Andy Warhol: Graphic Artist Andy Warhol was one of the most famous and successful graphic artists in the last century. His iconic paintings and prints are still remembered and noted today. If you see a brightly colored illustration of a celebrity, who do you think of? Andy Warhol, who was known for his portraits and product-based art work. Even looking at something as simple as a Campbell’s Soup can can trigger the thought of the 60’s artist. Andrew Warhola was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6, 1928. His parents were Slovakian immigrants; his father a construction worker and his mother an embroiderer (biography.com). At the age of 8, Warhol was stricken with Chorea which left him bedridden for a few months. Here, this was where …show more content…
His friends who were also artists, and both gay, considered him to be very “swish”. The 50’s was a very good time for Andy Warhol. With his job as a commercial illustrator, he was able to balance his life with commercial work and avant garde pieces. And in this time, he was able to explore his sexuality, which inspired a lot of sketches, enough to fill book. Just sketches of the male body, either in explicit, or completely innocent poses. The 60’s was Warhol’s big boom in production and fame. In 1962, Warhol “debuted the concept of ‘pop-art’” (biography.com). Here is where he did his famous pieces like the Campbell’s Soup cans and the Elvis prints. Most of his muse was commercial products at this point. He could make art out of anything. For example, the soup cans or the Brillo box. In 1961, Warhol made a piece inspired by Coca-Cola, which became a “pivotal piece in his career” (warhol.org). In 1962, Warhol made created his pieces he’s most famous for; his silkscreen photographic portraits of celebrities. He made art of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. In this year, Warhol opened a solo pop-art exhibit in Los …show more content…
These were paintings that used images of newspaper articles and even police photographs of car crashes, accidents, and suicides (warhol.org). Around this time, Warhol made more artsy films like “Sleep”, which was a five hour movie just of his friend John Giorno sleeping. He was really able to make art out of anything. In 1964, Warhol opened up The Factory, which was his own art studio in New York City. Occasionally, Warhol would hold parties that the richest of the rich and the socialites of the city would attend. Lou Reed, a musician, even wrote a song about the “hustlers and transvestites” who he met at the club (biography.com). Warhol, who now at this time, became a huge celebrity who attended infamous nightclubs such as Studio 54 and Max’s Kansas City. Towards the end of the 60s, Warhol lost the lease on his Factory and had to move his studio. In 1968, a writer who had worked with Warhol had broken into his studio and shot him, damaging eight organs and leaving him scarred emotionally and physically (warhol.org). For the rest of his life, Warhol needed to wear a surgical
Andy Warhol was a graphic artist, painter, and film maker, amoung other things, also associated with Pop Art. He moved to New York, around 1950, where he did his first advertisements as a comercial artist and, later, began showing in expositions. One technique employed by Warhol involved repeditive silk screen prints on canvas. He used this method to produce many series of prints with various, easily reconizable images. Between 1962 and 1964 in his self titled studio “The Factory”(Phaidon 484), Warhol produced over two thousand pictures. One of these, Lavender Disaster, was made in 1963 and belonged to a series of pictures all including the same image of an electric chair.
The Brilliant Minds of Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol were, and still are, two of the most influential and perpetual artists of their perspective time periods. Da Vinci being from the late 15th century to the early 16th century, he combined aspects of form and idea but also the ideals of mathematics and complete realism like no other that has done before. Andy Warhol, of the 20th century, portrayed his paintings and photographs using his personality and uniqueness that gave off a certain vibrato that made people fall in love almost instantaneously. Da Vinci had a bizarre but wonderful obsession with the anatomy of individuals and used this addiction to drive his sculptures and paintings. Andy Warhol was
Andy Warhol’s rise to fame was not easy. Haunted by his profession as a commercial artist in New York he struggled to gain recognition as a real artist, yet he kept trying. He experimented with different styles of art hoping to get a solo exhibition at a gallery. One of Warhol’s experimental styles was influenced by comic books; he made paintings that included characters from comics, along with though balloons. Warhol was greatly disappointed after seeing paintings of an artist by the name of Roy Lichtenstein, whose work resembled comic books as well. Fearing that his comic style paintings were inferior to those of Lichtenstein’s, Warhol moved on to another motif – painting consumer goods, specifically Campbell’s Soup cans. His original 32 paintings of Campbell’s canned soup (titled Campbell’s Soup Cans) played a major role in defining Andy Warhol’s artistic career. Apart from helping him get his first solo exhibition the Campbell’s Soup Cans steered the direction of Warhol’s future work.
Andy Warhol began creating the Death and Disaster series in 1962. This past week the four-panel silk screened painting from his titled " 1964 Birmingham Race Riots" included in the "Death and Disaster" series, is estimated to sell for $45 million. It was a direct response to an article Warhol saw in Life magazine that ran with an image by Associated Press by Photographer Charles Moore.
Now, twenty-three years after Warhol’s death, his face and art are on T-shirts, iPods, blue jeans, sunglasses, Christmas cards, handbags, skateboards and wallpaper. His reputation and popularity are both endless and his works of art continue to fetch enormous sums of money. Even with his death, Warhol’s name continues to be met with both publicity and infamy. Ultimately, Andy Warhol’s legacy lies with his outlandish and exotic style of art and his lust for materialism and wealth.
Known for being the father of Pop Art, and a giant in pop culture, Warhol dominated the art scene from the late fifties up until his untimely death in 1987. However Warhol’s influence spread further then the art world, he also was a major player in the LGBT, avant-garde and experimental cinema movements. Born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Slovakian immigrant parents, Warhol came from humble beginnings. Becoming widely known for debuting the concept of ‘pop art’ in 1962. Warhol’s reach grew further when he started experimenting with film, becoming a major player in the LGBT, avant-garde and experimental cinema movements. Warhol’s artist studio, known famously as ‘The Factory’ became a hub for experimentation, and a go-to point for celebrities, musicians and trans folk. During this time, Warhol came out as an openly gay man, challenging the status quo of the day, a time when being homosexual was illegal. While also producing highly experiential films such as ‘Blow Job’ (1964) and ‘Sleep’ (1964) which were highly political and provocative, at the time. As art critic Dave Hickey asserts, “Art has political consequences, which is to say, it reorganized society and creates constituencies of people around it” (Hickey, 2007), Andy Warhol’s art and lived experience created a political constituency which can be best recognised in the function of the “Silver Factory” on
The patron for Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans was Irving Blum. Irving Blum was born in 1930 in New York. His family moved to Arizona during the war in 1942. During his younger years, Blum became interested in theater. Once he began to work in the theater, Irving Blum soon found that theater was not for him. Irving happened to visit museums while in New York and realized that he had an interest in art. In 1957, Irving moved to California and a year later Blum was able to buy a share in the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. The Ferus Gallery was the first gallery in Los Angeles to show contemporary American art. In showing contemporary American art, the gallery helped establish reputations for New York artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. In 1962, Andy Warhol had his first solo exhibition at Ferus Gallery. Mr. Warhol’s exhibition was so successful that night that he sold five of the canvases from the Campbell’s Soup Cans collection. Irving Blum, being an art dealer and collector at that time, bought them back so that he could keep the set intact (Cummings). He paid one thousand dollars for the whole set of soup can paintings. Later on, Blum partially sold and partially gifted the collection to The Museum of Modern Art, where it is still located today (The Museum of Modern
By 1962, he had built up a network of people around him, becoming more involved in celebrity culture and founding ‘The Factory’ where he and a multitude of artists, writers, and celebrities gathered and worked (The European Graduate School, n.d.). By the time of his death in 1987, February 22, Warhol’s reputation was remarkable, and was the focus of an eleven page article in the New York Magazine. He was and continues to be an icon of the era and was described as creating “art that defines the glossy superficiality, manic denial of feelings and process, and underlying violence of the sixties” (Kornbluth, 1987). Warhol surpassed his infamous quote “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” and continues to capture the interest of people almost thirty years
In fact, this single piece transformed Andy Warhol into one of the most famous contemporary artists when it was first exhibited in 1962 in Los Angles. The attention placed on this artwork mainly roots from two things: the subject and the visual qualities of the piece. The subject is an interesting point in this art. Unlike previous artworks which employ subjects such as people or nature, Warhol chose an item which is found right in the pantry shelves and kitchens of millions of Americans and transformed it into high art. This is interesting because people are conditioned to see art as a venue for items or ideas that are “beautiful.” Andy Warhol, on the other hand, featured an item which we encounter every day and yet never gave a second look or thought. The choice of subject is but a challenge to the traditional concept of what art and beauty are. In the same way, Warhol’s decision to use soup cans as his muse may come from the emerging pop art movement. True to the objectives of this movement, pop art embraces the mundane and banal commercialism. And Warhol’s work functions as a subversive critique on consumerism as well as a reassertion of the joy and beauty that is innate in such object (Fallon
There is scarcely a person in America whose life has not been affected—whether or not they know it—by the way Warhol transformed our understanding of our culture. Certainly there is no serious artist working today who has not been influenced by Warhol 's conversion of the banal world of consumer culture into the sacred realm of art. We see ourselves and our world reflected in the mirror of Warhol 's art, but the image has still not come into full focus. By the time he painted this last Self-portrait, Warhol had become the most famous artist in the world; but more than a decade later his art remains enigmatic.
Andy's art, his presence, his films, his simple philosophies were seductive to a large group of people, and still are to this day. Warhol combined business and art and had the ability to nose out trends of the 1960's.
Andy Warhol is the god father of Pop Art. His window commercials were the start of a time where workmanship would be found in a variety of structures far from the conventional artworks and models of the old world. His adoration for splendid hues and intense patters alongside his peculiar identity prepared for his fruitful profession as a noteworthy figure in the pop craftsmanship development.
Warhol, Andy. Marilyn Diptych. Tate Gallery. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. London, 2009. web.
Warhol, A. (2007). The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. 2nd Edition. St.Ives, England, Penguin modern classics. Chapter 3
America had gone through a depression and a world war; Warhol had lived through this and saw the changes of development and manufacture. During the war production changed to mass production, and when the war was over they related this technique to modern advertising. What Warhol did was take this change in production and turned it into art.