Andy Warhol example essay topic
417 words
Andy Warhol was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh to immigrant parents of (Ruthenian) Czechoslovakian stock. He was best known as being one of America's best artists and filmmakers, also an initiator and leading icon of the Pop art movement of the 1960's. As a self-publicist, he projected a concept of the artist as an impersonal figure who is nevertheless a successful celebrity, businessman, and social climber... this type of work was new and innovative. Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, with a degree in pictorial design in 1949. He then went to New York City, where he worked as a commercial illustrator for about 10 years. Andy began painting in the late 1950's and received sudden fame in 1962 when he exhibited paintings of Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles. By 1963 he was mass-producing these images by silk screen prints, and he then began printing endless varieties of portraits of celebrities in vivid colors. The silk screen technique was suited to Warhol, because the repeated image was reduced to a dehumanized cultural icon that reflected both the supposed emptiness of American culture and the artist's emotional non involvement with the makings of his art. Andy's work placed him in the front of the emerging Pop art movement in the U.S. As the 1960's dragged on, Warhol devoted more of his time and energy to filmmaking. Usually underground films, motion pictures of his as The Chelsea Girls in 1961, Eat in 1963, My Hustler in 1965 and Blue Movie in 1969 are known for their inventive, plot less boredom, and extreme length (up to 25 hours). In 1968 Andy was shot and almost killed by one of his would-be followers, a member of his clan of underground film and rock music stars.
He had by this time become a well-known image on the fashion art scene and was an influential celebrity of his own kind. Throughout the 1970's and until he died, he continued to produce prints depicting political and Hollywood celebrities, and he got involved in a wide range of advertising pictures and other commercial art projects. His The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, published in 1975, was followed by Portraits of the Seventies and Andy Warhol's Exposures. Then, on February 22, 1987, Andy Warhol tragically died following a gall bladder surgery. Without the presence of Andy Warhol's innovative and creative styles, Pop Art would never be the same.
