ANDY WARHOL

1. ANDY WARHOL • Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928. • His family came from Czechoslovakia (now known as The Czech Republic). • In 1945 he entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) where he majored in pictorial design. • Upon graduation, Warhol moved to New York where he found steady work as a commercial artist.

2. Warhol befriended wealthy patrons who commissioned him to create large-scale portraits of them. • The portraits were made by transferring a photographic image onto a silk-screen and printing with ink. • This type of printmaking had not traditionally been used by artists before the 1960’s. • Many of Warhol’s iconic images were of famous actors. • Warhol became famous for the statement “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

3. “What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”– The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1975, • Warhol took banal images from everyday life and elevated them to the “ iconic” • With his background in advertising he was able to “ sell” his new concepts and challenged artistic conventions about what could be considered a worthy subject for artmaking.

5. POSTMODERNISM AND THE ICON Postmodern: Artist • Artists question mainstream values and beliefs. They parody or challenge artistic conventions. They question originality Postmodern: Artwork • Postmodern artworks are unconventional; they up-end their relationship with audiences. They recontextualise previous ‘texts’ and narratives. They question notions of originality and the masterpiece. Postmodern: World • The postmodern world is a clash of viewpoints, that challenge authoritarian notions. It is an eclectic world that parodies and satirises conventional ideas. It is a world of the simulacrum Postmodern: Audience • Audiences are agencies who question the power figures in the artworld. They accept multiviewpoints and reject traditional artistic wisdom

7. Discussion Questions: • Compare and contrast the formal aspects of the portraits (e.g., Warhol’s use of colour and shape, each artworks overall balance and unity, and the sitters’ poses) • Andy Warhol not only made portraits from photographs he shot himself, but also from images he appropriated from mass media. What portraits do you see all the time on the television and in magazines and newspapers? • What effect does this repetition have on culture? • Are there different types of fame? Which type is most valuable? • If you could make a portrait of anyone in the world, who would it be? Why? source:http://edu.warhol.org/aract_icons.html Modified from kidsartlab.com

8. Websites for further research • Warhol Foundation in New York, New York. • The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Warhol Family Museum in Medzilaborce, Slovakia • Two short articles about Warhol's 2002 museum retrospective from the art magazine "X-TRA" • Andy Warhol at Gagosian Gallery • Time Capsules: the Andy Warhol collection • Andy Warhol at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)