Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol was a famous American painter, commercial illustrator and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the pop art movement. Warhol also became famous as an avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author. Warhol paintings are still fresh even today, and many choose to add them to their bedroom or lounge walls. Many Warhol paintings suit the modern contemporary style of 21st century homes, and his work goes from strength to strength.
Subscribe to RSS FeedAfter Marilyn Monroe's death Andy Warhol produced several series of paintings of her, based on the same original photo. Warhol enjoyed her connection between death and celebrity cult and so chose her as a Warhol Star. Warhol tried out many varieties of color combinations. Campbell's Soup brand was also linked closely to Warhol after his series of paintings which spanned much of Warhol's career, as he commonly came back to the Soup Can image as a tool for creativity. These heavily branded themes brought in young people and gave importance and relevance to the pop art movement.
The attack on Warhol, which nearly claimed his life affected him for the rest of his years, making him somewhat shy and perhaps less ambitious than before. The mark of Warhol paintings has never been lost, though.
In the early 1960s, Warhol tried to exhibit some of his drawings using these techniques in a gallery, only to be turned down. He began to rethink the relationship between his commercial work and the rest of his art. Instead of treating these things as opposites, he merged them, and began to take commercial and popular culture more explicitly as his topic. Pop Art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists (such as Robert Rauschenberg). Eventually, Warhol pared his image vocabulary down to the icon itself – to brand names, celebrities, dollar signs – and removed all traces of the artist's "hand" in the production of his paintings.
Warhol's bold style is shown best in his Cow wallpaper series which remains a popular choice with Warhol Art lovers around the world. Psychedelic yellow combined with pinks to dazzle art lovers and attract young followers towards the Pop Art movement, of which Warhol was one of the figureheads. The cow photo came from an agricultural print which later was repeated into real wallpaper by obsessed Warhol.
The full length of Warhol's career is littered with interesting self-portraits which help art fans to see into Warhol's mind and discover how he saw himself. Some were also less than happy portrayals and showed a typical artist at odds with himself, so common amongst many of the greatest artists.



