15 Minutes of Fame

Gina Lauricella
15 Minutes of Fame
Molloy College





2 15 MINUTES OF FAME

In the future, everyone will be world- famous for 15 minutes
(Smithsonian.com), this was speculated to be a famous quote said by Andy Warhol,
whether he said it or not, he owned it. Similar to this quote, much of Andy Warhols
lifestyle and art were relatable by there being an uncertainty, but yet refined awkwardness
that seemed to work for him. During World War II in the 1950s, New York City was
discovering the world of abstraction with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Barnett
Newman and William de Kooning. Andy Warhols style was completely different from
upcoming artists of his time and his move to the great city gave him the ideas that would
lead him to be an American Icon.
One of the most intriguing things about Warhol is how he started out. Similar to
the living conditions in the tenements in New York City, The Warhola family lived in a
slovak ghetto located in Pittsburg. Andrew Warhola was born August 26, 1928 the third
and youngest son, brothers John and Paul; his mother was Julia and father Andre. During
the Great depression years of the 1930s they lived on the second floor of a brick row
house with two rooms and an outside toilet. They would attend an old Slavonic church
on Saturday and Sundays, which may have been one of Andys first inspirations. The
walls had large panels that had portraits of saints in them decorated in colors and most
with gold backgrounds, which he had to look at for hours at a time. When Andy was 8yrs
old he got very ill with Rheumatic fever leading to Sydenhams chorea (aka St.Vitus
dance), a rare neurological syndrome that is associated with acute rheumatic fever
marked by dancing movements of the muscles of the trunk and extremities and
anxiety (Venes, P2121). Its fascinating that this illness was so physically debilitating
especially on the arms and hands and he still maintained his art skills as a child. The
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more ironic thing involved with the disease is loss of pigment to the skin along with red-
brownish blemishes, hair loss and an albino looking appearance. This for Andy would
later become a curse considering his obsession with fame and vanity. Due to the disease
and school being too overbearing for him he was required to stay home on bed rest so
Julia created a sick room out of their dining room and encouraged him to color, create
paper dolls and collogues. On Andys 13
th
birthday his father passed away and 2 years
after that his mother was diagnosed with colon cancer and was hospitalized for 6weeks.
His older brother Paul took care of him and made him Campbells tomato soup and a
sandwich everyday. Its fair to assume that his inspiration of the 32 Campbells soup cans
came from the familiarity of his life growing up, as if a comfort for him that he could
easily relate to. In 1945 was enrolled at Carnegie Tech and developed his blotted line
technique which would become a fundamental technique for his commercial artwork.
The technique involves an ink drawing on a shinny paper, which is then transferred to the
absorbent paper, not all of the ink transfers so it gives it the blotted line effect. Although
he faced many struggles in childhood such as illness and the death of one of his parents
he remained focused on his drawings from a very young age and you see an artist that
doesnt fit in with the crowd developing and becoming a trendsetter. In 1949 Andy left
Pittsburg to go to New York City and start his career as an artist.
He was known as raggedy Andy at 20yrs old, walking the streets of New York
City with thick glasses, a sports coat and a brown paper bag that held his drawings. His
first job was with Glamour magazine Success is a job in New York he used his blotted
line technique to illustrate the drawing for the ad. There was an editor that made an error
on his name leaving out the letter a in Warhola, he never corrected it and from that point
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on it was Warhol. What was he impressed with, then? Fame- old, new or faded.
Beauty. Classical talent. Innovative talent. Anyone who did anything first. A certain
kind of outrageous nerve. Good talkers. Money- especially big, old, American brand-
name money (Warhol, p.X). He continued using the blotted line technique for record
covers, for art directors and magazine covers; this became the known famous Warhol
style. As a child he had an obsession with Shirley Temple he wrote to her and she sent
him a glossy photo signed in return. The older he got his obsessions changed and in 1952
he had completed multiple paintings of Truman Capote. Andy was driven and inspired
by people with fame, money and beauty and no one but him at this time recognized his
art or obsession being worth anything, none of the paintings sold. He was struggling
during these times and wasnt being recognized as a true artist that he so badly desired
and instead he fell into the commercial artist category. Other artists were producing
abstract art, absences of recognizable images and the soul spirit of the artist was being
evaluated but Andys art wasnt about any of this. Warhol said, I always get my ideas
from people. Sometimes I dont change the idea. Or sometimes I dont use an idea right
away, but may remember it and use it for something later on. I love ideashe needed
something that would be different from Lichenstein and Rosenquistpaint something
that everybody sees every day, that everybody recognizes like a can of soup (Danto,
p.32-33). He was questioned about his work and whether or not it was original that fact
that he was taking regular everyday items off a self in a super market and repainting them
but it was original because he was the only one doing it and altering it the way he did
which made it his own. He was a pop artist before the meaning of the term was
stabilized, but pop in 1962 was what caused people to talk (Danto, p.32).
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At this time Andy sent illustrations that he drew to a silk screener so that the final
product would be altered from its original form, the first was a Coca-Cola bottle, and then
he changed the illustrations to photos. His 32 silk-screened cans of Campbells soup all
placed together with their brilliant colors, representing an era of labels and brands with a
twist of Warhol. People hated them but eventually were able to relate to the recognizable
every day label. They are currently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City,
theyre worth is whats believed to be 100 million and are considered invaluable and
irreplaceable. Warhols works force us to deal with them primarily as painted surfaces.
Understanding the paradoxical levels of reality and artificiality in our culture, Warhol can
manipulate these questions in terms of art, which has its own reality (Rorimer, p.7).
Andy moved away from is grocery store images such as the brillo boxes and Coca-Cola
bottles and started using celebrities. He was fascinated by their beauty and was able to
alter the final look of a picture by adding a simple color or by replicating the image
multiple times in the presentation. Norman Rockwell had been painting Americans in
everyday life for 40 years prior to this, but Andy wasnt just painting any Americans he
was reproducing Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy in times
when America needed them most. He silk screened a photo of Marilyn from 1953 in
Niagra and began working on a series of Marilyns the day she died. He developed a
technique to place vivid color on the screens then place a black and white screen over the
color. The colors of her makeup were as if a child applied them and her facial structures
were distorted just as the media had done to her. After multiple silk screens of the same
photo the screens became clotted with paint, which altered the original even more, Andy
was okay with this. It is like a graphic representation of Marilyn dying, without the
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smile leaving her face. In Marilyn Diptych there is repetition, but it is transformative
repetition, in which the accidentalities of the silk-screen medium are allowed to
remain (Danto, p.41). So this was very different from the repetition of the soup cans
in that this genius mistake adds to telling Marilyns sad story. In the black and white
Marilyns the lines are less definitive as if shes faded away. He then silk-screened
Elizabeth Taylor in Blue Liz as Cleopatra, this was when she was about die and become
gone out of the public eye. Its as if Andy saved her and brought her back to life again.
His next beauty was Jackie Kennedy and her silk-screens were done November 22, 1963
right after her husband JFK was assassinated. These were 16 photos of Jackie 8 of her
smiling and 8 of her mourning the death of her husband; again he uses sequence and
repetition to convey particular images of someone that the public during this time could
relate to.
Although Warhol focused on beauty and fame there was a dark side where he
managed to capture another intriguing desire of the public, the news, crime and death. In
1964 New York held the Worlds Fair where Warhol displayed silk-screened mug shots
of the 13 most wanted criminals of 1962. So Warhol completely flips it to the other side
of the coin by depicting the most-wanted men of New York City-felons, drug dealers, the
downtrodden and thats not and very typical thing. Now in addition to making that very
radical decision to paint criminals, there also a really fantastic undertone of
homoeroticism (www.economist.com). These did not get shared with New York or the
people at the world fair because Robert Moses asked him to take it down and felt the vibe
ruined the uplifting theme the World fair had portrayed. Its now displayed in the Queens
Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona. He also silk-screened death and disaster such as
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car crashes, the deaths of two women who ate from bad tuna cans, and a woman after she
jumped from the empire state building. He felt that these people deserved a chance to be
remembered one last time before they faded away forever. It is clear that Warhols use
of photography and silk screen for his paintings, along with his subject matter, brought
the imagery of commercial culture into art culture in a particularly powerful manner, and
that is at the heart of both the aesthetic effect and the historical significance of Warhols
work (Mattick, p.976).
Andy then began to get into film and had rented a space on 47
th
street and named
it the factory, his biggest years here were from 1968-72. A radical feminist author of
The Scum Manifesto Valerie Solanas came into the factory with two guns in paper bags
and shot Andy, in which he recovered from. This social life filled with hangout of
random people and amphetamine use, Andy only came out during the night. In February
of 1987 gallstones was the second and final of Andys deaths.
The pop art era was a major time in New York City that many artists emerged
from and Andy Warhol coming from the slums of Pittsburg and his immigrant family is
one to be remembered. Andy was by far an artist that was ahead of his time, and able to
challenged the public and people of New York City with something that hadnt been done
before or perfected with the Warhol style and brand. Although he might have been a
simple man with few words his illustrations, blotted lines, silk-screens, and films will
remain a staple throughout art history.



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REFRENCES

Danto, A. C. (2009). Andy Warhol. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Mattick, P. The Andy Warhol Of Philosophy And The Philosophy Of Andy Warhol.
Critical Inquiry, 24, 976.

Most Wanted. (2014, May 9). The Economist. http://www.economist.com.

Rorimer, A. Andy Warhol's Mao, 1973. Bulletin of the art institute of Chicago, 69, 7.
Retrieved July 7, 2014, from http://www.jstor.org

Venes, D. (2005). Taber's cyclopedic medical dictionary (Ed. 20, illustrated in full color /
ed.). Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Co.

Warhol, A., & Hackett, P. (1989). The Andy Warhol diaries. New York, NY: Warner
Books.