Andy Warhol

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Andy Warhol, photographed by Helmut Newton.

Andrew "Andy" Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), was an American artist, writer, director and social figure. With his background and experience in commercial art, Warhol was one of the founders of the Pop Art movement in the United States in the 1950s.

Warhol is best known for his extremely simple, larger-than-life, high-contrast color paintings and silk-screen prints of packaged consumer products, and everyday objects, such as poppy flowers and the banana appearing on the cover of the rock music album The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967).

He also rendered stylized portraits of twentieth century icons Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.

Warhol was also an avant-garde filmmaker, publisher, music producer and actor.

Contents

Biography

Warhol was born as Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents, Ondrej (Andrew) Warhola (original surname was Varchola, he changed it after coming to US) and Júlia Justyna Zavacká, were working-class immigrants of Ruthenian ethnicity from Miková, in northeast Slovakia; his father worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. The family was Byzantine Catholic. In third grade, Warhol came down with St. Vitus' disease, which is caused by a virus that affects nerves and is thought to be a complication of scarlet fever. This disease changed his looks and his life forever.

Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising. He became well-known mainly for his whimsical ink drawings of shoes done in a loose, blotted style.

Campbell's Soup Can 1968

In the 1960s, Warhol began to make paintings of famous American products such as Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola. He switched to silkscreen prints, seeking not only to make art of mass-produced items but to mass produce the art itself. He said he wanted to be like a machine. He hired and supervised "art workers" engaged in making prints, shoes, films, books and other items at his studio, The Factory, located on Union Square in New York. Warhol's body of work furthermore includes commissioned portraits and commercials.

A lot of Warhol's works revolve around the concept of Americana and American culture. He painted money, food, women's shoes, celebrities, newspaper clippings and everyday objects. To him, these subjects represented American cultural values. For instance, Coca-Cola represented democratic equality:

"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 Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, 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 quote is typical of Warhol's deadpan commentary, and critics still argue about how seriously to take his various statements.

He used popular imagery and methods to visualize the American cultural identity of the 20th century. This popular redefinition of American culture is a theme and result of Warhol's art. Because American culture has had great international influence, Warhol has as well.

Outside the art world, Warhol is best known for the quotation, "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." He later told reporters, "My new line is, 'In fifteen minutes, everybody will be famous'".

Socialite and Recluse

Warhol used to socialize at Serendipity and Studio 54, nightclubs in New York City. He was generally regarded as quiet, shy and as a meticulous observer. More than one person jokingly referred to him as "death warmed over." But he also had a reputation for occasional bitchiness and manipulativeness. Warhol's contradictory personality led his friends to nickname him Drella, as a combination of Dracula and Cinderella.

Warhol regularly volunteered at homeless shelters in New York, particularly during the busier times of the year. He described himself as a religious person, though he was not fully accepted by religion because of his homosexuality. 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. Warhol also regularly attended mass during his life.

In 1968, Warhol was shot in the chest by Valerie Solanas. Solanas had previously founded a "group" called the "Society for Cutting Up Men" (S.C.U.M.) and authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a work of radical feminist literature that has since found something of a following both from those who take it seriously and those who find it funny. In actuality, Solanas was the only member of S.C.U.M. Arrested the day after the assault, she said, "He had too much control over my life." Warhol was seriously wounded and suffered physical effects for the rest of his life (he had to wear a corset to support himself). Solanas had received the gun in exchange for a stolen Warhol painting from artist David Horvitz. To this day Horvitz has refused to return the painting, claiming that he had received it in a fair exchange. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art, and the Factory scene became much more tightly controlled.

Sexuality

Warhol was gay, and in The Warhol Diaries writes openly about his relationships with several men. However, early in his career he occasionally implied to the press that he had girlfriends, including a (possibly fictitious) girl he called "Taxi" who allegedly went for long periods without bathing. Warhol was gay in an era when straight America was much less informed about homosexual culture, and gay men such as Liberace and Paul Lynde were generally accepted as simply being dandies. Gay themes in Warhol's work were often overlooked by a public oblivious to the symbolism of drag queens, cowboys and the other icons and clichés of gay culture that frequently appeared in his work. On the occasions Warhol was publicly pressed about his sexuality, he was often playfully evasive. He often claimed to have little libido, and those who knew him have said that being hugged or otherwise touched made him quite uncomfortable.

The 1970s

Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the 1970s was a much quieter decade. This period, however, saw Warhol becoming more entrepreneurial. According to Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions--including Mick Jagger, Brigitte Bardot and Michael Jackson. He also founded 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."

The 1980s

Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s. Partially, this was due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of '80s New York art: 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. Of particular significance was Warhol's close friendship with Jean-Michel Basquiat, with whom Warhol collaborated on a series of works. Jean-Michel Basquiat, despite rumors that he was upset with Warhol because of "being taken advantage of," was quite affected when Andy died, and many suspect that began his decline until he died of a drug overdose at the age of 27.

Death

Warhol died in New York City from a routine gallbladder surgery at the age of 58. Warhol was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors, so he had delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked.

He is interred at St. John the Baptist Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh. Fellow artist Yoko Ono was among the speakers at his funeral.

Warhol had so many possessions it took Sotheby's nine days to auction his estate after his death for a total gross amount of over US $20 million.

Andy Warhol's iconic Marilyn Monroe

Work

Paintings

When he decided to pursue a career as an artist, Warhol already had established a reputation as a commercial illustrator mostly doing illustrations of shoes. In school he had created paintings, but his work afterward had mainly consisted of "blotted ink" illustrations for warehouses and magazines. He felt he was not being taken seriously as an illustrator and wanted to become a true artist.

When he started painting, he wanted to find a niche for himself. At the time Pop Art, as it was later named, was already an experimental form used by artists as an alternative to abstract expressionism. Warhol turned to this new style where popular subjects could be part of the artist's vocabulary. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with added paint drips. He added these drips to give his paintings a seriousness by emulating the style of the abstract expressionists that were en vogue at the time. He wanted to be taken seriously or to sell his paintings, which may have had the same meaning to Warhol.

To him, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons already were being used by the artist Roy Lichtenstein, typography by Jasper Johns, and so on; Warhol wanted a distinguishing subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. In his signature way of taking things literally, for his first major exhibition he painted his famous cans of Campbell's Soup, which he had for lunch most of his life. Warhol loved money, so he later painted money. 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 hand-made from the artistic process. Warhol employed silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. In other words, Warhol went from being a painter to being a designer of paintings. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, in different versions and variations following his directions.

As time went on, Warhol's work became more conceptual and more reflective of art itself. His series of do-it-yourself paintings and Rorschach blots are intended as pop comments on art and what art could be. His cow wallpaper (literally, wallpaper with a cow motif) and his oxidation paintings (canvases prepared with copper paint that show oxidated urine stains) are also noteworthy in this context. Equally noteworthy is the way these works -- and their means of production -- mirrored the mores and atmosphere at Andy's New York "Factory." Biographer Bob Colacello provides some fascinating details on Andy's "piss paintings":

"Victor... was Andy's ghost pisser on the Oxidations. He would come to the Factory to urinate on canvases that had already been primed with copper-based paint by Andy or Ronnie Cutrone, who was a second ghost pisser, much appreciated by Andy, who said that the vitamin B that Ronnie took made a prettier color when the acid in the urine turned the copper green… Did Andy ever use his own urine? My diary shows that when he first began the series, in December 1977, he did… and there were many others: boys who'd come to lunch and drink too much wine, and find it funny or even flattering to be asked to help Andy 'paint.' Andy always had a little extra bounce in his walk as he led them to his studio..." ("Holy Terror - Andy Warhol Close Up," New York, Harper/Collins, 1990, p. 343).

It has been suggested that Warhol would just take images of things that were hip in his time and cover them in "Warhol gravy", but for Warhol there always was a personal relation between him and his subjects. For instance the Campbell's Soup did not only function as an illustration of commercial industry and advertisement, it was an intrinsic part of Warhol's life and memories. As a child his mother had given him this soup when he was sick, and Warhol loved it very much as an adult. For him (and for many other Americans) the soup represented a feeling of being "home" or what is often called "comfort food".

Another criterion that was important in the way Warhol chose his subjects was they had to represent a more philosophical notion and have a metaphorical quality. When Warhol painted money, he painted it because he wanted to own it - canvases filled with money. Partly his work was meant to provide him with this money (and success, fame and maybe even love). At the same time, these paintings spoke of art as a commercial commodity: the paintings of dollar bills represented monetary value as well as investments. In this way, instead of merely depicting dollar bills, the paintings touched on notions like artistic value or as a comment on art practice.

Similarly, when Warhol painted photographs of disasters in bright colors ("Red Car Crash", "Purple Jumping Man", "Orange Disaster") they pointed at the horror of the event in the picture and its media value but also at the way in which such images are trivialized by the media. By turning these "random" clippings into paintings, Warhol transformed them into monuments for personal tragedies. As such, they represent a personal experience as well as a social comment and an illustration of a time when the media grew in pertinence and relevance.

Films

Warhol worked across a wide range of mediums - painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture. He was also a highly prolific filmmaker. Between 1963 and 1968, he made more than sixty films. One of his most famous films, Sleep (1963), shows a man (John Giorno, with whom Warhol had a relationship) sleeping for eight hours. The 35-minute film Blow Job (1963) is one continuous shot of the face of Tom Baker, receiving oral sex from Willard Maas. Another, Empire (1964), consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building in New York City at dusk. Warhol's 1965 film Vinyl is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' popular dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange. Others record improvised encounters between Factory regulars such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico, and Jackie Curtis. Legendary underground artist Jack Smith appears in the film Camp.

His most popular and critically successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was highly innovative in that it consisted of two 16-mm films being projected simultaneously, with two different stories being shown in tandem. From the projection booth, the sound would be raised for one film to elucidate that "story" while it was lowered for the other. Then it would be the other film's turn to bask in the glory of sound. The multiplication of images evoked Warhol's seminal silk-screen works of the early 1960s. The influence of the film's split-screen, multi-narrative style could be felt in such modern work as Mike Figgis' Timecode and, however indirectly, the early seasons of 24 (TV series).

Other important films include My Hustler (1965) and Lonesome Cowboys (1968), a raunchy pseudo-western. Blue Movie, a film in which Warhol superstar Viva makes love and fools around in bed with a man for 33 minutes of the film's playing-time, was Warhol's last film as director. The film was at the time scandalous for its frank approach to a sexual encounter. For many years Viva refused to allow it to be screened. It was publicly screened in New York in 2005 for the first time in over thirty years.

After his June 3, 1968 shooting, a reclusive Warhol relinquished his personal involvement in filmmaking. His acolyte and assistant director, Paul Morrissey, took over the film-making chores for the Factory collective, steering Warhol-branded cinema towards more mainstream, narrative-based, B-movie exploitation fare with Flesh, Trash, and Heat. All of these films, including the later Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, were far more mainstream than anything Warhol as a director had attempted. These latter "Warhol" films starred Joe Dallesandro, who was more of a Morrissey star than a true Warhol superstar.

In order to facilitate the success of these Warhol-branded, Morrissey-directed movies in the marketplace, all of Warhol's earlier avant-garde films were removed from distribution and exhibition by 1972.

Another film, Bad, made significant impact as a "Warhol" film yet was directed by Jed Johnson. Bad starred the infamous Carroll Baker and a young Perry King.

The first volume of a catalogue raisoné for the Factory film archive is to be published in the spring of 2006.

Filmography

Blow Job (1963)

Eat (1963)

Haircut (1963)

Kiss (1963)

Naomi's Birthday Party (1963)

Sleep (1963)

13 Most Beautiful Women (1964)

Batman Dracula (1964)

Clockwork (1964)

Couch (1964)

Drunk (1964)

Empire (1964)

The End of Dawn (1964)

Lips (1964)

Mario Banana I (1964)

Mario Banana II (1964)

Messy Lives (1964)

Naomi and Rufus Kiss (1964)

Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964)

The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys (1964)

Beauty #2 (1965)

Bitch (1965)

Camp (1965)

Harlot (1965)

Horse (1965)

Kitchen (1965)

The Life of Juanita Castro (1965)

My Hustler (1965)

Poor Little Rich Girl (1965)

Restaurant (1965)

Space (1965)

Taylor Mead's Ass (1965)

Vinyl (1965)

Screen Test (1965)

Screen Test #2 (1965)

Ari and Mario (1966)

Hedy (1966)

Kiss the Boot (1966)

Milk (1966)

Salvador Dalí (1966)

Shower (1966)

Sunset (1966)

Superboy (1966)

The Closet (1966)

Chelsea Girls (1966)

The Beard (1966)

More Milk, Yvette (1966)

Outer and Inner Space (1966)

The Velvet Underground and Nico (1966)

The Andy Warhol Story (1967)

Tiger Morse (1967)

**** (1967)

The Imitation of Christ (1967)

The Nude Restaurant (1967)

Bike Boy (1967)

I, a Man (1967)

San Diego Surf (1968)

The Loves of Ondine (1968)

Blue Movie (1969)

Lonesome Cowboys (1969)

L'Amour (1972)

Music

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Warhol adopted the band the Velvet Underground as one of his projects in the 1960s, "producing" their first album The Velvet Underground and Nico as well as providing the album art. After the band became successful Warhol and band leader Lou Reed started to disagree more and more about the direction the band should take, and the contact between them faded.

Warhol designed the cover art for The Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers, released in 1971. Four years later, Warhol would be commissioned to do several portraits of the band's frontman Mick Jagger.

In 1990 Reed recorded the album Songs for Drella (one of Warhol's nicknames was Drella, a combination of Dracula and Cinderella) with fellow Velvet Underground alumnus John Cale. On Drella, Reed apologizes and comes to terms with his part in their conflict.

Warhol was also friendly with many musicians, including Bob Dylan and John Lennon, and he appeared as a bartender in The Cars' music video for their single "Hello Again," and Curiosity Killed The Cat's video for their "Misfit" single (both videos, and others, were produced by Warhol's video production company). He had a crush on Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes, with whom he met fairly often.

Actor and journalist Sam Slovick is mentioned in the Andy Warhol Diaries.

Books and Print

Warhol "wrote" several books.

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 and 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 (aka 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 is 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 has 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 leaf-gold that decorates the pages.
Sculpture: Warhol's most famous sculpture is probably his "Brillo Boxes," silkscreened wooden replicas of Brillo soap boxes. Other famous works include the "Silver Floating Pillows"; gas-filled, silver, pillow-shaped balloons that were floated out of the window during the presentation.
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.
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" for MTV in 1986. Besides his own shows he regularly made guest appearances in shows, including a notable appearance on "The Love Boat" wherein a Midwestern wife (Marion Ross) fears Andy Warhol will reveal to her husband (Tom Bosley) her secret past as a Warhol superstar named Marina del Rey.
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. His late oeuvre contains black and white photos sewn together.

Product

In many of his efforts Warhol has taken the position of a producer or director, rather than a creator. From an artist he gradually became the person that determined the direction and was the public face of a company, having a staff of sorts to do the actual labor involved in his products. He would coin an idea and oversee its execution, his Factory evolved from an atelier into an office.

As this position proved to work out, he found himself able to expand his activities into other fields. He founded the gossip magazine Interview, creating a stage for celebrities he "endorsed" and creating jobs for his friends. He adopted the young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the band The Velvet Underground and presented them to the public as his latest interest, cooperating with them, shaping their public personas. He would produce things and people, and they were part of his artistic product. He endorsed products, appeared in commercials, made business deals and even sold the film-making branch of his company when he decided to spend less time filming himself.

In this respect Warhol talked about "Art Business" and "Business Art", and how he thought business was the best type of art. This was a radical new stance, as artists had always presented themselves as flamboyant, individual, visionary outsiders - commenting on the normal part of society, but never really being a part of it. And receiving appreciation for that position on basis of their idealism, rare talents and personalities. Warhol and other pop-artists helped redefine the artist's position as professional, commercial, popular; a logical and valuable part of society. He did this using methods, imagery and talents that were (or at least seemed to be) available to everyone. Perhaps that has been the most meaningful result of (his) Pop Art: a philosophical and practical incorporation of art into society, art as a product of society.

Museums

The Andy Warhol Museum is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the largest American art museum dedicated to a single artist, holding more than 4,000 works by the artist himself.

Among others, Andy's brother, John Warhola, and the Warhol Foundation in New York, established in 1992 the Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art in the remote town of Medzilaborce, Slovakia. Andy's mother, Julia Warhola, was born 15 kilometers away in the village of Mikova. The museum houses several originals donated mainly by the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York and also personal items donated by Warhol's relatives

Films portraying Warhol

Andy Warhol is portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991). Warhol is also represented by David Bowie in Basquiat, a film by Julian Schnabel. In the film I Shot Andy Warhol, directed by Mary Harron (1996), the actor Jared Harris portrayed Warhol. Sean Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the film 54 (1998). The latest film actor to portray the artist is Guy Pearce in the 2006 film, Factory Girl.

Gus Van Sant was planning a version of Warhol's life in the early 1990s with River Phoenix in the lead role just before the latter's death (as discussed in an interview with the two, included in the published My Own Private Idaho script book).