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Andy Warhol |
The famed figure of Pop Art, Andy Warhol, influenced the art of the late 20th century in an utterly substantial way. His work succeeded to totally annul the once-valid discourse which had differentiated between low and high art, and his approach to art work, symbolized by his legendary Factory workshop, legitimized the mass character of art. He employed countless pop-culture icons and it can be said that his morphology based, as if were, on mismatching color registers has become well-known to the entire world. Warhol even willingly provided materials for his serigraphs to the artist Sherrie Levin who appropriated his achievements by printing from his screens. Warhol’s revolutionary and unforgettable works are, for example, the Brilo box, the Campbell soup cans and the portrait of Marilyn Monroe. His activity in the field of advertising bore the characteristic Warhol-like aspect of the massive and the repeatable, which the artist ironically intensified in his oeuvre to the point of gradually arriving at machinery-like art production in the very sense of the word. Warhol transformed the sacred thesis of the pointless beauty to the fact that artist was the one needed by no one. He perceived commercial art as something that arrived after art. Warhol had anticipated many theoreticians and became a pioneer of the period after the end of art history. His behavior was the one of a provocateur and poser who loved business more than art. He proclaimed non-existence of values and feelings. This, however, gained him many enemies and he was even shot. There are endless disputes whether Warhol was solely an unconcerned chronicler of the era of late capitalism or whether his cold gesture of adapting oneself to business principles in fact concealed a hidden moralist and an artist seeking his own identity. His works nevertheless represent top items at any auction held on a global scale. Warhol’s parents were from Slovakia by origin, and the Slovak city of Medzilaborce is today home to his museum. As to the date of the artist’s birth, Warhol himself never revealed the actual date; it is only speculated that he was born between 1928 and 1931. He studied art in Pittsburgh and moved to New York in the late 1940 where he worked as commercial artists for the Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar magazines and was also widely active in the sphere of advertising. In the 1950s, he already began to exhibit and to receive awards for his ads. In the beginning of his career, Warhol painted in the classical technique, employing oil or acrylic on canvas; it was only later when he became indulged exclusively in serigraphy. The famous Campbell’s soup image was also originally created as a painted image. In 1964, Warhol first exhibited in Europe (Paris) and began to shoot his underground films and collaborate with the legendary music group Velvet Underground. In the 1970, he also created many politically critical portraits (for example, of Mao Zedong) and published the book entitled The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again). He even produced his private TV channel in 1980. Andy Warhol died in 1987 after a surgery
Artworks of this author offered by Prague Art & Design
Andy Warhol
* 1928, Pittsburgh, USA
Education
1945-49 Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh
Solo Exhibitions
2009 | Andy Warhol - Motion pictures
