Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), 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 patrons.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely
used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his
life and artwork.
The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for
a 1963 canvas titled Eight
Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article
in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether
of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo
Picasso, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.[1] Childhood
Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.[2]
He was the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola (died 1942)[3]
and Julia (nee Zavacka, 1892-1972),[4]
whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their
migration to the U.S. His parents were working-class immigrants from Mikó
(now called Miková), in northeastern Slovakia,
then part of Austro-Hungarian
Empire. Warhol's father immigrated to the US in 1914, and his mother
joined him in 1921, after the death of Andy Warhol's grandparents.
Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen
Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.[5]
The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St.
John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older
brothers, Ján and Pavol, who were born in today's Slovakia.
Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's
book illustrator.
In third grade, Warhol had chorea, the nervous system disease
that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed
to be a complication of scarlet fever and causes skin pigmentation blotchiness.[6]
He became a hypochondriac, developing a
fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became
an outcast among his school-mates and bonded strongly with his mother.[7]
At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio
and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later
described this period as very important in the development of his
personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father
died in an accident.[8]
Early career
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).[9]
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 at the Bodley Gallery in New York. 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.[10]
1960s
His first one-man art-gallery exhibition as a fine artist[11][12]
was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus
Gallery of Los Angeles. The exhibition marked the West Coast debut of pop art.[13]
Andy Warhol's first New York solo Pop exhibit was hosted at Eleanor
Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The
exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke
Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time John
Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963.[citation needed]
It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic
American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola
bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis
Presley, Troy Donahue, Muhammad
Ali and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "The
Factory", his studio during these years, and gathered around himself
a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground
celebrities. He began producing prints using the silkscreen method. His work became popular and
controversial.
Among the imagery tackled by Warhol were dollar bills, celebrities
and brand name products. He also used as imagery for his paintings
newspaper headlines or photographs of mushroom clouds, electric chairs, and police dogs attacking civil rights protesters. Warhol also used Coca Cola
bottles as subject matter for paintings. He had this to say about Coca
Cola:
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 Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and
just think, you can drink Coca Cola, 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.[14]
New York's Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on pop art in
December 1962 during which artists like Warhol were attacked for
"capitulating" to consumerism. Critics were scandalized by Warhol's open
embrace of market culture. This symposium set the tone for Warhol's
reception. Throughout the decade it became more and more clear that
there had been a profound change in the culture of the art world, and
that Warhol was at the center of that shift.[citation needed]
Campbell's Tomato Juice Box (1964)
A pivotal event was the 1964 exhibit The American Supermarket,
a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was
presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that
everything in it – from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the
wall, etc. – was created by six prominent pop artists of the time, among
them the controversial (and like-minded) Billy
Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a
can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for
$6. The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly
confronted the general public with both pop art and the perennial
question of what art is (or of what is art and what is not).[citation needed]
As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants
to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining (and
controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; in
the 1960s, however, this was particularly true. One of the most
important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with producing
silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at "The
Factory", Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on
47th Street (later moved to Broadway). Other members of Warhol's Factory
crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary
Woronov, Billy Name, and Brigid
Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape-record his
phone conversations).[15]
During the '60s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian
eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "Superstars", including Edie
Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet,
and Candy Darling. These people all participated in the Factory
films, and some – like Berlin – remained friends with Warhol until his
death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world,
such as writer John Giorno and film-maker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol
films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range
of artistic scenes during this time.
Attempted
assassination
On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator Mario
Amaya at Warhol's studio.[16]
Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory
scene. She founded a "group" called S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up
Men) and authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a separatist feminist attack on
patriarchy. Over the years, Solanas' manifesto has found a following.[17]
Solanas appears in the 1968 Warhol film I, A Man. Earlier on the day of the attack,
Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the
return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script, apparently, had
been misplaced.[18]
Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital
later the same day. 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.[19][20]
Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of
explanation, she said that Warhol "had too much control over my life."
She was eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of
Corrections. After the shooting, the Factory scene became much more
tightly controlled, and for many this event brought the "Factory 60s" to
an end.[20]
The shooting was mostly overshadowed in the media due to the
assassination of Robert F. Kennedy two days later.
Warhol had this to say about the attack: "Before I was shot, I always
thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected
that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that
the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way
things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so
strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like
watching television – you don't feel anything. Right when I was being
shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels
switch, but it's all television." [21]
1970s
Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s,
the 1970s proved a much quieter decade, as Warhol became more
entrepreneurial. According to Bob
Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich
patrons for portrait commissions– including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick
Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John
Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot, and Michael Jackson.[22][citation needed]
Warhol's famous portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao
Zedong was created in 1973. He also founded, with Gerard Malanga, Interview magazine, and published The
Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975). An idea expressed in the book:
"Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best
art."[cite this quote]
Warhol used to socialize at various nightspots in New York City,
including Max's Kansas City; and, later in the '70s,
Studio
54.[23]
He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and a meticulous observer. Art
critic Robert Hughes called him "the white
mole of Union Square."[24]
1980s
Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the
1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of
prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of '80s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David
Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of
the Transavantgarde movement in Europe,
including Francesco Clemente and Enzo
Cucchi.
By this period, Warhol was being criticized for becoming merely a
"business artist".[25]
In 1979, unfavorable reviews met his exhibits of portraits of 1970s
personalities and celebrities, calling them
superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the
significance of the subjects. This criticism was echoed for his 1980
exhibit of ten portraits at the Jewish Museum in New York, entitled
Jewish Geniuses, which Warhol – who exhibited no interest in
Judaism or matters of interest to Jews – had described in his diary as
"They're going to sell."[25]
In hindsight, however, some critics have come to view Warhol's
superficiality and commerciality as "the most brilliant mirror of our
times," contending that "Warhol had captured something irresistible
about the zeitgeist of American culture in the 1970s."[25]
Warhol also had an appreciation for intense Hollywood glamour. He once said: "I
love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's
plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."[26]
Sexuality
Warhol never married or had children.[27]
Many people think of him as asexual
and merely a "voyeur"; however, it is now well-established that he was homosexual (see biographers such as Victor Bockris, Bob
Colacello,[28]
and art historian Richard Meyer[29]).
The question of his sexuality aside, Warhol stated in a 1980 interview
that he was still a virgin.[30]
The question of how Warhol's sexuality influenced his work and shaped
his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on
the artist, and is an issue that Warhol himself addressed in interviews,
in conversation with his contemporaries, and in his publications (e.g.
Popism: The Warhol Sixties).
Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and
drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of Liza
Minnelli, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor, and films like Blow Job, My Hustler, and Lonesome Cowboys) draw from
gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of
sexuality and desire. Many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters.
That said, some stories about Warhol's development as an artist revolved
around the obstacle his sexuality initially presented as he tried to
launch his career. The first works that he submitted to a gallery in the
pursuit of a career as an artist were homoerotic drawings of male
nudes. They were rejected for being too openly gay.[31]
In Popism, furthermore, the artist recalls a conversation with
the film maker Emile de Antonio about the difficulty
Warhol had being accepted socially by the then more famous (but closeted)
gay artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. De Antonio explained that Warhol
was "too swish and that upsets them." In response to this, Warhol
writes, "There was nothing I could say to that. It was all too true. So I
decided I just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things
that I didn't want to change anyway, that I didn't think I 'should' want
to change... Other people could change their attitudes but not me".[32][33]
In exploring Warhol's biography, many turn to this period – the late
1950s and early 1960s – as a key moment in the development of his
persona. Some have suggested that his frequent refusal to comment on his
work, to speak about himself (confining himself in interviews to
responses like "Um, No" and "Um, Yes", and often allowing others to
speak for him) – and even the evolution of his Pop style – can be traced
to the years when Warhol was first dismissed by the inner circles of
the New York art world.[34]
Religious beliefs
Images of Jesus from The Last Supper cycle (1986). Warhol made
almost 100 variations on the theme, which the Guggenheim felt "indicates
an almost obsessive investment in the subject matter."[35]
Warhol was a practicing Byzantine Catholic. He regularly
volunteered at homeless shelters in New York, particularly
during the busier times of the year, and described himself as a
religious person.[36]
Several of Warhol's later works depicted religious subjects, including
two series, Details of Renaissance Paintings (1984) and The Last Supper (1986). In addition,
a body of religious-themed works was found posthumously in his estate.[36]
During his life, Warhol regularly attended Mass, and the priest at Warhol's church, Saint Vincent's,
said that the artist went there almost daily,[36]
although he never took communion or made confession and sat or knelt in
the pews at the back.".[30]
The priest thought he was afraid of being recognized; Warhol said he
was self-conscious about being seen in a Roman Catholic church crossing himself "in the Orthodox way" (right to left
instead of the reverse).[30]
His art is noticeably influenced by the eastern Christian iconographic tradition which was so evident in
his places of worship.[36]
Warhol's brother has described the artist as "really religious, but
he didn't want people to know about that because [it was] private."
Despite the private nature of his faith, in Warhol's eulogy John Richardson depicted it
as devout: "To my certain knowledge, he was responsible for at least one
conversion. He took considerable pride in financing his nephew's
studies for the priesthood".[36]
Death
Warhol died in New York City at 6:32 a.m. on February 22, 1987.
According to news reports, he had been making good recovery from a
routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his
sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia.[37]
Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his
recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter
hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate
care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication.[38]
Warhol's body was taken back to Pittsburgh by his brothers for
burial. The wake was at Thomas P. Kunsak Funeral Home and was an
open-coffin ceremony. The coffin was a solid bronze casket with gold
plated rails and white upholstery. Warhol was dressed in a black
cashmere suit, a paisley tie, a platinum wig, and sunglasses. He was
posed holding a small prayer book and a red rose. The funeral liturgy
was held at the Holy Ghost
Byzantine Catholic Church on Pittsburgh's North Side. The eulogy was given by
Monsignor
Peter Tay. Yoko Ono also made an appearance. The coffin was covered with
white roses and asparagus ferns. After the liturgy,
the coffin was driven to St. John the
Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, a south suburb of Pittsburgh. At
the grave, the priest said a brief prayer and sprinkled holy water on
the casket. Before the coffin was lowered, Paige Powell
dropped a copy of Interview magazine, an Interview
t-shirt, and a bottle of the Estee Lauder perfume "Beautiful" into
the grave. Warhol was buried next to his mother and father. Weeks later
a memorial service was held in Manhattan for Warhol on April 1, 1987,
at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New
York.
Warhol's will dictated that his entire estate – with the exception of
a few modest legacies to family members – would go to create a
foundation dedicated to the "advancement of the visual arts". Warhol had
so many possessions that it took Sotheby's
nine days to auction his estate after his death; the auction grossed
more than US$20 million. His total estate was worth considerably more,
due in no small part to shrewd investments over the years.[citation needed]
In 1987, in accordance with Warhol's will, the Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts was founded. The Foundation not only serves as the
official Estate of Andy Warhol, but also has a mission "to foster
innovative artistic expression and the creative process" and is "focused
primarily on supporting work of a challenging and often experimental
nature."[39]
The Artists Rights Society is the U.S.
copyright representative for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual
Arts for all Warhol works with the exception of Warhol film stills.[40]
The U.S. copyright representative for Warhol film stills is the Warhol
Museum in Pittsburgh.[41]
Additionally, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has
agreements in place for its image archive. All digital images of Warhol
are exclusively managed by Corbis, while all transparency images of Warhol are
managed by Art Resource.[42]
The Andy Warhol Foundation released its 20th Anniversary Annual
Report as a three-volume set in 2007: Vol. I, 1987–2007; Vol. II, Grants
& Exhibitions; and Vol. III, Legacy Program.[43]
The Foundation remains one of the largest grant-giving organizations
for the visual arts in the U.S.[44]
Works
Paintings
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By the beginning of the 1960s, Warhol was a very successful
commercial illustrator. His detailed and elegant drawings for I. Miller
shoes were particularly popular. These illustrations consisted mainly of
"blotted ink" drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in
much of his early art. Although many artists of this period worked in
commercial art, most did so discreetly. Warhol was so successful,
however, that his profile as an illustrator seemed to undermine his
efforts to be taken seriously as an artist.
Pop Art was an experimental form that several
artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with
the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop",
turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the
artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with
paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract
expressionists (such as Willem de Kooning). Warhol's first Pop Art paintings were
displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department
Store Bronwit Teller's window display. This was the same stage his Pop
Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced.[45]
Eventually, Warhol pared his image vocabulary down to the icon itself –
to brand names, celebrities, dollar signs – and removed all traces of
the artist's "hand" in the production of his paintings.
To him, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter.
Cartoons were already being used by 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. It was
the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup
cans and Warhol's dollar paintings. On 23 November 1961 Warhol wrote
Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography,
Pop, The Genius of Warhol, was payment for coming up with the idea of
the soup cans as subject matter.[46]
For his first major exhibition Warhol painted his famous cans of
Campbell's Soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his
life. The work sold for $10,000 at an auction on November 17, 1971, at
Sotheby's New York – a minimal amount for the artist whose paintings
sell for over $6 million more recently.[47]
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 frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced
from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol
had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following
his directions to make different versions and variations.[48]
In 1979, Warhol was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 4 race
version of the then elite supercar BMW M1 for
the fourth installment in the BMW Art Car Project. Unlike the
three artists before him, Warhol declined the use of a small scale
practice model, instead opting to immediately paint directly onto the
full scale automobile. It was indicated that Warhol spent only a total
of 23 minutes to paint the entire car.[49]
Warhol produced both comic and serious works; his subject could be a
soup can or an electric chair. Warhol used the same techniques–
silkscreens, reproduced serially, and often painted with bright colors –
whether he painted celebrities, everyday objects, or images of suicide,
car crashes, and disasters, as in the 1962–63 Death and Disaster
series. The Death and Disaster paintings (such as Red Car
Crash, Purple Jumping Man, and Orange Disaster)
transform personal tragedies into public spectacles, and signal the use
of images of disaster in the then evolving mass media.
The unifying element in Warhol's work is his deadpan Keatonesque
style – artistically and personally affectless. This was mirrored by
Warhol's own demeanor, as he often played "dumb" to the media, and
refused to explain his work. The artist was famous for having said that
all you need to know about him and his works is already there, "Just
look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am.
There's nothing behind it." [50]
His Rorschach inkblots 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 was then oxidized
with urine) are also noteworthy in this context. Equally noteworthy is
the way these works – and their means of production – mirrored the atmosphere at Andy's
New York "Factory". Biographer Bob Colacello
provides some 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, 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...[51]
Warhol's first portrait of Basquiat (1982) is a black
photosilkscreen over an oxidized copper "piss painting".
After many years of silkscreen, oxidation, photography, etc., Warhol
returned to painting with a brush in hand in a series of over 50 large
collaborative works done with Jean-Michel Basquiat between 1984 and
1986.[52][53]
Despite negative criticism when these were first shown, Warhol called
some of them "masterpieces," and they were influential for his later
work.[54]
The influence of the large collaborations with Basquiat can be seen
in Warhol's The Last Supper cycle, his last and possibly his
largest series, seen by some as "arguably his greatest,"[55]
but by others as “wishy-washy, religiose” and “spiritless."[56]
It is also the largest series of religious-themed works by any U.S.
artist.[55]
At the time of his death, Warhol was working on Cars, a series of paintings for Mercedes-Benz.
[57]
Films
Warhol worked across a wide range of media – painting, photography,
drawing, and sculpture. In addition, he was a highly prolific filmmaker.
Between 1963 and 1968, he made more than 60 films [58],
plus some 500 short black-and-white "screen test" portraits of Factory
visitors.[59]
One of his most famous films, Sleep, monitors poet John
Giorno sleeping for six hours. The 35-minute film Blow Job
is one continuous shot of the face of DeVeren Bookwalter supposedly receiving oral sex
from filmmaker Willard Maas, although the camera never tilts
down to see this. Another, Empire (1964), consists of eight hours of
footage of the Empire State Building in New York City at dusk. The
film Eat consists of a man eating a mushroom for 45 minutes.
Warhol attended the 1962 premiere of the static composition by LaMonte Young called Trio for Strings and
subsequently created his famous series of static films including Kiss,
Eat, and Sleep (for which Young initially was
commissioned to provide music). Uwe Husslein cites filmmaker Jonas
Mekas, who accompanied Warhol to the Trio premiere, and who claims
Warhol's static films were directly inspired by the performance.[60]
Batman Dracula is a 1964 film that was
produced and directed by Warhol, without the permission of DC
Comics. It was screened only at his art exhibits. A fan of the
Batman series, Warhol's movie was an "homage" to the series, and is
considered the first appearance of a blatantly campy Batman. The film was until recently thought to have
been lost, until scenes from the picture were shown at some length in
the 2006 documentary Jack Smith and the
Destruction of Atlantis.
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. The multiplication of images evoked
Warhol's seminal silk-screen works of the early 1960s.
Other important films include Bike Boy, My Hustler, and
Lonesome Cowboys, a raunchy
pseudo-western. These and other titles document gay
underground and camp culture, and continue to feature prominently in
scholarship about sexuality and art.[61][62]
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 – more of a Morrissey star than a true Warhol superstar.
In the early '70s, most of the films directed by Warhol were pulled
out of circulation by Warhol and the people around him who ran his
business. After Warhol's death, the films were slowly restored by the
Whitney Museum and are occasionally projected at museums and film
festivals. Few of the Warhol-directed films are available on video or
DVD.
Factory in New
York
- Factory: 1342 Lexington Avenue (the first Factory)
- The Factory: 231 East 47th street 1963-1967 (the building
no longer exists)
- Factory: 33 Union Square 1967-1973 (Decker Building)
- Factory: 860 Broadway (near 33 Union Square) 1973-1984 (the building
has now been completely remodeled and was for a time (2000–2001) the
headquarters of the dot-com consultancy Scient)
- Factory: 22 East 33rd Street 1984-1987 (the building no longer
exists)
- Home: 1342 Lexington Avenue
- Home: 57 East 66th street (Warhol's last home)
- Last personal studio: 158 Madison Avenue
Filmography
Music
In the mid 1960s, Warhol adopted the band the Velvet Underground, making them a crucial
element of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable
multimedia performance art show. Warhol, with Paul Morrissey, acted as the band's manager, introducing
them to Nico
(who would perform with the band at Warhol's request). In 1966 he
"produced" their first album The Velvet Underground &
Nico, as well as providing its album art. His actual
participation in the album's production amounted to simply paying for
the studio time. After the band's first album, Warhol and band leader Lou Reed
started to disagree more about the direction the band should take, and
their artistic friendship ended.[citation needed]
Warhol designed many album covers for various artists starting with
the photographic cover of John Wallowitch's debut album, This Is John
Wallowitch!!! (1964). He designed the cover art for the Rolling Stones albums Sticky Fingers (1971) and Love
You Live (1977), and the John
Cale albums The
Academy In Peril (1972) and Honi Soit in 1981. In 1975, Warhol was
commissioned to do several portraits of Mick
Jagger, and in 1982 he designed the album cover for the Diana
Ross album Silk Electric.[citation needed] One of
his last works was a portrait of Aretha Franklin for the cover of her 1986 gold album Aretha, which was done in the style
of the Reigning Queens series he had completed the year before.[63]
Warhol was also friendly with many recording artists, including Deborah
Harry, Grace Jones, Diana Ross and John
Lennon (with whom he posed for an infamous photograph[64])
- he designed the cover to Lennon's 1986 posthumously released Menlove Ave. Warhol also 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).[citation needed] Warhol
featured in Grace Jones' music video for "I'm Not Perfect (But
I'm Perfect for You)".
Warhol strongly influenced the New Wave/punk rock band Devo, as well
as David Bowie. Bowie recorded a song called "Andy Warhol"
for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. Lou Reed wrote the song "Andy's
Chest", about Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Warhol,
in 1968. He recorded it with the Velvet Underground, but this version
wasn't officially released until the VU
album appeared in 1985. He recorded a new version for his 1972 solo
album Transformer, produced by Bowie and Mick
Ronson.[citation needed]
Books and print
Beginning in the early 1950s, Warhol produced several unbound
portfolios of his work.
The first of several bound self-published books by Warhol was 25 Cats Name Sam and One
Blue Pussy, printed in 1954 by Seymour Berlin on Arches brand
watermarked paper using his blotted line technique for the lithographs.
The original edition was limited to 190 numbered, hand colored copies,
using Dr. Martin's ink washes. Most of these were given by Warhol as
gifts to clients and friends. Copy #4, inscribed "Jerry" on the front
cover and given to Geraldine Stutz, was used for a facsimile printing in 1987[65]
and the original was auctioned in May 2006 for US $35,000 by Doyle New York.[66]
Other self-published books by Warhol include:
- A Gold Book
- Wild Raspberries
- Holy Cats
After gaining fame, Warhol "wrote" several books that were
commercially published:
- 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.[citation needed]
- The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
(From A to B & 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 (also known as Brigid Polk) and
former Interview magazine editor Bob
Colacello.[citation needed]
- Popism: The Warhol Sixties
(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 a diary dictated by Warhol to Hackett in daily phone
conversations. Warhol started the diary to keep track of his expenses
after being audited, although it soon evolved to include his personal
and cultural observations.[67]
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.[68]
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 as a commercial
illustrator, producing drawings in "blotted-ink" style for
advertisements and magazine articles. Best known of these early works
are his drawings of shoes. Some of his personal drawings were
self-published in small booklets, such as 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 A Gold Book, compiled of sensitive drawings of young
men. A Gold Book is so named because of the gold
leaf that decorates its pages.[69]
- Sculpture: Warhol's most famous sculpture is probably his Brillo Boxes, silkscreened ink on wood
replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes (designed by James Harvey), part of a series of
"grocery carton" sculptures that also included Heinz ketchup and
Campbell's tomato juice cases.[70]
Other famous works include the Silver Clouds– helium filled,
silver mylar, pillow-shaped balloons.
A Silver Cloud was included in the traveling exhibition Air
Art (1968–69) curated by Willoughby Sharp. Clouds was also adapted by Warhol
for avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham's
dance piece RainForest (1968).[71]
- 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.[citation needed]
- Time Capsules: In 1973, Warhol began saving ephemera from his
daily life– correspondence, newspapers, souvenirs, childhood objects,
even used plane tickets and food– which was sealed in plain cardboard
boxes dubbed Time Capsules. By the time of his death, the collection
grew to include 600, individually dated "capsules". The boxes are now
housed at the Andy Warhol Museum.[72]
- 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 (based on his famous "fifteen minutes of
fame" quotation) for MTV in 1986. Besides his own shows he regularly
made guest appearances on other programs, including The
Love Boat wherein a Midwestern wife (Marion
Ross) fears Andy Warhol will reveal to her husband (Tom
Bosley, who starred alongside Ross in sitcom Happy
Days) her secret past as a Warhol superstar named Marina del
Rey. Warhol also produced a TV commercial for Schrafft's
Restaurants in New York City, for an ice cream dessert appropriately
titled the "Underground Sundae".[73]
- 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?"[cite this quote] 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.[citation needed]
- Performance Art: Warhol and his friends staged theatrical
multimedia happenings at parties and public venues, combining music,
film, slide projections and even Gerard Malanga in an S&M
outfit cracking a whip. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable in
1966 was the culmination of this area of his work.[74]
- Theater: Andy Warhol's PORK opened on May 5, 1971 at LaMama
theater in New York for a two week run and was brought to the Roundhouse
in London for a longer run in August, 1971. Pork was based on
tape-recorded conversations between Brigin Berlin and Andy during which
Brigid would play for Andy tapes she had made of phone conversations
between herself and her mother, socialite Honey Berlin. The play
featured Jayne County as "Vulva" and Cherry Vanilla as "Amanda Pork".[citation needed] In
1974, Andy Warhol also produced the stage musical Man On The Moon, which was written
by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas.
- 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. Warhol was an accomplished photographer, and took an
enormous amount of photographs of Factory visitors, friends.[citation needed]
- Computer: Warhol used Amiga
computers to generate digital art, which he helped design and build with
Amiga, Inc. He also displayed the difference between slow fill and fast
fill on live TV with Debbie
Harry as a model.[75]
(video)
Producer and
product
Warhol had assistance in producing his paintings. This is also true
of his film-making and commercial enterprises.[citation needed]
He founded the gossip magazine Interview, a stage for celebrities
he "endorsed" and a business staffed by his friends. He collaborated
with others on all of his books (some of which were written with Pat
Hackett.) He adopted the young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the band The Velvet Underground, presenting them to the
public as his latest interest, and collaborating with them. One might
even say that he produced people (as in the Warholian "Superstar" and
the Warholian portrait). He endorsed products, appeared in commercials,
and made frequent celebrity guest appearances on television shows and in
films (he appeared in everything from Love Boat to Saturday Night Live and the Richard
Pryor movie, Dynamite Chicken).[citation needed]
In this respect Warhol was a fan of "Art Business" and "Business
Art"– he, in fact, wrote about his interest in thinking about art as
business in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again.[citation needed]
Dedicated museums
Two museums are dedicated to Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh,
is located at 117 Sandusky Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is
the largest American art museum dedicated to a single artist, holding
more than 12,000 works by the artist.[citation needed]
The other museum is the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern
Art, established in 1991 by Andy's brother John Warhola, the Slovak
Ministry of Culture, and the Warhol Foundation in New York. It is
located in the small town of Medzilaborce,
Slovakia. Andy's parents and his two brothers were born 15 kilometres
away in the village of Miková. The museum houses several originals
donated mainly by the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York and also
personal items donated by Warhol's relatives.[citation needed]
Movies about
Warhol
Dramatic
portrayals
Warhol (right) with director Ulli
Lommel on the set of 1979's Cocaine Cowboys, in which Warhol
appeared as himself
In 1979, Warhol appeared as himself in the film Cocaine Cowboys.[76]
After his passing, Warhol was portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver
Stone's film The Doors (1991), by David Bowie in Basquiat,
a film by Julian Schnabel, and by Jared
Harris in the film I Shot Andy Warhol directed by Mary
Harron (1996). Warhol appears as a character in Michael Daugherty's 1997 opera Jackie O. Actor
Mark Bringleson makes a brief cameo as Warhol in Austin Powers:
International Man of Mystery (1997). Many films by avant-garde
cineast Jonas Mekas have caught the moments of Andy's life. Sean
Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the 1998 film 54.
Guy
Pearce portrayed Warhol in the 2007 film, Factory
Girl, about Edie Sedgwick's life.[77]
Actor Greg Travis portrays Warhol in a brief scene from the 2009
film Watchmen.
Gus Van Sant was planning a version of Warhol's life with River
Phoenix in the lead role just before Phoenix's death in 1993.[78]
Documentaries
Andy Warhol: Double Denied is a 52 minute movie by lan Yentob
about the difficulties in authenticating Warhol's work.[81]
See also
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