Andy Warhol is known for heavily contributing to the Pop Art movement of the 1950s. Through his brightly colored, screen printed criticisms of consumerist culture through portraiture, his avant-garde, socially aware-yet-disturbing films, and his creation of a highly productive studio, he created an influential “brand” of his own amongst the artists of his time. As an openly gay man, he reflected his views on his sexuality and the culture amongst his peers through his artworks, all of which still have an impact on artists, designers, and fashion enthusiasts alike to this day.
Andy Warhol had difficult, yet very interesting childhood. Born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, 1928, to Slovak immigrants, Andy was a solitary child, one that kept to himself neatly, not getting along well with other boys. Most of his friends throughout childhood were girls, as he got along with them best.
Warhol lived through a serious bout of St. Vitus’ dance (medically known as Sydenham’s chorea), a neurological disorder that effects motor skills and cognition in children. He spent two separate months at home in recovery and away from school, in which he sat alone and produced a lot of art, especially primitive transfers made by putting wax on comic books and magazines. This would later inspire some of his printmaking.
While Andy was not permanently effected physically by St. Vitus in any severe way, he did have one major relapse, in which he fell ill after returning to school. He was a sickly child in many other regards, and spent a lot of his childhood out of school and creating art, often with inspiration from his mother, Julia, who found herself intrigued in the beauty of animals, especially cats (which Warhol later drew an entire book of). This period of Warhol’s life impacted his future works greatly, and it is made obvious that his identity was shaped by his illnesses.
Warhol intended to become an an art teacher as an adult, going to study at the University of Pittsburgh. This changed, however, when he decided to instead study commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of technology. He strongly led and created illustrations for the magazine of his college, Cano, After graduation, he went to work in the fashion industry, getting a job in illustrarion and advertising. It is these years that we can see what later influenced his extreme and vast contributions to the Pop-Art movement of the late 1950s.
One famous example from his beginnings were a commission he recieved while illustrating for the magazine known as Glamour. After boasting about his artistic abilities to the creative director, Tina Fredricks, she gave him the job of painting women’s shoes, which he designed intricately and specifically, giving each high-heel and platform a life of its own, creating works that were later to be considered some of his most charming and whimsical. While he was not yet a famous artist or icon, it was made clear by his peers that his works were very impressive.
Andy was quite partial to printing, particularly silk screenprinting, a method he rapidly picked up after he got out of college and later helped to quickly popularize within the artist community. Using this and similar methods as well as plain-old, wax, tracing paper, and ink, Andy was able to set a style of repetition in his artworks, an almost mass production of images that he liked to repeat for emphasis, often keeping everything the same besides his combinations of the bright and saturated colors that he favored so much.
Warhol, an advertising major, and someone with a knack for the art of eye-and-brain-catching visuals, had an interesting obsession with consumerism. This obsession can be seen in many of his paintings and prints, most notably in his well-loved pictures of Campbell’s Soup cans, exactly identical other than the names printed on the cans. These prints highlight one of Warhol’s favorite ideas to mess with— the iconography of the mundane.
Warhol also had interesting views upon celebrities, believing that the nature of stardom would lead to a future where “Everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.” (Warhol) One of the most recognizable images from Warhol’s forays into celebrity culture are his prints of Marilyn Monroe, which he produced after she died. He was fascinated with the very nature of stardom, as he noticed that celebrities were marketed just as brands were, and therefore were involved heavily in the perpetuation of consumer culture. He created several portraits in his familiar style — Mao Zedong, Jackie Kennedy, Mick Jagger — all reproduced many times in candy-coated, Technicolor schemes.
This statement that celebrities were something to be capitalistically consumed, especially his portrayal of women like Marilyn Monroe, would anger many people. One such person was Valerie Solenas, an author who identified as a radical feminist, and attempted to kill Warhol. She believed that Warhol contributed greatly to patriarchal culture, and therefore wished to kill him. She traveled to Andy’s studio and shot at him three times, missing twice, but injuring him severely with the third. After shooting a few more times at his coworkers, she left. Andy was left to wear a surgical corset for the rest of his life, creating an impact that influenced his art yet again.
While Andy had a particular knack for screenprinting, he was also a talented filmmaker. He produced over 600 films, ranging from actual scripted stories to artistic screen tests to symbolic commentaries. Many of these reflected sexuality in strange, avant-garde contexts, such as . However, Andy Warhol also had the ability to write full length films, such as the comedy My Hustler, a comedy about gay men competing for the attention of one particular man while stuck on Fire Island. All of these films show Andy’s personality greatly, as even the straightforward ones display pieces of Andy’s identity and obsession with star culture. Warhol worked with many celebrities on these films, even documenting an entire rehearsal of The Velvet Underground.
Andy had his own space to make his art, both in film and print. He created this space, dubbed “the Factory” with many other artists, designed to produce his imagery in effective ways. While it served that purpose well, the Factory This was used as a social setting, a venue for extremely boisterous parties between artistic types, typically users of amphetamines. Many artists used it as a place to hang around and talk, but that did not wholly keep Andy from his work. He created many works within the studio’s three incarnations, making progress into his great repertoire of films, plotting out sculptures, and finding new means to produce his art on a larger scale.
Andy wanted to to mirror the way goods are mass produced in capitalistic settings. He wished to make his screen printing and filmmaking methods more effective, so to help with this, he used the connections that he made through his parties at the Factory to bring in a team of artists. These artists consisted of workers from many mediums — visual artists, but musicians, drag queens, and celebrities of every kind as well. This became Warhol’s primary source of production. As John Cale, a musician from The Velvet Underground stated, “It wasn't called the Factory for nothing. It was where the assembly-line for the silkscreens happened.” (Cale)
Warhol helped to shape the worlds of art and fashion through his social commentaries on consumerist culture, but he was also notable for being a gay man in a time where being gay was considered to be wrong and sick. He openly identified as a gay man, and this was another aspect of his identity that greatly influenced his works. Warhol had multiple public boyfriends throughout his lifespan, and created many works regarding his sexuality, such as his photographic portraitures featuring himself in drag as well as the 1950s drawings compiled into his Boy Book, a collection of portraits, prints, and cryptically-symbolic-yet-obviously-phallic pencil sketches.
His displays of his sexuality became somewhat of an issue when submitting art to galleries, as the homophobia of his time period brought about unfair treatment. In 1952, Andy submitted work to the Grey Art Gallery, located at New York University. Many of the pieces he submitted were of a homoromantic nature, such as line drawings of men embracing and kissing. What could have been a positive embrace of homosexuality within the 1950’s was not accepted by those at the gallery, and his work was outright refused.
Several of Andy’s boyfriends were his fellow artists, coworkers and contributors to Warhol’s artistic development and sense of self. Many of them worked alongside him, such as the man he regarded as his muse, Billyboy (who, interestingly enough, though he saw Warhol as kind and loving, admitted he found Warhol just as obnoxious and irritating as he was charming). His lovers recall him to be generous and sweet. His longest standing boyfriend was Jed Johnson, initially just a hire to sweep the floors of the Factory, but turned into a co-habitant lover of twelve years. In fact, Johnson helped out with Warhol’s art very frequently, and ended up working on many of the films Andrew produced, like titles such as L’Amour.
Many of Warhol’s lovers adored his artworks and were pleased to see his identity cast out into them so frequently. As one of his partners, Billy Name stated, “It brought a joy to the whole art world in New York.” (London )However, throughout his personal interactions with those other than the men he dated and interviewers, he was cold and quiet about his attractions, not denying and therefore still living openly, but fairly defensive about it.
Warhol had some interesting ideas on sexuality. He thought that sex as a whole is taken far too seriously within society, and that this mentality was promoted in part by consumerism and media. Warhol did not like the idea of being perceived as He stated that “sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets anyway,” (Warhol) expressing that the consumption of media creates unfulfillable expectations. This also lends to his criticism of the media-and-consumerism based culture of the United States.
The pop art movement as a whole, led strongly by Andy, has had many influences on the art and fashion worlds of today. As he helped to popularize screenprinting amongst visual artists, it has become a much more visible and sought out medium for artists to create multiple works effectively and quickly, such as shirts and posters. He has also created inspiration in photographers and designers such as David LaChapelle, who used Warhol’s iconographic imagery to portray Amanda Lepore in the stylings of Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe.
Many designers are inspired by his iconography, and continue to put out looks inspired off of his stylings to this day. Diane Von Furstenberg, a fashion designer that worked for Andy in the 70s, created a line of beachwear heavily inspired by his bright, iconic prints. Versace and Moschino both designed specific lines and collections based off of Andy Warhol’s consumerist artwork, Versace with dresses inspired by his portraiture of Marilyn Monroe, and Moschino using Warhol’s favorite brand Coca-Cola, as well as others such as McDonalds and Fresh to create Pop Art images within the modern era. It is interesting to think of what Warhol himself would think of this, his favorite imagery being used to promote himself in what he has truly become to the current generations: A brand.
Andy Warhol is an extremely powerful icon of a human being. He set out to create images and critiques of consumerism, branding, and celebrity culture, and through his work within that, became so important and notable to other thinkers that he has formed into his own brand. His works continue to create inspiration for artists to this day, and the influence of his artistic style will last for years to come.