Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Andy Warhol, the artist who brought the shiny world of TV and advertisement into art, is to this day synonymous with Pop Art. Born into an immigrant, working class family, he was fascinated by celebrities and Hollywood magazines since his childhood. Graduating in pictorial design from Carnegie Mellon University in 1949, he moved to New York and worked as illustrator for commercial advertising companies. While his first Pop works were handmade, his photographic silkscreens, initiated in 1962, introduced the possibility of mechanising the process of artistic production. Repetition, serialisation and mass production are the main features of Warhol’s images, in which any trace of the artist’s hand is entirely removed. His works epitomise the era of consumerism and popular culture that defined mid-20th century America.
Arguably the most iconic artist of the modern era, Andy Warhol rose from modest beginnings to define Pop Art. Born Andrew Warhola to an immigrant, working class family in Pittsburgh, Warhol developed a rare health condition as a child that forced him to stay home, alienating him even further from society. He occupied his time with his growing obsession that pervaded his life and career: celebrities. Young Warhol filtered through Hollywood magazines and even wrote to celebrities to request autographs and headshots. These early hobbies were the precursors to his iconic series of celebrity portraits, the images taken from magazines or press photos.
Whilst Warhol’s early interests aligned with the ideals of consumerism, advertising and mass production that characterise Pop Art, he did not begin his Pop career until 1960. In 1949 Warhol’s degree in pictorial design from Carnegie Mellon University inevitably took him to New York. There, he worked as an illustrator for companies such as Glamour and Tiffany & Co., experiences that gave him insider knowledge of the world of commercial advertising and uniquely prepared him for a future career as a Pop artist.
Warhol was fascinated by Pop ideals, including mechanical production, yet his first Pop works were hand sketched and hand painted. It wasn’t until 1962 that he famously began to work in photographic silkscreen, a technique of printmaking that is now synonymous with Warhol’s name. The silkscreen had the technical benefit for Warhol of easily reproducing the images that he was once hand appropriated en masse, but also the simultaneous aesthetic benefit of echoing the age of mass production that his imagery recalls.
Warhol produced silkscreens from his studio, the Factory, a space that complemented his artistic aesthetic and interests. While also being a social space for the debauchery of New York socialites, the Factory was aptly nick-named by visitors to describe the mass production of Warhol’s silkscreens. At the Factory, with the help of his studio assistants and the silkscreen technology, Warhol removed the trace of the artist’s hand, creating works that are products of mass production, much like the subjects they depict.
This serialisation of artworks is echoed in Warhol’s use of repetition within works, a technique that overtly recalls the mass imagery that pervaded daily life. His use of repetition is just one of a number of techniques he experimented with, including over printing, registration and colour combinations. With each new technique employed Warhol challenged how he could manipulate and individualise easily recognisable imagery.
Warhol’s work digests the era of consumerism and popular culture that defined the second half of the 20th century through image and process. Throughout his career he used his signature electric colours to depict celebrities, household brands, flowers, Renaissance paintings and disaster, among a myriad of other subjects. Consistent across Warhol’s extensive portfolio of subjects are his interests in consumerism, popular culture, advertising, death and beauty, all of which consumed American life. In reflecting the contemporary state of America through familiar subjects, Warhol’s work was able to reach wide-ranging audiences, launching him into a fame that has not swayed, even decades after his death. Warhol’s work has the capacity to transcend generations, leaving him as one of the most relevant artists today.
DEATH AND DISASTER
Andy Warhol
In 1963 Andy Warhol turned away from silkscreening the faces of beautiful celebrities and tantalising bottles of Coca-Cola in favour of a new subject: death and disaster. Until 1965 Warhol used the logic of mass printing to portray the horrors of assassinations, car wrecks, suicides, race riots, the atomic bomb and executions, among other tragedies.
Instrumental to the creation of this series was the curator Henry Geldzahler who brought Warhol a newspaper with the headline ‘129 DIE IN JET’ to encourage him to turn to more serious topics. Inevitably, Warhol was captivated by the subject of tragedy.
As is typical across his work, Warhol’s silkscreens were based on found images taken from newspapers and police photographs. Crucially, these were the images that are sandwiched among cheerful advertisements and smiling celebrities, images which he used as source material for previous and future series.
Often, Warhol employed repetition in his ‘Death and Disaster’ works, a technique that numbs viewers to highly emotive scenes through the hyper-exposure of an image. It is also a technique that recalls the mass printing press which from which these images are derived. This effect of numbness through repetition echoes the prevalent problem of society’s de-sensitisation to these all too frequent horrors.
Perhaps the most iconic of this series are his ‘Electric Chair’ works which focus on the hotly debated subject of capital punishment. The focal image is an electric chair in New York known as ‘Old Sparky’, the same chair that famously ended the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, the alleged Soviet spy duo. Unlike other images in the series, ‘Electric Chair’ does not immediately depict death or disaster. The chair is empty, leaving the viewer with a sense of dread and anticipation of what is to come.
CAMPBELL’S SOUP CANS
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, the newcomer in New York’s Pop Art scene, shot to fame with the exhibition of his ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962. Here, he exhibited 32 hand-painted soup cans, each representing a different flavour. They sat on the gallery wall on fitted shelves, echoing the shelves in a grocery store. This exhibition marked the beginning of Warhol’s career as it is defined today: by an interrogation with mass consumerism and popular culture.
Before ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ Warhol was producing works depicting comic book characters. However, he was disheartened, believing his work to not be as good as Roy Lichtenstein’s own attempts at the subject. In search of a new idea Warhol turned to Muriel Latlow who suggested that he paint Campbell’s soup cans, his lifelong lunchtime staple.
Following his adoption of the photographic silkscreen, Warhol continued to produce more soup cans throughout his career in his perennial belief that art is inseparable from life. His soup cans take various forms, from individual prints to a 1985 commission by Campbell’s Soup in which Warhol produced a series based on their new dry mix soup line.
These humble soup cans, from the pristine can of ‘Tomato Soup’ to ‘Vegetable Beef Soup’ with its torn label, stand as commentaries on the banality of advertising in its ceaseless repetition and a nod toward standardisation in a world of industrialisation. Since then, the ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ has become Warhol’s most iconic series and his self-proclaimed favourite from his oeuvre. After all, as critic Ken Johnson said, ‘you are what you eat’.
MARILYN
Andy Warhol
Weeks after the world mourned her death in 1962, Andy Warhol produced his first silkscreens of Marilyn Monroe. Always based on the same image of Marilyn, Warhol’s various iterations of the starlet experiments with repetition and popping colour as means to interact with the historic rise and tragic fall of one of Hollywood’s most iconic faces.
The ‘Marilyn’ series is based on a publicity photograph from Marilyn’s film ‘Niagra’, taken five years before her death. Lips slightly open, her eyes relaxed, her hair moulded to perfection, Marilyn as depicted in this photograph is a rising star in the midst of winning over the hearts of many.
It is notable that Warhol selected this photo of Marilyn over another taken closer to her death when her depression was at its height. In selecting an image of the fresh-faced starlet to address her suicide constructs Marilyn’s death as a tragedy. As Warhol’s first ‘Marilyn’ silkscreens overlapped with his ‘Death and Disaster’ series, many consider his ‘Marilyn’ works to predate the series while others consider it to be part of it.
Warhol continued to return to Marilyn throughout his career, always using the same cropped photograph as its base. Still, each new silkscreen is distinctly unique from the previous. His changing use of colour highlights her features in differing ways, sometimes focusing on her sickness while other times her beauty. Additionally, his occasional use of repetition recalls a filmstrip and the consumer culture from which she is known. Effectively, Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’ portraits are about the life and death of an American icon, a woman who was the epitome of the popular culture that he so revered.
BANANA
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol believed that art was democratic, that it existed in the everyday for all to access. In 1967 Warhol took this notion to a new level with ‘Banana’, a series of silkscreens that began as the cover for the Velvet Underground’s debut album.
Once an outsider whose closest contact to the rich and famous was through magazines, in 1966 Warhol became the manager for The Velvet Underground. In fact, he facilitated the recording of their first album ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’, released in 1967. This was perhaps the extent of Warhol’s involvement with the band’s music, his more natural focus being on the design for their album covers, including ‘Banana’.
The original iteration of ‘Banana’ was as a LP cover with the yellow banana skin acting as a peel away sticker. The words ‘Peel slowly and see’ next to the image directs one to reveal the naked pink banana underneath. The other major iteration of ‘Banana’ is its own editioned silkscreen at a larger scale but still with the removable skin.
‘Banana’ can be interpreted as a tongue in cheek reference to the genre of still life and a nod to the everyday object as art. Still, what is overtly obvious in each iteration is its resemblance to phallic imagery, a connection that is also apparent in Warhol’s provocative Polaroids of men with bananas in their mouths.
The banana continues to emerge across Warhol’s oeuvre, including his paper dress with large banana cut outs, completed with the American department store Abraham & Straus. Even today ‘Banana’ can be found gracing t-shirts and tote bags in museum gift shops and clothing stores across the world. It is effectively one of Warhol’s most accessible images and perhaps that which most epitomises the artist and his interests.
SELF-PORTRAIT
Andy Warhol
Referred to as the ‘court painter’ of the 1960s and ‘70s, Andy Warhol’s portraits of the most iconic and beloved faces of the day included his own. Each version of Warhol’s self-portrait echoes a new understanding of himself, one that was specific to that moment in his life and career.
Warhol’s first ‘Self-portrait’ from 1963-64 is based on a series of enlarged photobooth photos, a widely accessible medium. Considering he perennially emphasised the notion of art as existing in the everyday, his selection of a photobooth to capture his likeness is particularly poignant.
Warhol’s early self-portraits reflect concern with his newfound status as a celebrity. His 1966 self-portraits depict a thoughtful Warhol, two fingers resting on his mouth as he looks out at the viewer. In using repetition to depict the photograph, multiplying the same image in varying amounts across the canvas, the silkscreen effectively recalls a still of an actor on a filmstrip. His 1967 self-portraits show a different kind of Warhol, one in which he humbly looks off into the distance, as if unaware of his fame.
‘Self-portraits’ is one of several of Warhol’s series which are based on his own photographs, not found images. In some instances, like his 1986 self-portrait, these photographs became just as famous as the silkscreen itself.
Completed a year before his death, Warhol’s 1986 ‘Self-portrait’ is one of the most recognisable images of the artist. Warhol portrays his head in a single popping colour, isolated against a black backdrop. He stares out at the viewer with an intense gaze as his iconic hair sticks out in every direction. No longer experimenting in portraying his celebrity status, Warhol here is contending with his own mortality.
ELVIS
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol’s portraits of some of the most iconic celebrities of the 20th century have become synonymous with our collective memories of them, a statement no truer than for Elvis Presley.
In 1963 Elvis was the crowned king of rock and roll who captured the hearts of the world with his unforgettable hip shaking performances and undeniable sex appeal. It was at this time that Warhol produced a new series of silkscreens of Elvis for an exhibition at Ferus Gallery. While subsequent versions of ‘Elvis’ from 1964 are coloured in blue, red and the like, the original series depicts Elvis in black outline against a silver background.
Warhol completed all 28 images of the Ferus Gallery silkscreens on a single roll of silver canvas in various combinations including singly, doubly and triply. He then shipped the roll to the gallery with pieces of stretching frames, asking the owner, Irving Blum, to cut the canvas himself and assemble each work onto the stretchers. This sort of ‘assemble yourself’ approach recall’s Warhol’s attempt to remove the artist’s hand from his works as well as mass produced consumer products.
Warhol’s iconic works are based on a film still of Elvis from his 1960 Western ‘Flaming Star’, he looks directly out at the viewer, pointing his gun and arresting the viewer with the notion of death. Still, the image is about more than just death, but the American dream. Not only are we presented with a cowboy from the frontier, nodding at the violence inherent to the American dream, but a cowboy on a silver screen, recalling the glamour and artificiality of the film industry. Even more, the silver canvas produces a mirror-like effect, revealing our own reality back at us.
FLOWERS
Andy Warhol
In 1964 Andy Warhol, typically the reproducer of images of popular culture and consumerism, approached a quintessentially traditional subject – still life florals.
The series was inspired by his friend Henry Geldzhaler who believed that florals were easily sellable, unlike his ‘Death and Disaster’ works which once struggled to attract buyers. Yet, Warhol did not wholly escape tragedy in his ‘Flowers’, a subject which recalls death in its inherent fragility.
Warhol’s ‘Flowers’ are based on a photograph of seven hibiscus flowers taken by Patricia Caulfield for the June 1964 issue of ‘Modern Photography’. He adapted the image before converting it to black and white for printing, cropping the edges to eliminate incomplete flowers and rotating one flower so it would fit into the square format.
The electric green space in which these flowers exist is unspecified, leaving it without a conventional top or bottom. In fact, Warhol stipulated his installation preference for these works as ‘any side up’. ‘Flowers’ is therefore, somewhat ironically, understood as Warhol’s most abstract series.
Warhol managed to render his natural subject synthetically. Not only are the flowers depicted in a series of highly saturated hues (with the occasional use of red, recalling pools of blood and undertones of death), but the speed of their production is infamous. Warhol and his assistants at the Factory completed up to 80 silkscreens a day, totalling more than 900 works in varying sizes overall. Effectively, ‘Flowers’ is distinctly Warholian in his manipulation of popular images in his own style and on a mass scale which calls attention to contemporary issues of consumerism as well as death.
