Everything about Andy Warhol totally explained
Andrew Warhola (
August 6,
1928–
February 22,
1987), better known as
Andy Warhol, was an
American artist and a central figure in the movement known as
pop art. After a successful career as a
commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a
painter, an
avant-garde filmmaker, a record producer, an author, and a
public figure known for his membership in wildly diverse social circles that included
bohemian street people, distinguished
intellectuals,
Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats.
A controversial figure during his lifetime (his work was often derided by critics as a
hoax, or "put-on"), Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books,
feature and documentary films since his death in
1987.
Biography
Childhood and early career
Andy Warhol was born in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Andy was the third child of his parents, Ondrej (Andrew) Warhola (the surname was spelled Varchola in Europe, and was modified after immigrating to America) and
Julia Warhola, née Ulja (Julia) Justyna Zavacky. His parents were working-class immigrants of
Lemkos-
Rusyns (Ruthenian) ethnicity from
Mezőlaborc, now
Medzilaborce, of
Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in northeast
Slovakia). Warhol's father migrated to the USA in 1914, while his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Andy Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the
Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.. The family was
Byzantine Catholic and attended
St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol has two older brothers John and Paul.
In
third grade Warhol had
St. Vitus' dance, a nervous system disease causing involuntary movements which is believed to be a complication of
scarlet fever, and which causes blotchiness in skin pigmentation of his skin. He became somewhat of a
hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became an outcast among his school-mates and bonded with his mother very strongly (Guiles, 1989). When in bed he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences.
Warhol showed an early artistic talent and studied
commercial art at the
School of Fine Arts at
Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now
Carnegie Mellon University). In 1949, he moved to
New York City and began a successful career in
magazine illustration and
advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements. These were done in a loose, blotted ink style, and figured in some of his earliest showings in New York at the Bodley Gallery. With the concurrent rapid expansion of the record industry and the introduction of the vinyl record, Hi-Fi, and stereophonic recordings,
RCA Records hired Warhol, along with another freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design album covers and promotional materials.
The 1960s
Andy Warhol's first New York solo Pop exhibit was hosted at Eleanor Ward's
Stable Gallery November 6-24th, 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
John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, "Sleep," in 1963.
It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of famous American products such as "
Campbell's Soup Cans" from the
Campbell Soup Company and
Coca-Cola, as well as paintings of celebrities like
Marilyn Monroe,
Troy Donahue, and
Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "
The Factory", his
studio during these years and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. He switched to
silkscreen prints which he produced serially, seeking not only to make
art of
mass-produced items but to mass produce the art itself. By minimizing the role of his own hand in the production of his work and declaring that he wanted to be "a machine", Warhol sparked a revolution in art. His work quickly became very controversial and popular.
Warhol's work from this period revolves around American Pop (Popular) culture. He painted dollar bills, celebrities, brand name products and images from newspaper clippings - many of the latter were iconic images from headline stories of the decade (
for example photographs of
mushroom clouds, and police dogs attacking
civil rights protesters). His subjects were instantly recognizable and often had a mass appeal. This aspect interested him most and it unifies his paintings from this period. Take for example Warhol's comments on the appeal of Coke:
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. |
This quotation both expresses his affection for popular culture, and evidences an ambiguity of perspective that cuts across nearly all of the artist's statements about his own work.
New York's
Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on
pop art in December
1962 during which artists like 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. Throughout the decade it became more and more clear that there had been a profound change in the culture of the art world, and that Warhol was at the center of that shift.
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 small supermarket environment, except that everything in it from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc. were created by six prominent pop artists of the time including 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 is art.
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; in the 1960s, however, this was particularly true. One of the most important collaborators during this period was
Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with producing 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,
Pietro Psaier,
Billy Name, and
Brigid Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape record his phone conversations). During this decade, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "
Superstars", including
Edie Sedgwick,
Viva, and
Ultra Violet. 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 (
for example writer
John Giorno, film-maker
Jack Smith) also appear in Warhol films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this period. By the end of the decade, Andy Warhol was himself a celebrity, appearing frequently in newspapers and magazines alongside Factory cohorts like Sedgwick.
Shooting
On
June 3,
1968,
Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator
Mario Amaya at Warhol's studio.
Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. She founded a "group" called S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting up Men) and authored the
S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a
separatist feminist attack on patriarchy. Solanas appears 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'd given to Warhol. The script, apparently, had been misplaced.
Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived (doctors opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again). He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art.
Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of explanation, she said that "He had too much control over my life." After the shooting, the Factory scene became much more tightly controlled, and for many this event brought the "Factory 60s" to an end.
The shooting was mostly overshadowed in the media due to the murder of
Robert F. Kennedy two days later. On recalling the event of the shooting Warhol stated, "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."
The 1970s
Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the 1970s would prove a much quieter decade. This period, however, saw Warhol becoming more entrepreneurial. According to
Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions—including
Mick Jagger,
Liza Minnelli,
John Lennon,
Diana Ross,
Brigitte Bardot, and
Michael Jackson. 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). In this book, he presents his ideas on the nature of art: "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art."
Warhol used to socialize at
Serendipity 3 and, later in the 70s,
Studio 54, nightspots in New York City. He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and as a meticulous observer. Art critic
Robert Hughes called him "the white mole of
Union Square".
The 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 '80s New York art:
Jean-Michel Basquiat,
Julian Schnabel,
David Salle and the so-called
Neo-Expressionists, as well as
Francesco Clemente,
Enzo Cucchi and members of the Transavantguardia movement, which had become influential.
By this period, Warhol's work had engendered controversy as to whether he'd merely become a "business artist". In
1979 unfavorable reviews met 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. This criticism was echoed for his
1980 exhibit of ten portraits at the
Jewish Museum in New York, entitled "Jewish Geniuses", which Warhol, who exhibited no interest in Judaism or matters of interest to Jews, had described in his diary as "They're going to sell."
Sexuality
Many people think of Warhol as "
asexual" and merely a "
voyeur", but these notions have been debunked by biographers (such as
Victor Bockris), explored by other members of The Factory scene such as
Bob Colacello (in his book
Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up), and by scholars like art historian Richard Meyer (in his book
Outlaw Representation). The question of how his sexuality influenced Warhol's work and shaped his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on the artist, and is an issue that Warhol himself addressed in interviews, in conversation with his contemporaries, and in his publications (
for example Popism: The Warhol Sixties).
Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of
Liza Minnelli,
Judy Garland,
Elizabeth Taylor, and films like
Blow Job,
My Hustler, and
Lonesome Cowboys) draw from gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of sexuality and desire. Many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters. That said, some stories about Warhol's development as an artist revolved around the obstacle his sexuality initially presented as he tried to launch his career. The first works that he submitted to a gallery in the pursuit of a career as an artist were
homoerotic drawings of male nudes. They were rejected for being too openly gay.
(External Link
) In
Popism, furthermore, the artist recalls a conversation with the film maker
Emile de Antonio about the difficulty Warhol had being accepted socially by the then more famous (but closeted) gay artists
Jasper Johns and
Robert Rauschenberg. De Antonio explained that Warhol was "too swish and that upsets them." In response to this, Warhol writes, "There was nothing I could say to that. It was all too true. So I decided I just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things that I didn't want to change anyway, that I didn't think I 'should' want to change ... Other people could change their attitudes but not me". In exploring Warhol's biography, many turn to this period - the late 1950s and early 1960s - as a key moment in the development of his persona. Some have suggested that his frequent refusal to comment on his work, to speak about himself (confining himself in interviews to responses like "Uhm, No" and "Uhm, Yes", and often allowing others to speak for him), and even the evolution of his Pop style can be traced to the years when Warhol was first dismissed by the inner circles of the New York art world.
Religious beliefs
Warhol was a practicing
Byzantine Rite Catholic. He regularly volunteered at
homeless shelters in New York, particularly during the busier times of the year, and described himself as a religious person. Many of his later works contain almost-hidden religious themes or subjects, and a body of religious-themed works was found posthumously in his estate. and the original was auctioned in May 2006 for US $35,000.
Other self-published books by Warhol include:
Gold Book
Wild Raspberries
Holy Cats
Later Warhol "wrote" several books that were commercially printed.
a, A Novel (1968, ISBN 0-8021-3553-6) is a literal transcription - containing spelling errors and phonetically written background noise and mumbling - of audio recordings of Ondine and several of Andy Warhol's friends hanging out at the Factory, talking, going out.
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again) (1975, ISBN 0-15-671720-4) - according to Pat Hackett's introduction to The Andy Warhol Diaries, Pat Hackett did the transcriptions and text for the book based on daily phone conversations, sometimes (when Warhol was traveling) using audio cassettes that Andy Warhol gave her. Said cassettes contained conversations with Brigid Berlin (also known as Brigid Polk) and former Interview magazine editor Bob Colacello.
(1980, ISBN 0-15-672960-1), authored by Warhol and Pat Hackett is a retrospective view of the sixties and the role of Pop Art.
The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989, ISBN 0-446-39138-7, edited by Pat Hackett) is an edited diary that was dictated by Warhol to Hackett in daily phone conversations. Warhol started keeping a diary to keep track of his expenses after being audited, although it soon evolved to include his personal and cultural observations.
Warhol created the fashion magazine Interview that's still published today. The loopy title script on the cover is thought to be either his own handwriting or that of his mother, Julia Warhola, who would often do text work for his early commercial pieces.
Other media
As stated, although Andy Warhol is most known for his paintings and films, he's authored works in many different media.
Drawing: Warhol started his career drawing commercial illustrations in "blotted-ink" style for warehouses and magazines. Most well known are his pictures of shoes. Some of his drawings were published in little booklets, like "Yum, Yum, Yum" (about food), "Ho, Ho, Ho" (about Christmas) and (of course) "Shoes, Shoes, Shoes." His most artistically acclaimed book of drawings is probably "The Gold Book", compiled of sensitive, personal drawings of young men. "The Gold Book" is thus dubbed because of the gold leaf that decorates the pages.
Sculpture: Warhol's most famous sculpture is probably his "Brillo Boxes", silkscreened bronze replicas of Brillo soap boxes. Other famous works include the "Silver Clouds"; helium filled, silver mylar, pillow-shaped balloons. A "Silver Cloud" was included in the traveling exhibition "Air Art" (1968-1969) curated by Willoughby Sharp.
Audio: At one point Warhol carried a portable recorder with him wherever he went, taping everything everybody said and did. He referred to this device as his "wife." Some of these tapes were the basis for his literary work. Another audio-work of Warhol's was his "Invisible Sculpture", a presentation in which burglar alarms would go off when entering the room. Warhol's cooperation with the musicians of The Velvet Underground was driven by an expressed desire to become a music producer.
Time capsules: Throughout his life, Warhol saved many of his correspondences, articles about himself and those which fascinated him, and numerous other items (everything from food to gay porn). Several of these items were boxed up and, progressively, numbered. They eventually totaled in the dozens. Today the Warhol Museum houses them and is in the process of opening and sorting them. As of 2008 there remain boxes which, while cataloged, have not been re-opened since their original sealing. (see external links below for more info).
Television: Andy Warhol dreamed of a television show that he wanted to call "The Nothing Special", a special about his favorite subject: Nothing. Later in his career he did create two cable television shows, "Andy Warhol's TV" in 1982 and "Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes" (based on his famous "fifteen minutes of fame" quotation) for MTV in 1986. Besides his own shows he regularly made guest appearances on other programs, including "The Love Boat" wherein a Midwestern wife (Marion Ross) fears Andy Warhol will reveal to her husband (Tom Bosley, who starred alongside Ross in sitcom Happy Days) her secret past as a Warhol superstar named Marina del Rey. Warhol also produced a TV commercial for Schrafft's Restaurants in New York City, for an ice cream dessert appropriately titled the "Underground Sundae"
Fashion: Warhol is quoted for having said: "I'd rather buy a dress and put it up on the wall, than put a painting, wouldn't you?" One of his most well-known Superstars, Edie Sedgwick, aspired to be a fashion designer, and his good friend Halston was a famous one. Warhol's work in fashion includes silkscreened dresses, a short sub-career as a catwalk-model and books on fashion as well as paintings with fashion (shoes) as a subject.
Performance Art: Warhol and his friends staged happenings; theatrical multimedia presentations during parties, containing music, film, slide projections and Gerard Malanga in an S&M outfit cracking a whip. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable is the culmination of this area of his work.
Photography: To produce his silkscreens, Warhol made photographs or had them made by his friends and assistants. These pictures were mostly taken with a specific model of Polaroid camera that Polaroid kept in production especially for Warhol. This photographic approach to painting and his snapshot method of taking pictures has had a great effect on artistic photography. Warhol was an accomplished photographer, and took an enormous amount of photographs of Factory visitors, friends - given the importance of this medium to both his paintings and to film, one might say that an interest in photography lies at the center of his artistic practice.
Computer: Warhol used Amiga computers to generate digital art.
Producer and product
In many ways Warhol refined and expanded the idea of what it means to be an artist. Warhol frequently took on the position of a producer, rather than a creator - this is true not only of his work as a painter (he had assistants do much of the work of producing his paintings), it's true of his film-making and commercial enterprises as well. He liked to coin an idea and then oversee or delegate its execution. As he refined this element of his work The Factory evolved from an atelier into an office. He became (and still is) the public face of a company, and a brand.
He founded the gossip magazine Interview, 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.) He adopted the young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the band The Velvet Underground, presenting them to the public as his latest interest, and collaborating with them. One might even say that he produced people (as in the Warholian "Superstar" and the Warholian portrait). He endorsed products, appeared in commercials, and made frequent celebrity guest appearances on television shows and in films (he appeared in everything from Love Boat to Saturday Night Live and the Richard Pryor movie, Dynamite Chicken).
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. This was a radical new stance, as artists traditionally positioned themselves against commercialism. Warhol and other pop-artists helped redefine the artist's position as professional, commercial, and popular. He did this using methods, imagery and talents that were (or at least seemed to be) available to everyone. In this respect Pop Art has contributed to a philosophical and practical incorporation of art into popular culture and society, and art offered to us as a product of that society.
Museums
Two museums are dedicated to Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, is located at 117 Sandusky Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the largest American art museum dedicated to a single artist, holding more than 12,000 works by the artist himself.
The other museum is the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, established in 1991 by Andy's brother John Warhola, the Slovak Ministry of Culture, and the Warhol Foundation in New York. It is located in the small town of Medzilaborce, Slovakia. Andy's parents were born 15 kilometers away in the village of Miková. The museum houses several originals donated mainly by the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York and also personal items donated by Warhol's relatives.
An exhibit dedicated to the works of Andy Warhol is on display at the World of Coke in Atlanta, Georgia.
Films portraying Warhol
Andy Warhol is portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991), by David Bowie in Basquiat, a film by Julian Schnabel and by Jared Harris in the film I Shot Andy Warhol directed by Mary Harron (1996). Actor Mark Bringleson makes a brief cameo as Warhol in, painting a supine woman's outfit to match the pattern on the floor of the Electric Psychedelic Pussycat Swingers' Club while looking at a Campbell's Soup can. Also, many films by Jonas Mekas have the moments of Andy's life caught (for example "Super 8 films"; "Scenes From The Life Of Andy Warhol" and many more). Sean Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the 1998 film 54. The latest film actor to portray the artist is Guy Pearce in the 2007 film, Factory Girl.
is a reverential four-hour 2006 movie by Ric Burns.
The 2001 documentary, Absolut Warhola, was produced by German director Stanislaw Mucha, featuring Warhol's parents' family and hometown in Slovakia.
Gus Van Sant was planning a version of Warhol's life with River Phoenix in the lead role just before Phoenix's death in 1993 (as discussed in an interview with the two, included in the published My Own Private Idaho script book).
Eponym
Asteroid 6701 Warhol is named for Andy Warhol.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Andy Warhol'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://andy_warhol.totallyexplained.com">Andy Warhol Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
