Term Paper on Andy Warhol The artist that had the most influence in the 20th Century was Andy Warhol. His life was such a struggle from the beginning he contracted rheumatic fever at a young age and had neurological problems. He was born of parent’s that were from Czechoslovakia and moved to Pittsburgh before his birth on August 6, 1928. His mother had a huge influence on his art and would buy him candy bars as a reward for painting. His father died when he was young and his older brother took care of him while his mother worked.
Every day his brother would make him Campbell soup and a sandwich for lunch. That later became the focus of one of his painting series. Julia his mother started taking him to free Saturday art classes at a local museum. Andy would stay late and wonder the museum focusing every detail of the paintings. His father set aside the funds for Andy to go to college. In 1949 he graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology. He also showed signs of having Espalier’s Syndrome or Autism throughout his life. In his teenaged years he had several nervous breakdowns and was almost suspended from college.
He was very socially awkward and was very self conscious of his looks. He had nose Jobs and skin ending processes done to help with the red splotches on his face that was a result of the rheumatic fever from his childhood. Andy moved to New York and was determined to get a Job in commercial art to ultimately become famous. He started hanging out a a little cafe in Manhattan called Serendipity. At this time Marilyn Monroe was always with her friends there so she became the object of Andy obsession at that time. This is probably why she is seen in his later works.
This time period in his life everyone referred to him as “Raggedy Andy’ because he was always seen in the same clothes and carrying a brown paper gag with all his drawings in it. He was struggling with his homosexuality and his fear of imperfection in himself. There were several attempt at having a relationship, but they ended with him very depressed for days. After making the conscious decision to change his view on this and forget about it so he could focus on his art. He wanted so desperately to become an recognized artist in the art community. That came later that he intended , but with more fame than he could ever imagine.
Anta’s work took on so much meaning and was a mirror of life under all the masks that everyone wore. He saw people from the inside and was noted at detecting retreats in people. The height of his art career was when he opened the Factory where he would have lavish parties and would begin dabbling in the film industry. Critics were very harsh on Anta’s first films such as Sleep an 8 hour long movie filming a man sleeping. When asked about why he would film that he replied why not the man was his friend and he left his door unlocked. He had a desire to show beauty and greatness in the most plain things.
His studio gave people from all walks of life a place to come and be their self. He studied these people and enjoyed them begin there while he created his art work. The atmosphere he created in the Factory was what is refereed to as the start of the ass’s. He was very sensitive to many things so he would rarely indulge in any of the drug taking parting that was going on around him. Instead he would Just watch everyone and that was like his inspiration for his art. However he did have a slight addiction to amphetamines that he refereed to as giving him the power to do more work.
He was able to be a art creating machine. He was quoted at saying you should Just keep creating art even when others think it is not good. That was his drive he adapted after all his failures he endured along the ay. After Andy survived an assignation attempt that left him in the hospital for several weeks his art began to change. He was more emerged in the serial reproduction of images in his art work. He was asked to do a portrait of a congress woman and he took her all over the town to photo strip booths with a baggie of coins he coached her through each picture session.
Then he took them back and screen printed them in a series and she said it was the best representation of her portrait she could of ever imagined. The coaching in the photographs will later be a precursor to his directing career. Andy Whorl’s art will withstand the test of time and he became everything he ever imagined his self to be. The piece of artwork that had the biggest impact on Andy Whorl’s art career was a series of 32 painting’s of all the varieties of Campbell soup cans. These painting’s were created after Andy had several years of failed attempts to get his art work known.
Always unsure of his direction with his own art it was important to Andy to get the opinion of his friends. After focusing on his painting skills so much that he was painting normal everyday household cleaners and objects over and over until he Hough it was perfect. He developed a new form of painting it got rid of brush strokes and drip marks. It had clean cut perfect edges. At this time in the art era it was Jackson Pollock’s influence in art this was out of the art realm of the time. He did some coca cola paintings like this then moved on the the soup can’s after one of his friends saying he should paint everyday stuff like soup can’s.
The Fears Gallery in Los Angels, California exhibited the entire collection for a few weeks. After that time Irving Blue called Andy and told him that for reasons he can not explain the time he pent with the painting’s have changed him in such a positive way that he wanted to purchase them. He bought he collection for $1,000 and sold the collection to the Museum of Modern Art for 5 Million dollars. The Thirty-two painting’s were done in 1962 the canvases were all the same size (20 x 16″) with a chosen medium of Synthetic polymer paint.
Each can is a different flavor labeled on the front. The can’s are all similar on the outside, but upon close observation I noticed that each top had a series of missing spots where the glare was different on each can. I then observed the them all as a group and realized that it presents society and how by genetic makeup we are all the same, but in reality we are all very different complex creatures capable of so many amazing things. This represented hope for achieving greatness. Before this time Anta’s art was viewed as lacking a emotional connection to the viewer.
When he sold the collection to Irving he made him agree to keep it as an complete collection because Andy said they were all conceived at the same time. They are all still intact and together as a completely collection to be viewed at the Museum Of Modern Art. This set of paintings were very dear to Andy and had a very personal connection to them. Looking back at his childhood after his father died the soup was the only stable thing in his life at that time. He had it everyday and he always felt that the most ordinary objects in our everyday lives needed to be shown for their simple beauty.
He wanted everyone to see beauty and feel beautiful. There is another element to these painting that everyone can connect to. Each one is entirely different than the next yet as a group are all the same. The detail that he took to individualize every one could be compared to the work of god. He was raised Byzantine Catholic and went to church every week with her. The Religious influence in his art was from this time period in his life. He was a very sheltered boy and at church he would sit and stare at all the religious artwork. This artwork was brightly colored portraits on gold plates on a grid frame of the back wall of the church.
This was how he portrayed a painting he did right after Marilyn Monomer’s death in 1962. This painting was called Golden Marilyn Monroe. He was able to achieve this copy printed look by silk screening all the images onto the paintings. There was a technique he developed where he would paint the color on the canvas then screen print the image over the color. This is why in this painting you see the lip color go beyond where the lips are printed and the eye shadow looks like a child put it on. Also the hair line is very Ronald McDonald looking.
The precision it took to screen print on a painted canvas had to be very hard. This technique helped him add a color element to the commercial print art world he painted in. The idea behind the Marilyn paintings was to show fame in mass society. This was Just the start of Anta’s famous people painting’s in this time period. This was refereed to as the death and fame period in his art work. Some of his subjects were Elvis Presley and Ann Taylor. When Andy moved to New York he would sit in the ice cream shop and watch Marilyn so this painting was a way for him to immortality her forever.
That is why she was surrounded by gold to show a heavenly portrayal and gave her bright colors similar to the church paintings. This painting is one of them most famous paintings of Marilyn and can been seen on so many things from clothes to purses and even phone covers. This tribute he did to here has stood the test of time as did the Campbell soup can it is still the same after all this time. This painting also represents Anta’s quest for beauty and how he connected beauty to fame. Marilyn was the perfect blend of beauty and fame.
After this series of paintings he moved on to some more gruesome screen prints of car crashes to show people the reality of what the news was reporting. He also wanted to pay tribute to people and things that are forgotten or lost in everyday life. Also he was noted as having the need to leave his influence in history. The reason I chose Andy Warhol is my desire to be a graphic artist and he had such an insight in the start of pop art. He was such a genius of his time with how he over came so many things. I could connect with him in so many ways through his art ND his personal life.
His struggle to stratum took so many turns before he made it. I totally understood his need to become a machine with making art. I have recently started using markers in all my paintings and I can get one done a day where when I was painting them all by hand it took weeks. I am now extremely interested in learning more about screen printing to help me speed up the process and to use my own photographs. Just to do some paintings in his paint style with the paint first then screen print over it would be a lot of fun. I love how quick he could produce art they aid he created sass of paintings in a month.
Also I loved how all the Campbell soup painting’s were 16 x 20″ that is the size of all my paintings and is a commonly starter artist canvas size. I do series of paintings on this size and from learning about his techniques I realized my art style is very similar. Even my husband said it’s like you are looking in a mirror isn’t it and that is very true. Andy had a huge personal connection to his are it helped him deal with all of his questions about life. It is almost like there is a quest to push all the limits of a subject to better understand it.
