Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is the artist I have selected. Andy Warhol was a prolific magazine and ad illustrator who
rose to prominence as a leading figure in the Pop art movements of the 1960s. He experimented
with a wide range of art forms, including performance art, filmmaking, video installations, and
poetry, and he blurred the boundaries between fine art and conventional aesthetics in controversial
ways. Warhol died in New York City on February 22, 1987.

Andy Warhol is known for his vivid, colourful paintings and prints of celebrities such as Marilyn
Monroe and Mohammed Ali, as well as everyday objects like soup cans and Brillo pads. The types of
medium Andy Warhol uses the most are painting, screen printing, photography & printmaking. His
celebrity portraits were produced using photographic silkscreen printing. As a result, he was able to
directly replicate pictures that were already public domain, such as promotional shots or newspaper
photos. He was also able to quickly create various copies and variants of the prints using this
technique.

Campbell’s Soup I

Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987), Campbell's Soup Cans

The year was 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on 32 canvases,

each measuring 20 x 16 inches " (50.8 x 40.6 cm). With 3"
between each panel, the overall installation measures 97" high
x 163" wide "big
Warhol began his career as a consumer ad designer and became immensely popular. He used his
trade techniques to produce a picture that is both instantly identifiable and visually stimulating. With
the optimism of the day, consumer products and ad imagery flooded the lives of Americans, and
Warhol set out to subtly recreate that wealth through images used in ads. He recreated the memory
of shopping in a supermarket on canvas. As a result, Warhol is credited with inventing a modern
genre of art that glorified (while still criticising) his contemporaries' and customers' consumption
habits.

Andy Warhol

Gold Marilyn Monroe

1962

Marilyn's portrait was reprinted over and over again in newspapers and
magazines at the time, which was a popular theme in all of the Marilyn
works. After seeing dozens or hundreds of such photographs, a viewer
no longer sees an individual depicted and is instead left with a familiar,
consumer culture symbol.

In Gold Marilyn Monroe, Warhol expands on the concept iconography by putting Marilyn's face
against a massive golden backdrop. The backdrop is reminiscent of Byzantine religious icons, which
are still revered in Orthodox faiths. Instead of a deity, we are looking at a picture (that, upon closer
inspection, appears a little garish) of a woman who rose to fame and died horribly. Warhol's work
implicitly criticises our society's elevation of celebrities to religious status. Here, too, the Pop artist
employs everyday objects and photographs to make very pointed observations about his
contemporaries' beliefs and surroundings.