Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) was an American artist, film director and producer who became the leading figure of the pop art movement. [1] Working from images drawn from advertising, packaging, newspapers and celebrity publicity, he used silkscreen printing to make art that deliberately resembled mass production. His New York studio, the Factory, was a centre of avant-garde film, music and social life, and he also made some sixty films and published extensively. [2]
Early life and commercial work
Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on 6 August 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants from what is now Slovakia. A childhood illness, probably Sydenham's chorea, kept him bedridden for long periods, during which he drew, collected film magazines and developed a fascination with celebrity. [1]
He studied pictorial design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, graduating in 1949, and moved to New York. Through the 1950s he became one of the city's most successful commercial illustrators, working for Glamour, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and producing shoe advertisements for I. Miller in a distinctive blotted-line technique. [3]
Pop art
Around 1960 Warhol began making paintings based on comic strips and advertisements. His 1962 exhibition of the Campbell's Soup Cans at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles presented thirty-two canvases, one for each variety then sold, and became a defining moment of American pop art. [2]
He soon adopted photographic silkscreen printing, which allowed repetition, mechanical reproduction and the deliberate accidents of misregistration and uneven ink. The method produced the Marilyn Diptych, made after Marilyn Monroe's death in 1962, along with works on Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy, and the Death and Disaster series, which reproduced newspaper photographs of car crashes, electric chairs and race riots. [1]
The Factory, film and music
In 1963 he established a studio on East 47th Street, lined with silver foil and known as the Factory, which functioned as a production workshop and a social hub for artists, performers and figures he promoted as "superstars." [3]
He turned seriously to film, making Sleep, Empire, Chelsea Girls and dozens of others, many of them long, static and improvised. He managed and produced the Velvet Underground, designing the banana cover for their first album and staging the multimedia show Exploding Plastic Inevitable. [2]
On 3 June 1968 Warhol was shot and seriously wounded at the Factory by Valerie Solanas, a writer who had been on its fringes; he required extensive surgery and wore a surgical corset for the rest of his life. The attack ended the Factory's open-door period. [1]
Later career
From the 1970s Warhol concentrated on commissioned portraits of collectors, politicians and entertainers, which became his principal source of income, and on series including Mao, Skulls and the late Last Supper paintings. He founded Interview magazine, published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism, and collaborated with younger artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat. [3]
Warhol died in New York City on 22 February 1987 following gallbladder surgery. [1]
Legacy
The Andy Warhol Museum opened in Pittsburgh in 1994 and is the largest museum in the United States devoted to a single artist. [4] His influence extends across contemporary art, design, advertising and the culture of celebrity.
