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Chloe Lamb

Mr. Bogardus

Seminar

14 December, 2017

Andy Warhols Contribution to Art

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (Fright Wig), 1986

The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol

Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

1998.1.2890
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Art is a universal form of beautiful entertainment. There is one major thing that sets the artists of

the paintings, photographs, videos, etc. apart from those who are viewing the art. Those who are

viewing the art want so badly to put a label on it and confine the piece of work into a category,

artists are just here to create what feels good and what is beautiful to them. Andy Warhol is an

artist that many people often try to confine to one specific category of art. The most common

category is Pop Art, but he was a man of many talents. He made videos, silk screens, painted, did

photography, and was the man of many firsts.

Warhol completely drowned himself in art to the point where his entire life was a

piece of art. No matter where he went he carried a tape recorder because he thought

conversations with others were very intriguing. People became so accustom to seeing Warhol

with the tape recorder that he began referring to it as his wife during interviews. Along with the

tape recorder he also carried a camera everywhere as well. He was so fascinated with his

conversations and interviews he did with the famous people and social lights he surrounded

himself with that he started Interview Magazine.

Warhol took up photography when he was only nine years old (Biography.com

Editors). Then at the incredibly young age of 16 Warhol graduated from Schenley High School

and applied for Carnegie Institute for Technology (Biography.com Editors). In 1949 Warhol

graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. The first time Warhols work was published for

the world to see was in a 1949 Glamour magazine issue (Andy Warhols Life). During his life he

was so fascinated with why people liked the things they did mostly because he did not

understand the appeal of the commercial goods that consumers enjoyed.

Even though he did not understand the appeal of these simple things, he

understood that he could do simple paintings and make handsome money from his work. One of
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Warhols most famous series of paintings is the Campbells soup cans. His first gallery show that

he held on his own is where he debuted his thirty-two paintings of Campbells soup cans. Warhol

got the inspiration from a friend to do a painting of something that was familiar to every

consumer, that is when he got the idea to do the soup cans. When he painted the red and white

cans of soup it launched his career into Pop Art. Even though he started late with Pop Art he

became the most famous artist next to Salvador Dali to have his name attached to the category

Pop Art. When he painted the cans he wanted to be as precise as humanly possible, as if it looked

like a machine had painted them. To be this precise he traced projections of the soup cans onto

canvas then tightly painted them. He did a painting for each of the 32 flavors that Campbells

offered. Warhols soup cans were not the only Pop Art series that he did. A few of his other

famous series of Pop Art was his Marilyn Monroe series, Eight Elvises, Green Coca-Cola

Bottles, and Sixteen Jackies.

One of Warhols Pop Art pieces, Flowers, is one of the best examples of how

Warhol loved to use colors in his work. Blocks of color illuminate the flowers and the grass is

shaped by lines of gray. He would experiment with colors on the flowers and in some of the

pieces he layered the flowers so it gave a motion to the screen print. He created Flowers because

he was very fascinated with the fashion world and in the 60s these softly shaped flowers were a

very popular pattern to use on fabric. He also did Flowers to experience something different

from the hard hitting political issues that were going on in the world at the time. The image used

for Flowers was a photograph taken by Patricia Caulfield and when she found out he was using

her image to create art she filed a law suit against Warhol. The lawsuit was not a big deal to

Warhol though.
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Andy Warhol preferred silk screen printing to make his artwork and paintings

because he wanted to be like a machine, and of course paint was to messy for him. Because of

screen printing Warhol was able to make his art in vastly large amounts to get them out in the

public. When Warhol first started screen printing he was using sketches but they were coming

out to smudgy looking for his liking. Since he wanted to be as much like a machine as possible

he figured out a way to do the same screen printing with photographs instead of sketches. The

use of silk screen printing meant that Warhol could now incorporate mechanical repetition

directly into his work, rather than indirectly through painting each image slowly by hand, or by

means of handcut stencils, stamps and blacks (Shanes, Eric). Most of the time it wasnt even

Warhol himself doing the screen prints. This makes people question if it is truly his work then if

he is having his friends do it for him. His work is still his work because the art is his idea. He

was just surrounded by his friends who wanted to help him succeed because The Factory was his

family.

Warhol created the repetition in his artwork because he believed that people did

not always fully understand something because they were just simply observing things in life. If

someone sees a repeated image continualsy then it is more likely to leave an impact on the

viewer than just a single image. Warhol truly enjoyed leaving impacts, even if he never did really

talk about how he liked the attention, many people believe he basked in it. Why else would he

have so many people around all of the time?

When Andy Warhol opened his new studio known famously by the name The

Factory he surrounded himself with very avant garde people. The Factory was like a safe haven

for those who did not exactly fit into society as a whole. Andy enjoyed the company quite a bit.

The members of the band The Velvet Underground became some of Andys closest friends and a
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big project of his. Everyone he had around him helped him produce his art and once he got more

into photography and film, his friends became his best subjects. Since his friends were so willing

to help him mass produce his art he now had more free time so, He branched out in new

directions, publishing his first book, Andy Warhols Index, in 1967 (Biography.com Editors).

Andy Warhols Index is a pop-up book that Andy created of his Pop Art.

In the same year Warhol published Andy Warhols Index, he also produced and

did the cover art for The Velvet Undergrounds first album. He greatly appreciated their music

and motivation and he knew they would be something and with him helping them, his legacy

would only expand more than it already was. With Warhol being the social light he was, without

even trying, he got to meet and talk to famous people pretty much every night of his life. He

decided to capitalize on his personal life so, In 1969, he co-founded Interview, a magazine

devoted to film, fashion, and popular culture that gave him access to the stars (Andy Warhols

Life).

Since Andy Warhol loved photography from a young age, In February 1976, he

bought the just-released Minox 35EL, then the smallest camera to take full-frame 35mm

photographs (Colacello, Bob). This camera really set the rest of his life in motion. From now on

he carried his camera absolutely everywhere with him. During this period, [the 1970s], Warhol

used a polaroid camera and a tape recorder to document his daily life, from business meetings to

star-studded social occasions (Andy Warhols Life). At this point of Warhols life, he was

captivated by everything, he took pictures of anything he found interesting, From 1976 until his

death, he took at least one roll of black-and-white film every day (Colacello, Bob). He kept a

box next to his desk and would fill it with anything and everything he found interesting in every
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single day of his life, he also believed you should go to F.A.O. Schwarz and buy a new toy every

day and leave it in the box because one day it would be worth money.

Once photography became one of Andy Warhols main focuses his polaroid

pictures became more a part of his show cased artwork. The fact that he took his pictures

whenever he felt the urge to capture a moment gave them a very airy light feeling. There is a

book by the company Polaroid called How To Take Instant Photos. In this book there is a quote,

A more relaxed approach can lead to slightly blurry or imperfect images (Polaroid). That is

exactly what Andy Warhol did and that is exactly why his photography stands out so much.

When he got bored of painting he started getting interested in film projects. He

was the first artist to use the Amiga computers introduced in 1984 to digitally generate new art

forms (Brown, Emily). His friends would let him record them doing absolutely anything at all.

He filmed a friend sleeping for five hours and twenty minutes. He was also very fascinated with

sex and he would paint very graphic and detailed paintings of people having sex, and he also

made two films of people giving and receiving blow jobs. Not all of his work was so

provocative. He once filmed himself just simply eating a hamburger. He also made a film just of

the Empire building and its shadows. There is a book about portrait photography but there is a

certain quote, Break free from the limitations of compositional conventions and your visual

instinct will speak to you that little bit louder (Carroll, Henry). An example of this quote is

something that viewers can see in Warhols films. He never did edit any of his movies before he

released them. He let his films be fully what they were with no outside influence.

Warhol had a theory that everyone could have fifteen minutes of fame. He also

thought the people didnt need to be talented either, just simply be themselves and people will

enjoy their entertainment. Warhol took an interest in television and produced two cable shows,
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Andy Warhols T.V. (1980-83) and Andy Warhols Fifteen Minutes (1985-87) for MTV (Andy

Warhols Life). Warhol believed that people would watch anything on television. He bought

eighteen half-hour slots on the Manhattan Cable T.V. from 1980-1982 for the first season of

Andy Warhols T.V. the second season was in 1983. It was a show where Andy Warhol was the

host and he would interview guests about different strange things that were happening in the

world. Andy Warhols Fifteen Minutes was another talk show hosted by Andy Warhol. MTV

aired the television show during the years 1985 to 1987. Warhol enjoyed talking to artists and

musicians and his television shows.

Andy Warhols Fifteen Minutes ended in 1987 because, Warhol died

unexpectedly in New York in 1987 following a gallbladder operation, and that same year in

accordance with the artists will (Colacello, Bob). Andy Warhol definitely left a legacy behind.

The book, Warhol: The Masterworks, written by Eric Shanes has a quote, Warhols images

might initially appear to be rather simple. Because of that very simplicity, however, they enjoy

not only a high degree of immediate visual impact but also the mental associations they set in

motion (Shanes, Eric). Warhols artwork will always have an impact on the art community

because he did work that was very different for his time. Artists of all kind look up to Warhol for

inspiration because he was unapologetically himself all of the time and he also was not afraid to

try something new.

Clearly Andy Warhol is not someone that can be placed in a specific category of

art. He dabbled in almost everything that has to do with art. He painted, did photography,

published books, illustrated a cookbook, made movies, had two of his own television shows,

made screen prints of his artwork, created Interview, and he even produced a record with The

Velvet Underground. Warhol was undeniably one of the most famous artists of the 70s and 80s.
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Works Cited

Biography.com Editors. Andy Warhol. Biography.com Website, A&E Networks Television, 27 Apr.

2017, www.biography.com/people/andy-warhol-9523875.

Andy Warhol's Life. The Andy Warhol Museum, www.warhol.org/andy-warhols-life/.

Colacello, Bob. And Warhol: He Got the Picture. The Telegraph,

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/7429937/Andy-Warhol-he-got-the-picture.hml.

Brown, Emily. Andy Warhol And His Artistic Influence. Culture Trip, 6 Sept. 2016,

theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/articles/andy-warhol-and-his-artistic-influence/.

Polaroid. Polaroid: How to Take Instant Photos. Octopus Books, 2015.

Carroll, Henry. Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs of People. Laurence King

Publishing, 2015.

Shanes, Eric. Warhol: the Masterworks. Studio, 1991.