Andy Warhol was an American artist during the sass and was a leading figure in pop art. He was an artist that revolutionized society with his art during that time. His art encompassed many forms of media including hand drawing, painting, photography and music. Andy Warhol became the symbol of a movement which made the arts easily available to and understandable for the public, thereby causing a change in the culture of America during the ass’s and ass’s. Acknowledging all of these factual evidence, it is unquestionable that anyone would disagree upon Andy Warhol being an artist.
Through his series with common images, celebrities and death, Warhol teaches us that surface images have a lot to say about pop culture. By exploring and learning more about the artist who opened so many doors in the art world, one can see why looking at the surface of his works often meant seeing and understanding so much more about the society in which we live. When considering the life and works of Andy Warhol, one thing is agreed upon: for good or bad, he changed the visual construction of the world we live in. By the time of his death in 1987 he was ranked on the same level with Pablo Picasso and Jackson
Pollock as one of the three most important artists of this century. He was a working man, a social climber, a person who liked to build things, an acquirer of goods, and a known homosexual. These attributes all contributed to the interesting and complicated nature of his art. Ands intention was to get us to look at the “art” that is all around us. For example, “Campbell Tomato Soup” (1962). Whorl’s Campbell soup cans are arguably some of his most famous works. Warhol wanted us to look at the simple image of the can for what it represented to our culture.
He challenged “old assigned” critics to overcome their ideas of art as complex and incomprehensible by using simple, common images. Whorl’s selection of the soup can may be the most important part of the work he did with them. He wanted to display his view of America and to him eating Campbell soup represented being American. Andy makes up art with the common tomato soup we see at the grocery store. Andy Warhol is telling us that good, bad, or very bad, there is “art” everywhere and we take it for granted. Looking at his photos really makes us fell ignorant to art making us think, “How could I miss that? Leaving us with guilt and having no confidence to being artists. Although Andy was identified with Pop art and credited with its invention, this is a misunderstanding of his creative ability. Pop is much more complicated than it seems. In creating Pop art, one must create memorable images and awareness of the unpredictable forces in nature and society in whole. It is not simply the portrayal of popular icons but more of an expression of all that is familiar and accepted American society. Pop art also contains a serious sub-message that is not apparent at first sight.
Warhol has many famous works spanning across distinct mediums, but arguably his most important works were his silkscreen based on photography and his revolutionary usage of the popular media as an artistic medium in itself; which he created through his carefully controlled public persona. Andy Warhol produced works that defied the popular notion of what art should be. Whorl’s works were meant to be taken at face value, for nothing more than what they portrayed on the surface. While he stressed this superficial attitude about his art, his works were often the cause of debate and influenced public opinion like no other cultural figure in
North America. Andy Warhol influenced – and still influences – many modern artists. He was influential not only with the unusual images he created, but also through his extensively publicized lifestyle and attitude. He redefined the role of the artist as a public persona, like a rock star. He was able to clamoring the ordinary. After Warhol, art is no longer seen as exclusively “high” art. Glorifying Campbell Soup cans and Coke bottles was a fundamentally democratic gesture. Andy Warhol was a great artist who made art accessible for many.
The popularity of contemporary art today is to mom extent due to his achievements and I believe that most importantly Warhol taught us that the artist is in reality, the art. Despite of popular belief, the tomato soup pictures were not his ideas; Andy needed new ideas to help boost his creativity. He got several ideas from a woman named Muriel Lotto; a gallery owner he knew. She advised him to paint what he loved most (like money) or what everybody would recognize (soup cans and coke bottles). Andy expanded on these ideas and his paintings of the early ass’s reflected his progress as a Pop artist.
He finally gained the financial success and international AMA he had longed for. This proves that art is not an idea, it is how you exemplify that idea to be original and creative. I find it simple at first glance but the majority of his work has quite a vast and deep meaning to it once the viewer takes a moment to really look at it for example the “famous boxes of Brills pads” (1968) , as first glance it is a well taken and quirky image of a pretty mundane item, however with artistic analysis and deeper thought the ideas of mortification and consumerism seep through the image.
Warhol also creates photograph collages and screen-prints of his self-portrait within his portfolio. This is a postmodern artistic medium as instead of allowing the media and public to create an opinion of him, he is taking that license and liberty away from them by creating these images himself, as if to force-feed the media before they get a chance to create a per-conceived opinion. He wanted to portray a creative image of himself, which stands out from everyone else; and he certainly has achieved this in mellow’ (1968) self-portrait.
Andy Warhol brought forward society’s obsession with mass culture and allowed it to become the subject of art itself. Using many techniques such as isolation, repetition and color placement, Warhol brought o the world of art his views on materialism, politics, economics and the media. Some people dispute that Whorl’s work isn’t original, and it isn’t actually creating anything ‘new and that it is simply cheating and copying the basics of an already famous image.
In contrast, others believe that he is indeed creating a new work of art as it is taking traditional high art and changing the message of it in to something modern. Warhol appreciated and admired the original and did not intend to take ‘credit’ for this creation, he was simply expressing his artistic license to enhance the ark further and in his own way. Ironically, Andy Warhol, a man who fantasized about simply vanishing upon death, a man who expressed so much desire to become a machine, became amortized through the media.
Andy Whorl’s choice of visual technologies ultimately allowed him to convey the ideas of fame and repetition through literal example. Warhol even turned his life as a whole into a musing on fame, mass-production and the culture of 20th century America. In the end, it is ironic that the very man who coined the phrase ‘1 5 minutes of fame,’ received so much more than his share.
