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Warhol

Andy Warhol (/ˈwɔːrhɒl/;[1] born Andrew Warhola; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans(1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Warhol initially pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator. After exhibiting his work in several galleries in the late 1950s, he began to receive recognition as an influential and controversial artist. His New York studio, The Factory, became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons. He promoted a collection of personalities known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with coining the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In the late 1960s, he managed and produced the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founded Interview magazine. He authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He lived openly as a gay man before the gay liberation movement. After gallbladder surgery, Warhol died of cardiac arrhythmia in February 1987 at the age of 58.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster); his works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold.[2] A 2009 article in The Economist described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market".[3]

Biography

Early life and beginnings (1928–49)

Warhol was born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[4] He was the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola (Americanized as Andrew Warhola, Sr., 1889–1942)[5][6][7] and Julia (néeZavacká, 1892–1972),[8] whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U.S.

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As a teenager, Warhol graduated from Schenley High School in 1945. Also as a teen, Warhol won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award.[14] After graduating from high school, his intentions were to study art education at the University of Pittsburgh in the hope of becoming an art teacher, but his plans changed and he enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he studied commercial art. During his time there, Warhol joined the campus Modern Dance Club and Beaux Arts Society.[15] He also served as art director of the student art magazine, Cano, illustrating a cover in 1948[16] and a full-page interior illustration in 1949.[17] These are believed to be his first two published artworks.[17] Warhol earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in pictorial design in 1949.[18] Later that year, he moved to New York City and began a career in magazine illustration and advertising.

1950s

Warhol's early career was dedicated to commercial and advertising art, where his first commission had been to draw shoes for Glamour magazine in the late 1940s.[19] In the 1950s, Warhol worked as a designer for shoe manufacturer Israel Miller.[19][20] American photographer John Coplans recalled that

nobody drew shoes the way Andy did. He somehow gave each shoe a temperament of its own, a sort of sly, Toulouse-Lautrec kind of sophistication, but the shape and the style came through accurately and the buckle was always in the right place. The kids in the apartment [which Andy shared in New York – note by Coplans] noticed that the vamps on Andy's shoe drawings kept getting longer and longer but [Israel] Miller didn't mind. Miller loved them.

Warhol's "whimsical" ink drawings of shoe advertisements figured in some of his earliest showings at the Bodley Gallery in New York.

Warhol was an early adopter of the silk screen printmaking process as a technique for making paintings. A young Warhol was taught silk screen printmaking techniques by Max Arthur Cohn at his graphic arts business in Manhattan.[21] While working in the shoe industry, Warhol developed his "blotted line" technique, applying ink to paper and then blotting the ink while still wet, which was akin to a printmaking process on the most rudimentary scale. His use of tracing paper and ink allowed him to repeat the basic image and also to create endless variations on the theme, a method that prefigures his 1960s silk-screen canvas.[19] In his book Popism: The Warhol Sixties, Warhol writes: "When you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something."[22][23]

Warhol habitually used the expedient of tracing photographs projected with an epidiascope.[24] Using prints by Edward Wallowitch, his 'first boyfriend'[25] the photographs would undergo a subtle transformation during Warhol's often cursory tracing of contours and hatching of shadows. Warhol used Wallowitch's photograph Young Man Smoking a Cigarette (c.1956),[26] for a 1958 design for a book cover he submitted to Simon and Schuster for the Walter Ross pulp novel The Immortal, and later used others for his dollar bill series,[27][28] and for Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable), of 1962 which initiated Warhol's most sustained motif, the soup can.

With the rapid expansion of the record industry, RCA Records hired Warhol, along with another freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design album covers and promotional materials.[29]

1960s

Warhol (left) and Tennessee Williams (right) talking on the SS *France*, 1967.

He began exhibiting his work during the 1950s. He held exhibitions at the Hugo Gallery[30] and the Bodley Gallery[31] in New York City; in California, his first West Coast gallery exhibition[32][33] was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. The exhibition marked his West Coast debut of pop art.[34] Andy Warhol's first New York solo pop artexhibition was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles, and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time poet John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963.[35]

It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American objects such as dollar bills, mushroom clouds, electric chairs, Campbell's Soup Cans, Coca-Cola bottles, celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali, and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as newspaper headlines or photographs of police dogs attacking African-American protesters during the Birmingham campaign in the civil rights movement. During these years, he founded his studio, "The Factory" and gathered about him a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. His work became popular and controversial. Warhol had this to say about Coca-Cola:

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.[36]

New York City's Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on pop art in December 1962 during which artists such as Warhol were attacked for "capitulating" to consumerism. Critics were scandalized by Warhol's open embrace of market culture. This symposium set the tone for Warhol's reception.

Campbell's Soup I (1968)

A pivotal event was the 1964 exhibit The American Supermarket, a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that everything in it—from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc.—was created by six prominent pop artists of the time, among them the controversial (and like-minded) Billy Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for $6. The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the perennial question of what art is.[citation needed]

Andy Warhol, between 1966 and 1977

As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; this was particularly true in the 1960s. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with the production of silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at "The Factory", Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street (later moved to Broadway). Other members of Warhol's Factory crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary Woronov, Billy Name, and Brigid Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape-record his phone conversations).[37]

During the 1960s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian and counterculture eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "Superstars", including Nico, Joe Dallesandro, Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis, and Candy Darling. These people all participated in the Factory films, and some—like Berlin—remained friends with Warhol until his death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world, such as writer John Giorno and film-maker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol films (many premiering at the New Andy Warhol Garrick Theatre and 55th Street Playhouse) of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this time. Less well known was his support and collaboration with several teen-agers during this era, who would achieve prominence later in life including writer David Dalton,[38] photographer Stephen Shore[39]and artist Bibbe Hansen (mother of pop musician Beck).[40]

Attempted murder (1968)

On June 3, 1968, radical feminist writer Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and Mario Amaya, art critic and curator, at Warhol's studio.[41] Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. She authored in 1967 the S.C.U.M. Manifesto,[42] a separatist feminist tract that advocated the elimination of men; and appeared in the 1968 Warhol film I, a Man. Earlier on the day of the attack, Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script had apparently been misplaced.[43]

Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived: surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again. He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life, including being required to wear a surgical corset.[12] The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art.[44][45]

Solanas was arrested the day after the assault, after turning herself in to police. By way of explanation, she said that Warhol "had too much control over my life." She was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of Corrections. After the shooting, the Factory scene heavily increased security, and for many the "Factory 60s" ended.[45]

Warhol had this to say about the attack: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there—I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television—you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television."[46]

1970s

Warhol socialized at various nightspots in New York City, including Max's Kansas City; and, later in the 1970s, Studio 54.[50] He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and a meticulous observer. Art critic Robert Hughes called him "the white mole of Union Square."[51]Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the 1970s were a much quieter decade, as he became more entrepreneurial.

According to Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions—including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, and Brigitte Bardot.[47][48] Warhol's famous portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was created in 1973. He also founded, with Gerard Malanga, Interview magazine, and published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975). An idea expressed in the book: "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art."[49]

In 1979, along with his longtime friend Stuart Pivar, Warhol founded the New York Academy of Art.[52][53]

1980s

Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of 1980s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi. Before the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, he teamed with 15 other artists, including David Hockney and Cy Twombly, and contributed a Speed Skater print to the Art and Sport collection. The Speed Skater was used for the official Sarajevo Winter Olympics poster.[54]

By this time, graffiti artist Fab Five Freddy paid homage to Warhol when he painted an entire train with Campbell soup cans. This was instrumental in Freddy becoming involved in the underground NYC art scene and becoming an affiliate of Basquiat.[55]

By this period, Warhol was being criticized for becoming merely a "business artist".[56] In 1979, reviewers disliked his exhibits of portraits of 1970s personalities and celebrities, calling them superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the significance of the subjects. They also criticized his 1980 exhibit of 10 portraits at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, entitled Jewish Geniuses, which Warhol—who was uninterested in Judaism and Jews—had described in his diary as "They're going to sell."[56] In hindsight, however, some critics have come to view Warhol's superficiality and commerciality as "the most brilliant mirror of our times," contending that "Warhol had captured something irresistible about the zeitgeist of American culture in the 1970s."[56]

Warhol also had an appreciation for intense Hollywood glamour. He once said: "I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."[57]

In 1984, Warhol immortalized the singer Prince by creating one of his final portraits, *Orange Prince (1984)*, a commission from Vanity Fair to accompany an article to celebrate the success of Prince's album and movie entitled *Purple Rain*.[58] Referencing the many celebrity portraits produced by Warhol across his career, *Orange* *Prince (1984)* was created using a similar composition to the Marilyn "Flavors" series from 1962, among some of Warhol's very first celebrity portraits.[59] Prince is depicted in a pop color palette commonly used by Warhol, in bright orange with highlights of bright green and blue. The facial features and hair are screen-printed in black over the orange background.[60][61][62]

In the Andy Warhol Diaries, Warhol recorded how excited he was to see Prince and Billy Idol together at a party in the mid 1980s, and he compared them to the Hollywood movie stars of the 1950s and '60s who also inspired his portraits: "... seeing these two glamour boys, its like boys are the new Hollywood glamour girls, like Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe".[63]

Works

Paintings

By the beginning of the 1960s, pop art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Marilyn Monroe was a pop art painting that Warhol had done and it was very popular. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists (such as Willem de Kooning). Warhol's first pop art paintings were displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department Store Bronwit Teller's window display. This was the same stage his Pop Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced.[64]

He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the handmade from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.[67]

^It was the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup cans and Warhol's dollar paintings. On November 23, 1961, Warhol wrote Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography, Pop, The Genius of Warhol, was payment for coming up with the idea of the soup cans as subject matter.[65] For his first major exhibition, Warhol painted his famous cans of Campbell's soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his life. A 1964 Large Campbell's Soup Can was sold in a 2007 Sotheby's auction to a South American collector for £5.1 million ($7.4 million).[66]

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In pop culture

Warhol founded Interview magazine, a stage for celebrities he "endorsed" and a business staffed by his friends. He collaborated with others on all of his books (some of which were written with Pat Hackett.) One might even say that he produced people (as in the Warholian "Superstar" and the Warholian portrait). Warhol endorsed products, appeared in commercials, and made frequent celebrity guest appearances on television shows and in films (he appeared in everything from Love Boat[235] to Saturday Night Live[236] and the Richard Pryor movie Dynamite Chicken[237]).

In this respect Warhol was a fan of "Art Business" and "Business Art"—he, in fact, wrote about his interest in thinking about art as business in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again.[180]

Films

Warhol (right) with director Ulli Lommel on the set of Cocaine Cowboys (1979), in which Warhol appeared as himself

Warhol appeared as himself in the film Cocaine Cowboys (1979)[238] and in the film Tootsie (1982).

After his death, Warhol was portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991), by Jared Harris in Mary Harron's film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), and by David Bowie in Julian Schnabel's film Basquiat (1996). Bowie recalled how meeting Warhol in real life helped him in the role, and recounted his early meetings with him:

I met him a couple of times, but we seldom shared more than platitudes. The first time we saw each other an awkward silence fell till he remarked my bright yellow shoes and started talking enthusiastically. He wanted to be very superficial. And seemingly emotionless, indifferent, just like a dead fish. Lou Reed described him most profoundly when he once told me they should bring a doll of Andy on the market: a doll that you wind up and doesn't do anything. But I managed to observe him well, and that was a helping hand for the film [Basquiat...] We borrowed his clothes from the museum in Pittsburgh, and they were intact, unwashed. Even the pockets weren't emptied: they contained pancake, white, deadly pale fond de teint which Andy always smeared on his face, a check torn in pieces, someone's address, lots of homeopathic pills and a wig. Andy always wore those silver wigs, but he never admitted it were wigs. One of his hairdressers has told me lately that he had his wigs regularly cut, like it were real hair. When the wig was trimmed, he put on another next month as if his hair had grown.[239]

Warhol appears as a character in Michael Daugherty's opera Jackie O (1997). Actor Mark Bringleson makes a brief cameo as Warhol in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). Many films by avant-garde cineast Jonas Mekas have caught the moments of Warhol's life. Sean Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the film 54 (1998). Guy Pearce portrayed Warhol in the film Factory Girl (2007) about Edie Sedgwick's life.[240] Actor Greg Travis portrays Warhol in a brief scene from the film Watchmen (2009). Comedian Conan O'Brien portrayed Warhol in the film Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022).

In the movie Highway to Hell a group of Andy Warhols are part of the Good Intentions Paving Company where good-intentioned souls are ground into pavement.[241] In the film Men in Black 3 (2012) Andy Warhol turns out to really be undercover MIB Agent W (played by Bill Hader). Warhol is throwing a party at The Factory in 1969, where he is looked up by MIB Agents K and J (J from the future). Agent W is desperate to end his undercover job ("I'm so out of ideas I'm painting soup cans and bananas, for Christ sakes!", "You gotta fake my death, okay? I can't listen to sitar music anymore." and "I can't tell the women from the men.").

Andy Warhol (portrayed by Tom Meeten) is one of main characters of the 2012 British television show Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy. The character is portrayed as having robot-like mannerisms. In the 2017 feature The Billionaire Boys Club Cary Elwes portrays Warhol in a film based on the true story about Ron Levin (portrayed by Kevin Spacey) a friend of Warhol's who was murdered in 1986.[242] In September 2016, it was announced that Jared Leto would portray the title character in Warhol, an upcoming American biographical drama film produced by Michael De Luca and written by Terence Winter, based on the book Warhol: The Biography by Victor Bockris.[243]

Documentaries

Television

Warhol appeared as a recurring character in TV series Vinyl, played by John Cameron Mitchell.[251] Warhol was portrayed by Evan Peters in the American Horror Story: Cult episode "Valerie Solanas Died for Your Sins: Scumbag". The episode depicts the attempted assassination of Warhol by Valerie Solanas (Lena Dunham).[252]

In early 1969, Andy Warhol was commissioned by Braniff International to appear in two television commercials to promote the luxury airline's "When You Got It – Flaunt It" campaign. The campaign was created by the advertising agency Lois Holland Calloway, which was led by George Lois, creator of a famed series of Esquire Magazine covers. The first commercial series involved pairing unlikely people who shared the fact that they both flew Braniff Airways. Warhol was paired with boxing legend Sonny Liston. The odd commercial worked as did the others that featured unlikely fellow travelers such as painter Salvador Dalí and baseball legend Whitey Ford.

Two additional commercials for Braniff were created that featured famous persons entering a Braniff jet and being greeted by a Braniff hostess while espousing their like for flying Braniff. Warhol was also featured in the first of these commercials that were also produced by Lois and were released in the summer of 1969. Lois has incorrectly stated that he was commissioned by Braniff in 1967 for representation during that year, but at that time Madison Avenue advertising doyenne Mary Wells Lawrence, who was married to Braniff's chairman and president Harding Lawrence, was representing the Dallas-based carrier at that time. Lois succeeded Wells Rich Greene Agency on December 1, 1968. The rights to Warhol's films for Braniff and his signed contracts are owned by a private trust and are administered by Braniff Airways Foundation in Dallas, Texas.[253]

Music

Warhol strongly influenced the new wave/punk rock band Devo, as well as David Bowie. Bowie recorded a song called "Andy Warhol" for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. Lou Reed wrote the song "Andy's Chest", about Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Warhol, in 1968. He recorded it with the Velvet Underground, and this version was released on the VU album in 1985. The band Triumph also wrote a song about Andy Warhol, "Stranger In A Strange Land" off their 1984 album Thunder Seven.

Books

A biography of Andy Warhol written by art critic Blake Gopnik was published in 2020 under the title Warhol.[254][255][256]

Comic books

Warhol is featured as a character in the Miracleman series of comics. It is first mentioned that he was resurrected by the alien scientist Mors and subsequently convinces the latter to mass-produce copies of himself.[257] Later on, 18 copies of Warhol are seen in the underworld beneath the pyramid structure Olympus, where they produce pop art relating to the new superhuman regime. One Warhol clone numbered 6 is assigned to and develop a friendship with a clone of Emil Gargunza (Miracleman's creator) before the latter's betrayal and attempted escape.[258]

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