Andy Warhol | every-picture 19/12/23, 2:58 PM

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Artists From The Edge

ANDY WARHOL
(1928-1987)

Selection of Andy Warhol prints

"You
You own a ‘Warhol’ not an artwork with a title". This comment about Andy Warhol’s art captures the
powerful influence of one of the most celebrated artists of the last third of the twentieth century. A
leading exponent of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, Warhol’s mass-produced art captured the
supposed banality of the commercial culture of the United States.

Born in 1928, Warhol redefined what it meant to be an

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Andy Warhol | every-picture
artist as a public figure.
An artist works in a studio. Warhol worked in a Factory
with others. The artist paints. Warhol made films. Art is
the opposite of everyday objects. Warhol painted soup
cans and used media photos for his portraits. The artwork
is what the artist signs. Warhol would sign anything for a
fee and did not personally make many of his famous
images.
Unravelling these contradictions lie at the heart of
understanding Warhol’s work.
During his lifetime, Andy Warhol was always associated
with the idea of celebrity. He understood the attraction
of global celebrity and its effects on contemporary society
long before Twitter and Instagram were launched. He
was fascinated by starlets and famous actresses whom
he would often immortalize in his artworks.
Although Warhol’s early work focused on post-war
America’s love affair with consumerism, as illustrated by
his obsession with Campbell’s soup tins and Coca-Cola
bottles.
Warhol’s most highly-priced pieces featured female
celebrities. By relying on his signature screen-printing
techniques to scribble over the iconic features of famous
female faces, Warhol was responsible for making these
celebrities even more popular even in death.
Campbell's Soup Cans, Andy Warhol, mid 1960s
If you want to know about Andy Warhol, then just look
at the surface of my pictures, and there I am,’ the
artist said in 1967.
Six Self-Portraits (1986) click on the portraits above —
completed just months before his sudden death — engages
with the humanity beneath his carefully crafted façade.
In Six Self-Portraits, Warhol assembles six variations of his
iconic 1986 ‘fright wig’ self-portrait, his disembodied face
emerging from darkness in a series of intimate 22 x 22-inch
canvases. His sculpted, mask-like face, bathed in dramatic
contrast, resembles a skull. Placing himself alongside the
great masters of the genre, from Dürer and Rembrandt to
Picasso and Bacon, Warhol charges his self-image with a
poignant sense of his own mortality.
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19/12/23, 2:58 PM
AndyWarhol-MarilynDiptych,1962,acrylic,silkscreenink,andgraphiteonlinen,twopanels,205.4×289.6cm
(807/8×114in.),Tate,London
Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych is one of many
paintings and prints that he produced of Marylyn
Monroe just after she died in 1962, highlighting
the public’s obsession with celebrity. It is made of
two silver canvases on which the artist
silkscreened a photograph of Marilyn Monroe fifty
times. At first glance, the work—which explicitly
references a form of Christian painting in its title
—invites us to worship the legendary icon, whose
image Warhol plucked from popular culture and
immortalized as art.
But as in all of Warhol's early paintings, this
image is a carefully crafted critique of modern art
and contemporary life. Warhol’s works reveal that
he was influenced not only by pop culture but
also by art history—and especially by the art that
was then popular in New York. For example, in
this painting, we can identify the hallmarks of
Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson
Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
The size of Marilyn Diptych (more than six feet
by nine feet) demands our attention and
announces the importance of the subject matter.
Furthermore, the seemingly careless handling of
the paint and its “all-over composition”—the even
distribution of form and colour across the entire
canvas, such that the viewer’s eyes wander
without focusing on one spot—are each hallmarks
of Abstract Expressionism, as exemplified by
Jackson Pollock's drip paintings. Yet Warhol
references these painters only to undermine the
supposed expressiveness of their gestures. Like
Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, whose
work he admired, he uses photographic imagery,
the silkscreen process,32 and repetition to make
art that is about society.
Warhol takes as the subject of his painting an
impersonal image. Though he was an award-
winning illustrator, instead of making his drawing
of Monroe, he appropriated an image that already
existed. The image is not some other artist’s
drawing, but a photograph made for mass
reproduction. We know the image is a photo, not
only because of its verisimilitude but also because
of the heightened contrast between the lit and
shadowed areas of her face, which are associated
with a photographer’s flashgun.
Monroe looks at us seductively from under heavy-
lidded eyes and with parted lips; but her
expression is also a bit inscrutable, and the
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Andy Warhol | every-picture
Keenly aware of the ‘self’ in the world and in art as an
artificial construct, Warhol frequently represented himself in
his art in ways both revelatory and evasive. In his first self-
portraits, from 1963, Warhol is pictured in a raincoat and
dark glasses — the stereotypical image of disguise. In his
1966-67 self-portraits, facial features dissolve into patterns
of layered colour — this is the self-portrait as a disappearing
act. By the late 1980s, Warhol’s self-image was virtually a
complete fabrication.
Self Portrait, Andy Warhol, 1963
Dollar Signs, Andy Warhol, 1982
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19/12/23, 2:58 PM
repetition remakes her face into an eerie,
inanimate mask. Warhol’s use of the silkscreen
technique further “flattens” the star’s face. By
screening broad planes of unmodulated colour,
the artist removes the gradual shading that
creates a sense of three-dimensional volume and
suspends the actress in an abstract void. Through
these choices, Warhol transforms the literal
flatness of the paper-thin publicity photo into an
emotional “flatness,” and the actress into a kind
of automaton. In this way, the painting reflects
that “Marilyn Monroe,” was a manufactured star
with a made-up name, merely a one-dimensional
(sex) symbol.
Warhol’s silkscreened repetitions complicate his
identity as the artist. The silkscreen process
allowed Warhol and his assistants in the Factory
to reproduce the same image over and over
again, using multiple colours. Once the screens
are manufactured and the colours are chosen, the
artist simply spreads inks evenly over the
screens. Though there are differences from one
face to the next, these appear to be the
accidental by-products of a quasi-mechanical
process, rather than the product of the artist's
judgment.
Warhol's world was that of a highly commercial
artist. He turned screen printing into saleable
paintings, managed a rock group the Velvet
Underground, and pioneered independent
cinema with his 16m films. His art reflects his
personal life even though it was highly
impersonal.
Some critics have asked if his work is art?
It could be part of an advertising department. But
by displaying his work in an art gallery it
becomes more than advertising through its
setting alongside other art.
Warhol was innovative in his approach to re-
shaping everyday objects. He took many
Duchampian ideas to a new level.
His work is multimedia and challenged the art
establishment but in turn, Warhol became part of
it.
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