Campbell's Soup

Referencing

Andy Warhol, Campbells Soup Cans – 1962. Synthetic Polymer paint of canvas, 20X16” on 32 Canvases (Approx 128X80’), Museum of Modern Art

5 Unique Facts about the Work

-          It consists of thirty-two individual canvases

-          One of each of the canned soup varieties the company offered at the time in 1962

-          The first one he painted was the tomato soup can and it is still the most valuable

-          This artwork was mounted for his first one-man gallery exhibition as a fine artist in 1962

-          This artwork represented the debut of pop art.

Marilyn Monroe

Referencing

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe – 1962. Size: 36x36, Medium: Screen print, Location: National Gallery of British Art

5 Unique Facts about the Work

-          This image of Marilyn Monroe was done shortly after she committed suicide in 1962

-          The image is based on a famous publicity photo taken by Gene Korman for a movie she made in 1953 named Niagara

-          First image Warhol did when he began experimenting with silk screening

-          Image shows the falseness of fame. Warhol shows that the public image of Marilyn Monroe is so fake, nothing the public saw reflected her real life

-          For this and many other images Warhol experimented with colour. He purposely selected the bright colours to reflect the falseness of her public image 

Self Portrait

Referencing

Andy Warhol, Self-portrait – 1963. Medium: Paint on canvas, Size: Dimensions: 208.3 cm × 208.3 cm (82.0 in × 82.0 in), Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

5 Unique Facts about the Work

-          For this artwork, Warhol used a silkscreen image of himself

-          Warhol’s image is like a single and dramatic paint-splash on a black canvas

-          This was the last exhibit done by Warhol, in 1986

-          Self-portraits derived from polaroid photographs taken by Benjamin Liu, operating under Warhol's instructions

-          The pictures were taken while he was sitting in the stairwell outside his studio

Mick Jagger

Referencing

Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger – 1969. SIZE 29x43, Medium: Screen print on Arches Aquarelle (Rough) Paper, Location: Different owners around the world

5 Unique Facts about the Work

-          Silkscreen based on a photograph taken of Mick Jagger by Warhol himself

-          Its hand-made by additions of collage elements he used from torn cheap graphic color aid papers

-          Picture is made from 10 different photos

-          This photo lead to Andy Warhol designing the Stones record company logo

-          Andy Warhol had never charge Mick Jagger for any of the artwork he had done for him, this was because of the friendship they made after this art piece.

Green Car Crash

Referencing

Andy Warhol, Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), Medium: synthetic polymer, silkscreen ink and acrylic on linen, Size: 90 x 80 in. (228.6 x 203.2 cm.) 
Painted in 1963. Location: Christie's Galleries at Rockefeller Center, New York

5 Unique Facts about the Work

- Car crash paintings were actually part of a series of paintings called The Death and Disaster Series 
 - Wasn’t made to help Ralph Nader visualize his message about the lack of safety features in cars
- The series also included images of airplane crashes, the electric chair, atomic bombs, race riots
- The car crash photo were the most popular out the series
- This painting set world record being sold for $71,720,000 in 2007

What make Warhol a True Master

        I would say what makes him a true master is his courage to announce his homo sexuality in the 60’s. Through his mastering of advertisement Warhol mastered a style and mastered a market. The influence of celebrities was massive in his time with superstars like Elvis and Marylyn Monroe, and the people loved them. He used this idea of peoples love for culture to create art that captured people’s attention; from famous products to people to car crashes. Warhol’s work was for the masses not just for the upper class to hang in their dining rooms. Warhol’s art always suggests something about life; he let the world around him influence his art. His style received a lot of criticism but he still pushed forward and he certainly did make a difference in today’s life.

 “Sometimes the little times you don't think are anything while they're happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life” – Andy Warhol

Style

“Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody.
Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about?
Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.”

Warhol’s art encompassed many forms of media, hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film and music. Warhol’s style was known as pop art; which illustrates the relationship of artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertisement. Warhol was an early adopter of silkscreen printmaking process as a technique for making paintings. The earliest silk-screening in painting would involve hand drawn images. This soon developed into photographically derived silk-screen paintings.

His work as a commercial artist and fine artist shows that unintentional marks and smudges were tolerated. Both his commercial and fine art endeavors were often full of imperfections such as smudges and smears. In the 70’s Warhol devoted most of his time to finding well off  celebrities that he would do portrait commissions of such as Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Diana Rose, to name a few. In the 80’s Warhol’s reemergence of critical and financial success in the 80’s was due to his affiliation and friendship with prolifically younger artists. They were dominating the New York art scene. All of Warhol’s work from the 70’s was starting to cause criticism and that he was becoming a business artist. The reviewers in 1979 disliked the exhibits and portraits of the 1970’s personalities and celebrities. They called them superficial, facile and commercial with no depth or indication of significance of the subject. The fact that Warhol was a homosexual also influenced his work and shaped his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on the artist.

The colour palette used by Warhol was bright colour no matter if it was a painting of a celebrity or a car crash. He would also use softer pastel colours and blacks for shadows to contrast the main vivid colours that made his art pop.

                In his final years Warhol pioneered in computer-generated art using Amiga computers that were introduced in 1984. When Warhol died he was working on ‘Cars’, a series of painting for Mercedes-Benz.

Medium/Media

Drawing:   Warhol started as a Commercial Illustrator he was producing drawings in blotted ink style for advertising and magazine articles. His early works that are best known are his drawings of shoes.

Sculpture:  Warhol had some famous Statues but Brillo Boxes and Heinz Boxes are the most famous.  Silkscreen ink on wood there are replicas of the large cardboard boxes used to hold 24 packages of Brillo soap pads

Audio:  Warhol liked to carry a recorder and he would just record everything everybody said or did.

Time Capsules: It was 1973 when Warhol started to save ephemera all his daily life correspondence, newspapers, souvenirs childhood objects, used plane tickets some food items that were sealed in plain cardboard boxes dubbed as time capsules. When he died the collection of these dated time capsules was 600. The boxes are hosed in the Andy Warhol Museum.

Television: Warhol dreamed about a television special about a favourite subject of his, Nothing, he wanted to call it The Nothing Special. Later Warhol did create two cable shows, Andy Warhol’s TV. in 1982 and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen minutes (based on his famous fifteen minutes of fame quotation) these shows were produced for MTV in 1986. Warhol also made regular guest appearances on The Love Boat, and he also made TV, commercials for restaurants in New York City.

Fashion: Warhol also liked to put his touch on fashion he did some silk screening on dresses and he also painted shoes, he also had a short sub career as a catwalk model and wrote books on fashion.

Photography: Warhol was an accomplished photographer he had taken an enormous amount of photographs of visitors to the factory and friends.

“An artist is somebody 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.” – Andy Warhol

Art Mentors

Warhol created his own style without the influence of others and piloted the artistic style of pop art. His work is not defined by works of others but rather the media, culture and celebrities of his time period. 

Life and Career Defining Moments

     Warhol had numerous artistic passions; he was a painter, photographer, sculpture, print maker, and film maker. Later he became the leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator (graphic artist), Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. It was in 1952 when Warhol debuted his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery, which featured 15 drawings he created based on writing the writing of Truman Capote.

During the 1960’s is when Warhol began making painting of iconic American objects like Marilyn Monroe. The 1960’s were also very defining for Warhol in the sense that he opened his studio called ‘The Factory’ where he gathered artists, musicians, writers, and underground celebrities. In this decade he also painted his first works based on comics and advertisement, he did this by enlarging and projecting the images onto a canvas where he could then paint them. He created icons out of icons.

Another pivotal moment was the 1964 exhibit ‘The American Supermarket’, this exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the question of ‘what is art?’. Though this decade held much success for Warhol is also came with its dangers; in 1968 Valerie Solanas shot him. Warhol’s work was not always appreciated in all galleries; his art was too commercial in some people’s opinion. Some of his work for the times (1960’s) would have been considered shocking, rude, and disgusting.

The 70’s and 80’s were less exciting than his booming 60’s. Warhol commissioned celebrities for portraits, founded ‘Interview’ magazine, and published a book ‘Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and back again)’. In 1982 Warhol died from sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia after having a routine gallbladder surgery. The Andy Warhol Museum in the city of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania holds an extensive permanent collection of art archives. It is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to one single artist.

PLACE OF BIRTH: Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA

DATE OF BIRTH: August 6, 1928

DATE OF DEATH: February 22, 1987

  Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola) was born in Pittsburgh, he was one of four children, though one of his siblings died before the family moved from Slovakia to America. Warhol’s father moved to the U.S. in 1914 and his mother joined him in 1921. Andy’s father was a coal miner. The family lived at 55 Beelen St. then at 3252 Dawson St. in Pittsburgh. Warhol had two older brothers, Paul the oldest who was born in Slovakia; Jẚn was born in Pittsburgh.

While in grade three Warhol came down with Sydenham’s chorea (also known as St. Vitus’ dance) which is a nervous system disease that causes the person to have involuntary movement of the extremities. It is believed to be a complication of Scarlett fever which causes skin pigmentation blotchiness. From this traumatic childhood experience Andy became a hypochondriac with a fear of doctors and hospitals.  When he was a child he was often bedridden and became an outcast at school, because of this he used celebrity magazines and comics as an escape. While often confined to his bed he drew and listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed.  Warhol later stated that this time in his life was very important in the development of his personality and skill-set and preferences. During his college years Andy tried to create a new persona for himself signing greeting cards as “André”, and later he started dropping the ‘a’ from his last name Warhola. It was when Warhol was just thirteen his father was killed in an accident.

As a teenager he graduated from Schenley High School in 1945, after high school he intended to study art education at the University of Pittsburgh in hopes of becoming an art teacher. Those plans changed and he enrolled at Carnegie Institute of Technology to pursue a career as a commercial illustrator, and he majored in pictorial design. Warhol was the only member of his family to attend college. In 1949 Warhol earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. After graduation he moved to New York where his life as a pop artist we know today would soon begin.