ONE OF MY FAVORITES-ANDY WARHOL
American artist and filmmaker, an initiator and leading exponent of the Pop art movement of the1960's,The son of Czechoslovak immigrants,Andrew Warhola was born August 6, 1928, in the industrial city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Andy Warhol is best known for his exploration of Pop Art, mass producing images of mass produced objects.
As an adroit self-publicist, he projected a concept of the artist as an impersonal, even vacuous, figure who could be a successful celebrity as well as a businessman, and magnetic socialite.
Graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, with a degree in pictorial design in 1949. He moved to New York City, where he began working as a commercial illustrator for about a decade.
Graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, with a degree in pictorial design in 1949. He moved to New York City, where he began working as a commercial illustrator for about a decade.
In the late 1950s he began painting and in 1962 received sudden notoriety , when he exhibited paintings of Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles.By 1963 he was mass-producing these purposely banal images of consumer goods by means of photographic silk screen prints. He then began printing endless variations of portraits of celebrities in garish colours ie. Marilyn Monroe,Mick Jagger and many others.
Warhol’s work was placing him in the forefront of the emerging Pop art movement in America.The silk screen technique was ideally suited to Andy,as the repeated images was reflecting both the supposed emptiness of American material culture and the artist’s emotional non-involvement with the practice of his art.
The 1960s was an extremely prolific decade for Warhol. Appropriating images from popular culture, Warhol created many paintings that remain icons of 20th-century art.In addition to painting, Warhol made several 16mm films which have become underground classics,Chelsea Girls,Blow Job,Kiss and Empire to name a few.Most of the actors in his films came from an ever growing entourage called the Superstars.In 1968, founder and sole member of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men),Valerie Solanis, walked into Warhol's studio(the Factory) and shot the artist,almost killing him.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Andy began to publish Interview magazine as an another outlet for the hype of American celebrity culture. Firmly established as a major 20th-century artist and international celebrity, Warhol exhibited his work extensively in museums and galleries around the world.Some of his works created in this decade include Maos,Hammer and Sickles,Torsos and Shadows and numerous commissioned works,mostly celebrity portraits.
In the 1980's Andy began with the publication of POPism: The Warhol '60s and with exhibitions of Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century and the Retrospectives and Reversal series. He also engaged in a series of collaborations with younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente and Keith Haring.Another interesting fact is that he also created two cable television shows, "Andy Warhol's TV" in 1982 and "Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes" for MTV in 1986.Paintings created in this time period include The Last Suppers, Rorschachs and, in a return to his first great theme of Pop, a series called Ads.
On February 22, 1987,following routine gall bladder surgery, Andy Warhol died. Friends and associates organized a memorial mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York,after his burial in Pittsburgh,it was attended by more than 2,000 people.
The Museum of Modern Art in N.Y.C did a major retrospective of his works in 1989 and The Andy Warhol Museum opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in May 1994.
As you look out at the world it can not be helped but to see his contribution and influence to our society.This is something that will never fade,it will continue to proliferate through the eyes and talents of new artists and designers.
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As you look out at the world it can not be helped but to see his contribution and influence to our society.This is something that will never fade,it will continue to proliferate through the eyes and talents of new artists and designers.
