Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol Shoe Drawing (1955)

Andy Warhol was born and raised in Pittsburgh, by parents from  Eastern Europe. His original surname was Warhola, but Warhol dropped the final ‘a’ when a young adult (was this namechange a critical part of his success?).  Warhol’s childhood was not without tragedy.  He lost his father when just 13, then he contracted a rare form of scarlet fever, which left his skin badly pigmented (his schoolfriends nicknamed him Spot).  Throughout these turbulent years his relationship with his mother, Julia, remained strong and continued so throughout his life.  The young Warhol showed a precocious talent for drawing, and signed up to the Carnegie Institute of Technology to study commercial art. 

After college he moved to New York to start a career as a commercial artist.  Many consider that the truly genius of Andy Warhol was most apparent in these early years.  He produced an incredible variety of promotional art, using a unique ‘blotted-line’ style.  Especially noteworthy are the beautiful range of adverts he created for I Miller shoes, a series which had the triple effect of catching the public’s imagination, saving the ailing shoe concern and propelling Warhol to fame.

At the beginning of the sixties, after some early success in small gallery exhibitions, Warhol began to see himself as a pure artist, rather than a commercial draughtsman.  But he concerned himself with identical subject matter - commercial and strongly branded products, like Campbell’s soup cans, and Brillo pad boxes.   He also turned to Hollywood brands for inspiration, utilising famous faces such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.  So Warhol invented Pop Art, morphing popular culture to art. Andy Warhol artworks didn’t arrive into the mainstream of public consciousness, they started there.

In 1962 Warhol set up ‘The Factory’, a New York loft which served as a production base for his artistic output.  Warhol directed operations with a manic enthusiasm.  For a time he became obsessed with producing a huge number of ‘art movies’, many of which starred Edie Sedgwick (brilliantly played by Sienna Miller in the movie ‘Factory Girl’).   

In 1968 an assistant of Warhol, Valerie Solanis, attempted to shoot him.  As a reason she citied that ‘He had too much control over my life’.   Warhol survived, but had to wear a bandage around his midrift for the rest of his life.

The 1960s were the heyday of Warhol’s career, the time for which he’ll always be remembered.  The 70s saw him making portraits of celebrities, like Mick Jagger, using the same style, but not the same energy as with his earlier works. In 1975 he wrote and published his autobiographical book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol .  In the book Andy mentioned his conviction that he’d achieved to create Business Art, a phrase which sent a shudder through many art lovers.

Andy Warhol died in 1987, after complications arose after a supposedly straight-forward surgical operation.

Warhol’s works have continued to be phenomenally popular, with high price tags attached to his most famous works (like $72million paid in 2007 for Green Car Crash).  The Andy Warhol foundation has set up the Andy Warhol Art Identification Board to pronounce on the authenticity of any works purportedly by Warhol – surely a business proposition here that could be introduced for other artists, like an official Van Gogh Real Or Not Court.

Best Artists’s (from 100BestEverything) rating (out of 5 stars) 4-creativity,3-execution.

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