| Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was an American artist, sculptor, designer, film director, publisher of magazines, author, collector and producer. His works became an embodiment of the triumph and commercial success of pop art, an artistic trend and he – an embodiment of the Renaissance ideas “homo universale” an epoch of mass culture.
Andy Warhol (name at the time of birth - Andrew Warhol) was born in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA) to a Slovak emigrant family. From 1945 to 1949, he studied in the art department of the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He then moved to New York, where, in the beginning, he worked as an artist – illustrator in different magazines, including “Vogue” and “Harper's Bazaar”, compiled show-windows, prepared cards and posters. Graphical works in the advertising field, especially his drawings of footwear for company “I.Miller” brought him success.
Already in 1952, his works were displayed in an exhibition in New York and in 1956; he received an honorary prize the “Art Directors Club”. By this time, the artist made about a hundred thousand dollars a year; however, he did not cease to dream of “high art”.
In 1960, Andy Warhol created the cult portrait of Coca-Cola. In 1960–1962, a number of paintings with the image of cans with Campbell's Soup (Campbell's Soup Can) appeared.
In the beginning, “portraits” of soup cans were executed in blotted-ink technique: Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato Rice), 1961 and from 1962 – silk-screen prints (Thirty two cans of Campbell Soup), a hundred Campbell Soup cans, two hundred Campbell soup cans – all in 1962).
Refined, smoothed images, accurately cut out and fixed, repeated with nuances – such are Warhol's rudiments. Through many years, only the plots and color filters changed but the principle remained the same. The length and monotony of his creations looked like shelves in supermarkets.
Infinite series of the detergent powder Brillo, bottles of Coca-Cola and Campbell soups were replaced by replicated portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Elvis Presley: “I make paintings precisely in such a manner not because I want to be a machine and I feel what I do, becoming like a machine – this is what I want to do” are the words of the artist, embodied into the idea of a "Factory", where the “production” of modern art was organized on the basis of a duplicate silk-screen technique.
In 1963, Warhol shifted his factory to the centre of Manhattan and it was painted with silver metallic paint. “The Factory” was called the Studio.
The artist considered that all should look like “superstars” on portraits: The painting of before and after (a series of Advertisements, 1960) gives standard advertising promise of a new person “from Warhol”, an improved version of you, similar to all advertisements of consumer goods.
Warhol firmly believed in “plastic surgery”, “subdued light and deceiving mirrors”, in the literal sense of the word, and bestowed all the models with beauty: cleared wrinkles and other skin defects, removed double chins, made their eyes look more lively, and lips to be more sensual and thereby creating a star-effect for his models.
Warhol's stormy life passed in the overall holiday atmosphere till June 3, 1968, when the mentally unbalanced writer, feminist Valerie Solanas, who acted in one of Andy Warhol’s films, seriously wounded him with a shot from a pistol. After the attempt, Warhol started visiting the nearest church regularly to confess and receive communion.
In 1979, Warhol painted racing car. According to his views on painting, the car could become a moving creation of art, the entire beauty of which could appear in the dynamics. Warhol painted the car with his own hand, applied paint using different improvised materials and even with a finger: “I tried to paint what speed looks like. When the car moves at huge speeds, all lines and colors will become smudged”.
Through five years (from 1963 to 1968), Warhol made hundreds of films including 472 four-minute B&W portrait screen tests, tens of short-length films and more than 150 films with a specific plot (60 of them have seen the light of day).
Warhol aspired to expand the traditional borders of cinema by making so-called “silent films” in the beginning. The best of them were “Empire” (shot from the evening of July 25 to the morning of July 26, 1964), where Andy Warhol shot one of the highest buildings in the world, the Empire State Building, continuously for 8 hours with a stationary movie camera in slow-motion mode during night lighting; Sleep (1963), where the image of a sleeping person (poet John Giorno) is projected on the screen for 5.5hrs practically without change in complete absence of sound.
In 1968, Warhol together with Paul Morrissey made the first feature film “Flesh”.
In 1980, Warhol decided to organize his own TV and designed the project of a new cable channel (Andy Warhol's TV) and became its director.
Andy Warhol did not know music and did not like music, however, from 1966 to 1968, he made several films with the participation of the “Velvet Underground group” (The Velvet Underground). The artist was the producer of several albums by this group and even designed the cover of their first disc. In 1966, Warhol devised a multimedia performance art show the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” (EPI), combining the multi-screen projection of films, color light rays, color flashes etc, for the concert group.
|
Today is the 80th birthday of the "father of pop-art" Andy Warhol. Andrew Warhola (his real name) was an American with Slovak roots and worked as advertisement illustrator for Vogue and other magazines, before becoming famous. Andy coined the phrase "15 minutes of fame", but there's a rumor that he was dyslexic and he really meant 51 minutes :)
