Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 in Pennsylvania. He is very well known throughout both the art and non art worlds. Warhol pioneered the pop art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His philosophy about art and what can be considered art made an immense impact on even today’s art world. His works involve consumerism and our society’s obsession with consumer products and celebrities.

Warhol was diagnosed with chorea at a very young age. It is “a rare disease of the nervous system, which left him bedridden for months” ("Andy Warhol Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com."). Since he was such an outcast and often home sick, he turned to art.

Andy Warhol was not sure what he should paint, so his friends suggested he paint the things loved. Out of this, he started his works like the Marilyn Diptych and the 100 Soup Cans. Warhol loved celebrities, so he often used famous people like Marilyn Monroe, Jackie O, and Elizabeth Taylor. In the Marilyn Diptych, he makes a connection between the death of Marilyn Monroe and her celebrity status. It is “a stark and unresolved dialectic of presence and absence, life and death, mediating on the conflict between Marilyn’s immortality as a movie star, whose image and being lives on, captured for all eternity on rolls of film, and the real life death of Norma Jean” (Patterson). He is able to make the pop culture of the day into icons. The way in which he portrays many of his celebrities also makes them into the modern day saints that we worship through our obsession with their lives.

The Campbell’s soup cans were another work that used commercialism and branding, which can be seen in 100 Soup Cans. Warhol used a silk screening technique, “for the repeated image was reduced to an insipid and dehumanized cultural icon that reflected both the supposed emptiness of American material culture and the artist's emotional noninvolvement with the practice of his art” ("Andy Warhol Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com."). In this work he is uses the process of printing to make a connection to the repetition of our lives and how obsessed we are with buying brands that our society is.

On June 3, 1968 Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas. Solanas wrote the S.C.U.M. Manifesto which was a separatist feminist attack on males (“Andy Warhol”). She was sentenced to three years in jail. The shooting had an effect on the rest of Warhol’s works (“Andy Warhol”). After the incident, he focused on doing portraits for famous celebrities and wealthy patrons. He also began doing films. Chelsea Girls was his most popular and critically successful film. It told two stories by having two films being projected side by side. He also published many books, like The Philosophy of Andy Warhol.

Warhol is a very influential artist even in our current day. He is often criticized for being a “business artist”. However, he was able to make us question what is art and what can be art. Even branding can be art. He was able to find what would sell, and capitalized on that. This is done in our society every day; it was just uncommon in the art world until Warhol did it so blatantly. Warhol is able to mock our consumer driven market while being financially successful.