Andy Warhol, Prince of Pop Biography Essay Example For Students

Andy Warhol, Prince of Pop: Biography Essay Andy showed an early talent in drawing and painting. After high school he studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute biotechnology in Pittsburgh. Warhol graduated in 1949 and went to New York where he worked as an illustrator for magazines like Vogue and Harpys Bazaar and for commercial advertising. He soon became one of New Works most sought of and successful commercial illustrators. The Pop Icon In 1952 Andy Warhol had his first one-man show exhibition at the Hugo Gallery in New York. In 1956 he had an important group exhibition at the renowned Museum of Modern Art, In the sixties Warhol started painting daily objects of mass production like Campbell Soup cans and Coke bottles. Soon he became famous figure in the New York art scene, Prom 1962 on he started making silkscreen prints of famous personalities like Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor. The strength of Andy Warhol art was to remove the difference between fine arts and the commercial arts used for magazine illustrations, comic books, record albums or advertising campaigns. Warhol once expressed his philosophy in one poignant sentence: When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums. The Factory The pop artist not only depicted mass products but he also wanted to mass produce his own works Of pop art. Consequently he founded The Factory in 1962. It was an art studio where he employed in a rather chaotic way art workers to mass produce mainly prints and posters but also Other items like shoes designed by the artist. The first location of the Factory was in 231 E. 47th Street, 5th Floor (between 1st 2nd Eve). Whorls favorite printmaking technique was silkscreen. It came closest to his idea of proliferation of art. Apart from being an Art Producing Machine, the Factory served as a filmmaker studio. Warhol made over 300 experimental underground films most rather bizarre and some rather pornographic. His first one was called Sleep and showed nothing else but a man sleeping over six hours, Nearly Murdered In July to 1968 the pop artist was shot two to three times into his chest by a woman named Valerie Solaris. Andy was seriously wounded and only narrowly escaped death. Valerie Solaris had worked occasionally tort the artist in the Factory, Solaris had founded a group named SCUM (Society for Cutting up Men) and she was its sole member. When Valerie Solaris was arrested the day after, her words were He had too much control over my life, Warhol never recovered completely from his wounds and had to wear a bandage around his waist for the est. of his life. Andy Warhol Art in the Seventies After this assassination attempt the pop artist made a radical turn in his process of producing art. The philosopher Of art mass production now spent most Of his time making individual portraits of the rich and affluent of his time like Mice Jaeger, Michael Jackson or Brigit Aboard. Whorls activities became more and more entrepreneurial. He started the magazine Interview and even a night-club. In 1974 the Factory was moved to 860 Broadway. In 1975 Warhol published THE philosophy of Andy Warhol. In this book he describes what art is: Making money s art, and working is art and good business is the best art. A Bizarre Personality Warhol was a homosexual with a slightly bizarre personality. In the fifties he dyed his hair straw-blond. Later he replaced his real hair by blond and silver-grey wigs. The pop artist loved cats, and images of them can be found on quite a few of his art works. One of Antas friends described him as a true workaholic. Warhol was obsessed by the ambition to become famous and wealthy, And he knew he could achieve the American dream only by hard work. In his last years Warhol promoted other artists like Keith Haring or Robert Manipulators. Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987 from complications after a gall bladder operation. More than 2000 people attended the memorial mass at SST. Patriots Cathedral. The pop art icon Warhol was also a religious man -a little known fact. Outwears later, in May 1994 the Andy Warhol Museum opened in his home town Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Warhol, Andy Related: United States Art Biographies 1928-87, American artist and filmmaker, b. Pittsburgh as Andrew Warhol. The leading exponent Of the pop art movement, Warhol chose his imagery from the world of commonplace objects such as dollar bills, soup cans, soft-drink bottles, ND soap-pad boxes. He is variously credited With attempting to ridicule and to celebrate American middle-class values by erasing the distinction be,even popular and high culture. Monotony and repetition became the hallmark Of his multi-image. Mass-produced silk-screen paintings: for many of these, such as the portraits Of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy, he employed newspaper photographs. He and his assistants worked out of a large New York studio dubbed the Factory. In the mid. Sass Warhol began making films, suppressing the personal element in marathon essays on boredom. In The Chelsea Girls 1966), a seven-hour voyeuristic look into hotel rooms, he used projection techniques that constituted a startling divergence from established methods. Among his later films are Trash (1971) and L Amour (1973). With Paul Morrissey, in 1974 Warhol also made the films Frankincense and Drachma. In 1973, Warhol launched the magazine Interview, a publication centered upon his fascination with the cult of the cel ebrity. He died from complications following surgery, The Andy Warhol Museum, which exhibits many of his works, opened in Pittsburgh in 1994, led prefer to remain a mystery, never like to give my background and, nap. Ay, I make it all up different every time Im asked. He was one of the most enigmatic figures in American art. His work became the definitive expression of a culture obsessed with images. He was surrounded by a coterie of beautiful bohemians with names like Viva, Candy Darling, and ultra Violet. He held endless drug- and sex-filled parties, through which he never stopped working. Andy Warhol: Influence on the Twentieth Century Pop Art Movement EssayAs Susan Sonata had reported in her seminal 1964 essay Notes on Camp,' camp embraced extravagance, effeminacy, and an obsession with surface appearances. Indeed, the gayness that Warhol projected in both his art and his public persona entrusted sharply with the macho posturing that had dominated the art world in the asses. But such openness carried a price. When Warhol asked why his idols, Jasper Johns and Robert Reassurances, avoided him, a mutual friend, filmmaker Emil De Antonio, answered, Okay, Andy, if you really want to hear it straight, Ill lay it out for you. Youre too swish, and that upsets them In defiance, Warhol emphasized his effeminacy even more. Like Johns and Reassurances, Warhol was influenced by the ideas of Marcel Decamp, manifested particularly in the recycling of imagery that both celebrates and berets modern mass culture. Whorls silk-screened repetitions Fuchs mundane objects as soup cans and Brills boxes, and similarly mass-produced icons such as film stars, made them chic. His appropriations comment, coolly and ironically, on the collapse of the distinction be,even high and popular art, and on modern obsessions With consumer goods and media-manipulated celebrity. From childhood Warhol embraced the myth of stardom. His attraction to the young and famous motivated some Of his first silkscreen paintings, Which were based on images of Troy Donahue and Elvis Presley and date from 1962. Whorls identification with these celebrities is tuft. Fold, both as objects of desire and as role models. But he also screened images of death and disasters taken from the tabloids. When the theme of tragedy coincided with his fascination with stardom, Warhol found the subjects of his best-known groups of celebrity portraits: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jacqueline Kennedy. In his gold Marilyn series, initiated shortly after her suicide in August 1962, Warhol contrived the effect to a gilded Byzantine icon, but substituted for the Virgin Mary an image whose face is suffused with eroticism. It stunningly evokes the need to love and to be loved. With his increasing success, Warhol became a celebrity himself, Hailed as court painter to the ass, he amassed a fortune, Critics debate whether his later silkscreen portraits celebrate or satirized the worlds of money, glamour, and style that he himself increasingly inhabited. Whorls characteristic attitude remained deadpan; he insisted that his work had no meaning. Despite his persona of decadent artist, Warhol clung to what might seem, in the context of the jet-set glamour of his public image, an archaic piety. He maintained a diet, surreptitious devotion to the Catholic Church. He was never political, and more a voyeuristic dandy than an engaged homosexual. Nevertheless he supported the careers Of gay artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basque. He died on February 22, 1987, soon after gall bladder surgery. His will established a foundation to help young artists. Today Warhol has entered the canon of significant American artists, his importance signaled by the fact that Pittsburgh has named a museum in his honor and retrospectives of his career attract large crowds. As Robert Summers points out, however, even supposedly impressive exhibits distort his achievement by white-washing him as asexual and divesting his work of its queerer content and connections. Warhol, Andy (as artist) (1928-1987) 1 coos. Even his first major appearance as an artist in 1961 was commercial: five paintings as backdrop in a display window at New Works Bobbin Teller department store. Born Andrew Warhol, Jar, on August 6, 1928 into a working- class family in Forest Cubby, Pennsylvania, Warhol attended art school at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, He moved to New York in 1949, Johns and Robert Reassurances Whorls work needs to be seen as part of the intentions pluralism in the arts that characterized the early asses, as artists joined the assault on conventional pieties and prejudices. In 1966 Time because it insisted on reducing art to the trivial, by which Time meant camp. As Susan Sonata had reported in her seminal 1364 essay Notes on Camp,' camp embraced extravagance, effeminacy, and an Obsession With surface appearances. Indeed, the gayness that Warhol projected in both his art and his public persona contrasted sharply With the macho posturing that had dominated the art world in the asses. But such openness carried a price. When Warhol seed Why his idols, Jasper Johns and Robert Reassurances, avoided him, 3 mutual friend, filmmaker Emil De Antonio, answered, Okay, Andy, bayou really want to hear it straight, Ill lay it out for you. Youre too swish, and that upsets them. In defiance, Warhol emphasized his effeminacy even more. Like Johns and Reassurances, Warhol was influenced by the ideas of Marcel Decamp, subverts modern mass culture. Whorls silk-screened repetitions of such and ironically, on the collapse of the distinction between high and popular art, and on modern obsessions with consumer goods and media-manipulated celebrity. From childhood Warhol embraced the myth of stardom, His attraction to the young and famous motivated some of his first silkscreen paintings, which Whorls identification with these celebrities is two-fold, both as objects of desire with stardom, Warhol found the subjects of his best-known groups Of celebrity contrived the effect of a gilded Byzantine icon, but substituted for the Virgin Mary an image Whose face is suffused With eroticism. It stunningly evokes the need to love and to be loved. With his increasing success. Warhol became a celebrity himself. Hailed as court painter to the ass, he amassed a fortune. Critics debate f the jet-set glamour of his public image, an archaic piety, He maintained a and more a voyeuristic dandy than an engaged homosexual, Nevertheless he supported the careers to gay artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basque, He died on February 22, 1987, soon after gall bladder surgery, His will established a foundation to help pun artists. Today Warhol has entered the screenwriter A stencil process in which the stencil is placed on a screen. Ink is forced through the screen onto paper, fabric, or metal, forming a distinct layer of pigment on the surface.