Born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Andrew Warhola was the son of Slovak immigrants. Nicknamed Andy at a young age, his interest in art started very young. Andy made his way from a Pittsburgh working class family, to an American Legend. He attended the Carregie Institute of Technology between the years 1945-1949 and majored in Pictorial Design. He moved to New York to pursue a career in this line of work. He soon landed a job as an illustrator for Vogue Magazine and before long he was one of New York’s most successful illustrators. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that Andy became an independent artist. During these years he shortened his last name to Warhol. In the 1960’s he started painting objects that were of mass production. Such as Campbell Soup cans and labels. Andy Warhol brought real-life images from culture and created surreal painting. His famous paintings consisted of Marilyn Monroe’s and as mentioned before, Campbell Soup labels.
His paintings were very colorful and bright. Many times he used non realistic colors, seen in Marilyn. He became a famous figure in New York; Andy Warhol wanted to find the line between fine arts and commercial arts. This is really when he became a pop art icon. He started with comic books, record albums and advertisements.
In 1962 he created ‘The Factory’ he did this in order to mass produce his own works of art; which was really ‘pop’ culture. The Factory was a studio in which Andy hired artists to mass produce many of his pieces. The factory also served the purpose of a filmmaking studio. Where roughly 300 underground films were made, including pornography. You can only imagine what kind of place this factory was.
In 1968, while sitting in the factory; the artist was, almost killing Andy. Valerie Solanis was the attempted murderer. She had worked for Andy and had felt that he was taking up too much of her life. Unfortunately this icon never recovered 100 percent from the wounds in result of the shootings.
Into the 1970’s Andy established into a major artist of the 20th century and celebrity. His work was in museums and galleries around the entire world. By the 1980’s he had T.V. shows on MTV and his own Series. Paintings in these years include ‘Hammer and Sickles’ and ‘The Jews of the Twentieth Century’. In his last years, he was lucky to be able to team up with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring.
1987 was a rough year for Andy Warhol fans, a failed gallbladder surgery led to this famous artist’s death.
I chose Andy Warhol because I really like the creativity and individuality that he has when it comes to his paintings and films. Andy Warhol wanted to paint things that everyone was able to relate to, such as Coke, Marilyn Monroe and Campbell soup cans. Everyone is familiar with these things, and in a sense, these simple things connect people, and Andy Warhol, made that happen through his pieces of art.
The Campbell Soup can in my personal favorite painting from Andy Warhol because it’s something that I’m familiar with. Because of this familiarly it’s something that’s easy for me to look at. Instantly I know what it is, and I like when that happens with art. When I first saw this painting, I was about fourteen years old, and it was during a field trip for visual arts, to the Milwaukee Art Museum. I still remember when I saw it, I was in complete awe, because for once, I saw something that I recognized while I was at a museum, which doesn’t happen often to a child. And ever since then, Andy Warhol has caught my attention. That’s one main reason why I like Andy Warhol’s paintings, there are so familiar, yet very unusual.
I think this is why his painting were in more of a popular culture than in fine arts, his art and himself were pop art icons. He was very appealing to a mass audience, not just royalty, or the wealthy, but an ordinary person could look at his art, and feel like they belonged in society, because they could relate somehow.
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