Andy Warhol; pop art icon

The art of the sixties is pop art. This art was inspired by daily life and by images of the consumer society. The artists didn't cut themselves off from society, but instead used the clichés which belonged to it. Andy Warhol is one of the most well-known artists of this movement and is seen as the figurehead of the American pop art.

Andy Warhol became world-famous with his screen prints of, for example, cans of soup and packs of washing-powder. Everyone probably knows the Campbell's Soup Cans and Brillo Boxes. At least as famous are Warhol's paintings with the image of American dollar bills and the colourful screen prints of celebrities like Che Guevara and Marilyn Monroe.

Consumer society

Pop art was a reaction to former art movements, including the abstract expressionism. For works of art from these movements it was mostly about its meaning and the underlying emotion. This didn't play a part in pop art anymore; it was only about the image itself. Pop art was a way of life. The artists mostly got the inspiration from daily life and the consumer society. This way, they wanted to reach a large audience with images which were known to everyone.

Andy Warhol was fascinated by consumer society. One of his famous statements, "buying is a lot more American than thinking," was an apt characterisation of the American society. Warhol himself was a product of consumer society as well; he thought the best art was "the art of making money." That's why he started painting money after he had asked a few friends for inspiration: a friend of his had then asked what he loved the most. "And that's how I started painting money."

The aforesaid Campbell's Soup Cans are a characterisation for the pop art and the consumer society, too. Campbell's cans of soup could be found in every supermarket, in 32 different flavours. Warhol raised these cans of soup to art icons and in 1962 he painted all 32 flavours of Campbell's soup. Later on he screen printed those, which is a printing technique which makes it easy to produce many copies of one image. This way his works of art became mass-produced articles as well.

Not only the consumer society had Warhol's attention; he was also fascinated by the media, modern life and celebrities. One of Warhol's most famous statements was, "in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." This fascination for celebrities is also expressed in his most famous works: the colourful screen prints of, among others, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Che Guevara.

He wanted to show celebrities the way they really were, because according to him, the media transformed them.

The Factory

Andy Warhol was born as Andrew Warhola in Pennsylvania in 1928. His parents were Czechoslovakian immigrants. He studied applied art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, then moved to New York in 1949 and started a career in the world of advertising. The exhibition of Campbell's Soup Cans managed to make Andy Warhol known to the general public and he fixed up a studio in the heart of New York: The Factory.

Andy Warhol and his co-workers and admirers came together in The Factory. Here they produced the paintings and print screens which made Warhol so famous, but they also made films in the old factory and the magazine "Interview" was released from there. Apart from that, the rock band "Velvet Underground" was established in The Factory and happenings and performances took place there.

One of the people who rallied around Warhol and his group in The Factory, was the feminist Valerie Solanis. She had once played a small part in one of Warhol's films and had also written a script for him. However, he found it too bizarre and lost the script, but kept claiming he might want to turn it into a film. Solanis became frustrated because of this and finally shot him from close range. She declared to the police that Andy Warhol had had too much control over her life.

The attack made Andy Warhol a real star. Shortly after the assault, prices of his works were raised. While at first people had to pay around 200 dollars for a screen print, after the attack this turned into at least 15,000 dollars. In 1970 one of the cans of soup was auctioned off for 70,000 dollars, which made it the most expensive work of a living American artist.

Overrated?

Andy Warhol aroused many contradictory reactions with his work. He was loved and hated; one didn't think much of him, the other saw him as a genius. Because of these fierce, contradictory reactions his work arouses even now, Andy Warhol is one of the most representative artists from the seventies.

His paintings and screen prints were risky and modern for that time, but over the course of the years Warhol's work hasn't changed much. It mostly remained to be colourful portraits of celebrities and screen prints of everyday American objects. Therefore, it has been said that Warhol was overrated.

However, overrated or not, Andy Warhol has become the symbol of American pop art thanks to his peculiar appearance - he dyed his hair flaxen and in interviews he often said no more than "well, do you think so?" - and with that, of the sixties.

Sources: www.todio.nl