ANDY WARHOL POP ARTIST OF THE 60’s and beyond. Warhol-LIFE and WORKS Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), more commonly known as Andy.

ANDY WARHOLPOP ARTIST OF THE 60’s and beyond.

Warhol-LIFE and WORKS

Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), more commonly known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and public figure known for his membership in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats.

Background info.

Birth name Andrew Warhola Born August 6, 1928(1928-08-06)

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania U.S. Died February 22, 1987 (aged 58)

New York City, United States Nationality American (United States) Field Painting,

Cinema Training Carnegie Mellon University Movement Pop art Works Chelsea Girls (1966), Exploding Plastic Inevitable

(1966), Campbell's Soup Cans (1962),

On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator Mario Amaya at Warhol's studio.Warhol however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived (surgeons 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. Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (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

Again this work is typical of Warhol and what he was on about. Taking an ordinary every day object and turning it into art. Soap powder! It make people really think about what should art really be about. In the past only the rich could afford it and it was usually of historical or religious subject matter or even portraits of the rich families. This is a 3D piece of work and is typical of an object that most people of the 60’s would be familiar with as so as far as Warhol was concerned a suitable topic for his artwork.

His first one-man art-gallery exhibition was on July 9, 1962, The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills. Initially his work caused an outrage because he was he was taking ordinary subjects and giving them status by calling them art. Today we even recognise the humble soup can because we all see it on the shelves of the supermarket. Is it art? I think it is because it reflects the rapid growth or progress of consumerism on the lives of ordinary people of the 60’s .Life was supposed to be made easier.

COKE BOTTLES 1962

Characteristics

Ordinary/popular consumer item as subject matter is made into art

This work is typical of Warhol. He has taken an ordinary

mundane object and turned it into Art. It is something we are familiar with. Coke bottles. They look like they are on a supermarket shelf but if you look closely you’ll notice that they are all slightly different and some are not even full to the top.

He has used only a few colours, mainly browns and reds with white highlights to show reflections. His bottled look 3D because they are toned in.

He is making a statement about the ordinary object by making his work very large and by using repetion.

This is typical of his movie star series where he does many works of the same artist and uses strange colour . He uses this weird colour because he is trying to highlight the fact that we don't really know the person behind the MASK.

Warhol did many works of celebrities ,something that the masses were familiar with. He did lots of painting and screen prints of famous people from the movies or performers of bands . He used artificial colour on his portraits because often he was trying to make a statement about Super stars and what we see as an audience and the real person behind the ‘mask’. He is saying that we don’t really see the real person,only what the media want to portray.Mick Jagger

This is an example of my POP art work. I took a section from a comic strip (Asterix) and took it out of context and made it into an art work by enlarging it 6 times and painting it. I tried to use the same bright colours that you would normally see in a comic. My work is different in that it is not a print and the scale of the work s different. I can call it my own work because even though it is a borrowed image I have transformed it into something else. I have created a totally different image and it meaning has changed because of what I have done to it. I think I have successfully tried to achieve the same goals as the pop artists.

MY POP ART WORK