the Crucifixion, 1275/80, tempera on panel, 38 x 59 cm (Art Institute of Chicago) Diptych with the Virgin and Child Enthroned and the Crucifixion, 1275/80, tempera on panel, 38 x 59 cm (Art Institute of Chicago) But as in all of Warhol's early paintings, this image is also a carefully crafted critique of both modern art and contemporary life. Not only pop culture With sustained looking, Warhol’s works reveal that he was influenced not only by pop culture, but also by art history—and especially by the art that was then popular in New York.

For example, in this painting, we can identify the hallmarks of Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Visitor at Tate Modern, London (photo: Barbara Piancastelli, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0) Visitor, Tate Modern, London (photo: Barbara Piancastelli , CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0) As in the work of these older artists, the monumental scale of Marilyn Diptych (more than six feet by nine feet) demands our attention and announces the importance of the subject matter. Furthermore, the seemingly careless handling of the paint and its “allover composition”—the even distribution of form and color across the entire canvas, such that the viewer’s eyes wander without focusing on one spot—are each hallmarks of Abstract Expressionism, as exemplified by Jackson Pollock's drip paintings. Yet Warhol references these painters only to undermine the supposed expressiveness of their gestures: like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, whose work he admired, he uses photographic imagery, the silkscreen process and repetition to make art that is not about his interior life, but rather about the culture in which he lived.

Emotional flatness Warhol takes as the subject of his painting an impersonal image. Though he was an award-winning illustrator, instead of making his own drawing of Monroe, he appropriates an image that already exists. Furthermore, the image is not some other artist’s drawing, but a photograph made for mass reproduction. Even if we don’t recognize the source (a publicity photo for Monroe’s 1953 film Niagara), we know the image is a photo, not only because of its verisimilitude, but also because of the heightened contrast between the lit and shadowed areas of her face, which we associate with a photographer’s flash. Publicity still for the film Niagara, 1953 with silkscreen face details Publicity still for the film Niagara, 1953 left; center and right, details from: Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, acrylic on canvas, 2054 x 1448 mm (Tate) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

2015 True to form, the actress looks at us seductively from under heavy-lidded eyes and with parted lips; but her expression is also a bit inscrutable, and the repetition remakes her face into an eerie, inanimate mask. Warhol’s use of the silkscreen technique further “flattens” the star’s face. By screening broad planes of unmodulated color, the artist removes the gradual shading that creates a sense of three-dimensional volume, and suspends the actress in an abstract void. Through these choices, Warhol transforms the literal flatness of the paper-thin publicity photo into an emotional “flatness,” and the actress into a kind of automaton. In this way, the painting suggests that “Marilyn Monroe,” a manufactured star with a made-up name, is merely a one-dimensional (sex) symbol—perhaps not the most appropriate object of our almost religious devotion. Repetitions While Warhol’s silkscreened repetitions flatten Monroe's identity, they also complicate his own identity as the artist of this work. The silkscreen process allowed Warhol (or his assistants) to reproduce the same image over and over again, using multiple colors.

Once the screens are manufactured and the colors are chosen, the artist simply spreads inks evenly over the screens using a wide squeegee. Though there are differences from one face to the next, these appear to be the accidental byproducts of a quasi-mechanical process, rather than the product of the artist's judgment. Warhol's rote painting technique is echoed by the rigid composition of the work, a five-by-five grid of faces, repeated across the two halves of its surface. Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, acrylic on canvas, 2054x 1448 mm (Tate) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 2015 Detail, Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, acrylic on canvas, 2054 x 1448 mm (Tate) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 2015 Here, as in many Neo-Dada, minimalist and conceptual works, the grid is like a program that the artist uses to “automate” the process of composing the work, instead of relying on subjective thoughts or feelings to make decisions.

In other words, Warhol's "cool," detached composition is the opposite of the intimate, soulful encounter with the canvas associated with Abstract Expressionism. But whereas most works that use grids are abstract, here, the the grid repeats a photo of a movie star, causing the painting to resemble a photographer’s contact sheet, or a series of film strips placed side-by-side. These references to mechanical forms of reproduction further prove that for Warhol, painting is no longer an elevated medium distinct from popular culture. Ghostly symmetry Aside from radically changing our notion of painting, Warhol's choices create a symmetry between the artist and his subject, who each seem to be less than fully human: the artist becomes a machine, just as the actress becomes a mask or a shell.

Another word we could use to describe the presence of both the artist and the actress might be ghostly, and in fact, Warhol started making his series of "Marilyn" paintings only after the star had died of an apparent suicide, and eventually collected them with other disturbing paintings under the title “Death in America.” Her death haunts this painting: on the left, her purple, garishly made-up face resembles an embalmed corpse, while the lighter tones of some of the faces on the right make it seem like she is disappearing before our eyes. Warhol once noted that through repeated exposure to an image, we become de-sensitized to it. In that case, by repeating Monroe’s mask-like face, he not only drains away her life, but also ours as well, by deadening our emotional response to her death. Then again, by making her face so strange and unfamiliar, he might also be trying to re-sensitize us to her image, so that we remember she isn’t just a symbol, but a person whom we might pity. From the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, he may even be forcing us to relive, and therefore work through, the traumatic shock of her death.

The painting is more than a mere celebration of Monroe’s iconic status. It is an invitation to consider the consequences of the increasing role of mass media images in our everyday lives. Essay by Tina Rivers Ryan Additional resources This painting at Tate Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900: modernism antimodernism postmodernism, 2nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2011). Steven Henry Madoff, ed., Pop Art: A Critical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Kynaston McShine, ed., Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989). Annette Michelson, ed., Andy Warhol (October Files) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). Pop The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts - Andy Warhol Biography The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Share More than twenty years after his death, Andy Warhol remains one of the most influential figures in contemporary art and culture.

Warhol’s life and work inspires creative thinkers worldwide thanks to his enduring imagery, his artfully cultivated celebrity, and the ongoing research of dedicated scholars. His impact as an artist is far deeper and greater than his one prescient observation that “everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes.” His omnivorous curiosity resulted in an enormous body of work that spanned every available medium and most importantly contributed to the collapse of boundaries between high and low culture. A skilled (analog) social networker, Warhol parlayed his fame, one connection at a time, to the status of a globally recognized brand. Decades before widespread reliance on portable media devices, he documented his daily activities and interactions on his traveling audio tape recorder and beloved Minox 35EL camera. Predating the hyper-personal outlets now provided online, Warhol captured life’s every minute detail in all its messy, ordinary glamour and broadcast it through his work, to a wide and receptive audience. The youngest child of three, Andy was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 in the working-class neighborhood of Oakland, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Stricken at an early age with a rare neurological disorder, the young Andy Warhol found solace and escape in the form of popular celebrity magazines and DC comic books, imagery he would return to years later. Predating the multiple silver wigs and deadpan demeanor of later years, Andy experimented with inventing personae during his college years. He signed greeting cards “André”, and ultimately dropped the “a” from his last name, shortly after moving to New York and following his graduation with a degree in Pictorial Design from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1949. Work came quickly to Warhol in New York, a city he made his home and studio for the rest of his life. Within a year of arriving, Warhol garnered top assignments as a commercial artist for a variety of clients including Columbia Records, Glamour magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, NBC, Tiffany & Co., Vogue, and others. He also designed fetching window displays for Bonwit Teller and I. Miller department stores.

After establishing himself as an acclaimed graphic artist, Warhol turned to painting and drawing in the 1950s, and in 1952 he had his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery, with Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote. As he matured, his paintings incorporated photo-based techniques he developed as a commercial illustrator. The Museum of Modern Art (among others) took notice, and in 1956 the institution included his work in his first group show. The turbulent 1960s ignited an impressive and wildly prolific time in Warhol’s life. It is this period, extending into the early 1970s, which saw the production of many of Warhol’s most iconic works. Building on the emerging movement of Pop Art, wherein artists used everyday consumer objects as subjects, Warhol started painting readily found, mass-produced objects, drawing on his extensive advertising background. When asked about the impulse to paint Campbell’s soup cans, Warhol replied, “I wanted to paint nothing. I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and that was it”.

The humble soup cans would soon take their place among the Marilyn Monroes, Dollar Signs, Disasters, and Coca Cola Bottles as essential, exemplary works of contemporary art. Operating out of a silver-painted and foil-draped studio nicknamed The Factory, located at 231 East 47th Street, (his second studio space to hold that title), Warhol embraced work in film and video. He made his first films with a newly purchased Bolex camera in 1963 and began experimenting with video as early as 1965. Now considered avant-garde cinema classics, Warhol’s early films include Sleep (1963), Blow Job (1964), Empire (1963), and Kiss (1963-64). With sold out screenings in New York, Los Angeles, and Cannes, the split-screen, pseudo documentary Chelsea Girls (1966) brought new attention to Warhol from the film world. Art critic David Bourdon wrote, “word around town was underground cinema had finally found its Sound of Music in Chelsea Girls.” Warhol would make nearly 600 films and nearly 2500 videos.

Among these are the 500, 4-minute films that comprise Warhol’s Screen Tests, which feature unflinching portraits of friends, associates and visitors to the Factory, all deemed by Warhol to be in possession of “star quality”. Despite a brief self-declared retirement from painting following an exhibition of Flowers in Paris, Warhol continued to make sculptures (including the well known screenprinted boxes with the logos of Brillo and Heinz Ketchup) prints, and films. During this time he also expanded his interests into the realm of performance and music, producing the traveling multi-media spectacle, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with the Velvet Underground and Nico, In 1968 Warhol suffered a nearly fatal gun-shot wound from aspiring playwright and radical feminist author, Valerie Solanas. The shooting, which occurred in the entrance of the Factory, forever changed Warhol. Some point to the shock of this event as a factor in his further embrace of an increasingly distant persona. The brush with death along with mounting pressure from the Internal Revenue Service (stemming from his critical stance against President Richard Nixon), seem to have prompted Warhol to document his life to an ever more obsessive degree.

He would dictate every activity, including noting the most minor expenses, and employ interns and assistants to transcribe the content of what would amount to over 3,400 audio tapes. Portions of these accounts were published posthumously in 1987 as The Warhol Diaries. The traumatic attempt on his life did not, however, slow down his output or his cunning ability to seamlessly infiltrate the worlds of fashion, music, media, and celebrity. His artistic practice soon intersected with all aspects of popular culture, in some cases long before it would become truly popular. He co-founded Interview Magazine; appeared on television in a memorable episode of The Love Boat; painted an early computer portrait of singer Debbie Harry; designed Grammy-winning record covers for The Rolling Stones; signed with a modeling agency; contributed short films to Saturday Night Live; and produced Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes and Andy Warhol’s TV, his own television programs for MTV and cable access. He also developed a strong business in commissioned portraits, becoming highly sought after for his brilliantly-colored paintings of politicians, entertainers, sports figures, writers, debutantes and heads of state.

His paintings, prints, photographs and drawings of this time include the important series, Skulls, Guns, Camouflage, Mao, and The Last Supper. While in Milan, attending the opening of the exhibition of The Last Supper paintings, Warhol complained of severe pain in his right side. After delaying a hospital visit, he was eventually convinced by his doctors to check into New York Hospital for gall bladder surgery. On February 22, 1987, while in recovery from this routine operation, Andy Warhol died. Following burial in Pittsburgh, thousands of mourners paid their respects at a memorial service held at Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The service was attended by numerous associates and admirers including artists Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, and entertainer Liza Minnelli. Readings were contributed by Yoko Ono and Factory collaborator and close friend, Brigid Berlin. Plans to house The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh were announced in 1989, two years after the establishment of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Through the ongoing efforts of both of these institutions, Andy Warhol remains not only a fascinating cultural icon, but an inspiration to new generations of artists, curators, filmmakers, designers, and cultural innovators the world over.

Question: Andy Warhol is associated with what sort of art?
Answer: Pop