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ANDY WARHOL About This Work: Much has been said about Andy Warhol, his art and his decadent personality. Warhol’s fascination for fame and celebrities shows up in this work, that he masterfully simply calls Sidewalk. The image of this work is from a series of photographs taken by Andy Warhol himself. This image displays the handprints and signatures of Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Jack Nicholson and Shirley Temple, that are on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. |
Tag Archives: andywarhol
WOW – Work Of the Week – Andy Warhol “Ingrid Bergman, The Nun FS.II 314”
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ANDY WARHOL About This Work: Andy Warhol was the most successful and highly paid commercial illustrator in New York even before he began to make art destined for galleries. Neverthless, his screenprinted images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans, movie stars and sensational newspaper stories, quickly became synonymous with Pop Art. Pop Art marked an important new stage in the breakdown between high and low art forms. Warhol’s paintings from the early 1960s were important in pioneering these developments, but it is arguable that the diverse activities of his later years were just as influential in expanding the implications of Pop Art into other spaces, and further eroding the borders between the worlds of high art and popular culture. Andy Warhol is now considered one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century, who created some of the most recognizable images ever produced. After the the success of the Campbell’s Soup Series in the early 1960s, indeed, Warhol began creating screenprints of movie star portraits including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and Ingrid Bergman. The Ingrid Bergman Series is made up of three types of screen prints. The source images used for these portrait pieces include a publicity photo (Herself), and movie stills from her role in Casablanca (With Hat) and from the movie The Bell of St. Mary’s (The Nun). Of course, when we think of Ingrid Bergman, we think of her playing Ilsa, the long lost love interest of Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart. No one can ever forget Bergman standing on the runway, all teary eyed and wearing the famous hat, as Bogart makes her get on that plane. However, many people do not realize that the movie The Bell Of St. Mary’s was enormously popular, the highest-grossing movie of 1945 in the USA. In this movie, Ingrid Bergman is the leading female role and stars together with famous actor and singer Bing Crosby, who plays the unconventional Father Charles “Chuck” O’Malley, assigned to St. Mary’s parish. The parish includes a school building on the verge of being condemned; but the sisters of the parish feel that God will provide for them. Father O’Malley and the dedicated but stubborn Sister Superior, Mary Benedict (Ingrid Bergman), both wish to save the school, but they have different views and methods. This portrait of Ingrid Bergman in her most severe role is made even more dramatic in this iconic print. The vibrant color palette is made dynamic through Warhol’s exciting element of abstraction, the yellow lines making her figure and makeup pop, with her hands clasped in prayer and only sketched with yellow lines. Like the majority of his works, once again, this print is indicative of Warhol’s obsession with all things relating to fame, especially movie stars. For this reason, his artwork can also be considered as a sort of visual recording of the culture of his time. |
WOW – Work Of the Week – Andy Warhol “Louis Brandeis”
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ANDY WARHOL About This Work: In 1980 Andy Warhol produced a suite called Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century. This series appeared at the Jewish Museum that year for the first time. To create this portfolio, Warhol followed his usual procedure for portraits, silk-screening a photograph over previously applied colors and tracing crayon-like lines over the photograph’s contours. The underlying vivid colors are broken up into flat, geometric compositions, creating a mild tension between abstraction and photographic representation. The ten subjects of the series were more than just celebrities. They were all people of great accomplishment. But the real subject in this portraits is Fame. Warhol was obsessed with the concepts of fame and publicity and he was interested in famous people because they were famous. What the series reflects is the distinctively modern experience of knowing many famous people but rarely knowing in any depth what they are famous for. For example, lots of people know the name Gertrude Stein, but how many have actually read anything she wrote? The Ten Portraits Of Jews Of The 20th Century are renowned luminaries of Jewish culture. They are:
The collective achievements of this group changed the course of the twentieth century and may be said to have influenced every aspect of human experience. About Louis Brandeis: Louis Brandeis was an American lawyer. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents. He was the first jewish lawyer to enter the Supreme Court and his work has been fundamental in building some of the most important legal concept of all times, such us the right to privacy, the freedom of speech and the regulation of big corporations and monopolies. Being heavily socially involved and sincerely willing to help people, he used to work for free a lot of times and for this reason he eventually gained the name of “People’s Lawyer”.
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WOW – Work Of the Week – Nate Lowman “Bullet Holes”
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NATE LOWMAN About This Work: Nate Lowman is an American artist, well-known for being part of a group of New York artists who called themselves “Warhol’s children”. The main theme of his work lies in creating connections from the detritus of pop culture to its spectators. Lowman states: “I don’t have a great imagination to share something with you that I don’t know, so it’s about interpreting things, a dialogue”. Lowman brought downtown nonconformity to the mainstream art world with his “bullet holes” paintings. Bullet Holes, although resembling a very simple artwork, hides a lot of different references and has its roots in the American Pop Art. Metaphorically, the deafening shot of the gun refers to the nonchalant prevalence of violence in media culture and America’s obsession with guns. “America is built on violence “ Lowman has said. The destructive force of the bullets culminates in a bottomless black hole at the center of the two images, resulting in a powerful yet playfully hopeful message of culture awareness. Lowman came to prominence in the New York art scene during the early 2000s. He has has solo exhibitions in New York, London, Greenwich, Greece and many other places. His work has also been exhibited by the Museum Of Modern Art in New York, the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the Palais De Tokyo in Paris and the Whitney Museum Of American Art in New York. He lives and works in New York City, NY. |
WOW! – Work Of the Week – Andy Warhol “Life Savers”
Andy Warhol
Life Savers, from Ads FS II.353
1985
Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board
38 x 38 in.
Edition of 190
Pencil signed and numbered
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ABOUT THIS WORK:
Although Pop Art began in Great Britain in the late 1950s, in America it was given its greatest impetus during the 1960s. The term “Pop Art” was officially introduced in December 1962: the occasion was a “Symposium on Pop Art” organized by the Museum of Modern Art.
As the British viewed American popular culture imagery from a somewhat removed perspective, their views were often instilled with romantic, sentimental and humorous overtones. By contrast, American artists, bombarded every day with the diversity of mass-produced imagery, produced work that was generally more bold and aggressive.
Pop Art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising and news. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, and/or combined with unrelated material. The concept of “popular art” refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes behind the art.
Pop Art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. One of its aims is to use images of popular culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques such as screenprints or silkscreens.
Among the early and most famous artists that shaped the Pop Art movement, the most iconic certainly is Andy Warhol. He has been the greatest pop artist and the one who best developed this concept in his work.
His beginnings as a product marketer heavily influenced his artistic career, in which he glamorized and transformed everyday objects, like soup cans and cleaning supplies, into works of art. So in the 1980’s when Feldman Fine Arts commissioned Warhol to create his “ADS” series, Warhol was in his element. The Ads Portfolio of prints by Andy Warhol is one of his most sought after and iconic sets of prints and it contains the “Life Savers”. This Andy Warhol portfolio includes images of James Dean and the Paramount Logo. The Ads portfolio is made up of ten screen prints on Lenox Museum Board by Andy Warhol. These images that make up Warhol’s ADS Series reflect Warhol’s fascination with American consumerism.
This is a particularly colorful original work of art by this legendary artist. The five flavors candies were first introduced in 1912, coming in different colors and flavors but same shape and size. These candies are still sold today. This screenprint is a summary of Pop Art: bright colors, use of advertising, screenprint technique, presence of slogans and everyday life goods, a transformation of something normal and banal in a high-quality artwork.
The essence of Andy Warhol’s art was to make no distinction between fine art and commercial art used in magazine illustrations, comic books, record albums or advertising campaigns. Warhol once expressed his thinking in one sentence: “When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums”.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
He was one of the most enigmatic figures in American art. His work became the definitive expression of a culture obsessed with images. He was surrounded by a coterie of beautiful bohemians with names like Viva, Candy Darling, and Ultra Violet. He held endless drug- and sex-filled parties, through which he never stopped working. He single-handedly confounded the distinctions between high and low art. His films are pivotal in the formation of contemporary experimental art and pornography. He spent the final years of his life walking around the posh neighborhoods of New York with a plastic bag full of hundred dollar bills, buying jewelry and knick knacks. His name was Andy Warhol, and he changed the nature of art forever.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh. He received his B.F.A. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in 1949. That same year, he moved to New York, where he soon became successful as a commercial artist and illustrator. During the 1950s, Warhol’s drawings were published in Glamour and other magazines and displayed in department stores. He became known for his illustrations of I. Miller shoes. In 1952, the Hugo Gallery in New York presented a show of Warhol’s illustrations for Truman Capote’s writings.
During this time, Warhol had also been working on a series of pictures separate from the advertisements and illustrations. It was this work that he considered his serious artistic endeavor. Though the paintings retained much of the style of popular advertising, their motivation was just the opposite. The most famous of the paintings of this time are the thirty-two paintings of Campbell soup cans. With these paintings, and other work that reproduced Coca-Cola bottles, Superman comics, and other immediately recognizable popular images, Warhol was mirroring society’s obsessions. Where the main concern of advertising was to slip into the unconscious and unrecognizably evoke a feeling of desire, Warhol’s work was meant to make the viewer actually stop and look at the images that had become invisible in their familiarity. These ideas were similarly being dealt with by artists such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg – and came to be known as Pop Art.
Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Warhol produced work at an amazing rate. He embraced a mode of production similar to that taken on by the industries he was mimicking, and referred to his studio as “The Factory.” The Factory was not only a production center for Warhol’s paintings, silk-screens, and sculptures, but also a central point for the fast-paced high life of New York in the ’60s. Warhol’s obsession with fame, youth, and personality drew the most wild and interesting people to The Factory throughout the years. Among the regulars were Mick Jagger, Martha Graham, Lou Reed, and Truman Capote. For many, Warhol was a work of art in himself, reflecting back the basic desires of an consumerist American culture. He saw fame as the pinnacle of modern consumerism and reveled in it the way artists a hundred years before reveled in the western landscape. His oft-repeated statement that “every person will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” was an incredible insight into the growing commodification of everyday life.
By the mid-’60s, Warhol had become one of the most famous artists, in the world. He continued, however, to baffle the critics with his aggressively groundbreaking work. His paintings were primarily concerned with getting the viewer to look at something for longer than they otherwise would.
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Warhol produced hundreds of portraits, mostly in silk screen. His images of Liza Minnelli, Jimmy Carter, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Taylor, and Philip Johnson express a more subtle and expressionistic side of his work.
Following routine gall bladder surgery, Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987. After his burial in Pittsburgh, his friends and associates organized a memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York that was attended by more than 2,000 people.
2015-11-17
WOW! – Work of the Week 9/8/15
Andy Warhol, Alfred Hitchcock, 1983
Andy Warhol
Alfred Hitchcock
1983
Unique color screenprint
30 1/2 x 20 3/4 in.
Authenticated by The Andy Warhol Foundation and stamped by The Andy Warhol Estate on verso
About This Work:
This work is a unique proof, based on a publicity photograph of the famed film director, Alfred Hitchcock. It is part of one of Warhol’s many commissioned projects, all of which reflect his avid interest in advertising and celebrity images. Warhol was asked to create the image for the Vanity Fair, March 1983 article, “The Trouble with Alfred” by Walter Clemons. The article’s basis detailed the contradictory sentiments of the director, which Warhol was able to illustrate by contrasting a black and white image of the director with gradated colored lines outlining his distinct round face and suit and tie. This unique proof however was not the final image selected by Vanity Fair for the magazine spread.
Warhol also made quite a few paintings with Alfred Hitchcock as his portrait subject. Warhol’s portraits of Hitchcock have been described by Christie’s as “a variation on the doubled self-image that Hitchcock played with in his title sequence, layering his own expressive line-drawing over the director’s silhouette, suggesting the mischievous defacement of graffiti as much as the canonization of a hero through the timelessness of the inscribed profile.” There is an apparent duality motif in all of Warhol’s renderings of the director as seen by Hitchcock’s stoic demeanor and monochrome complexion with Warhol’s playful sarcasm in the details of his tie.
At first thought, it would seem Warhol and Hitchcock had little in common. Rather they both directed films, but more over, began as visual artists – Warhol as a commercial illustrator and Hitchcock creating illustrations for title cards in silent movies. Much like Warhol’s artworks, Hitchcock’s films are renowned for their accessibility as well as their complexity. Viewers enjoy both as entertainment, while critics and scholars study both as layered works of cinematic and visual artistry. The concept of duality also pertains to themselves. Warhol and Hitchcock created public personas – Warhol as the vunderkind of the New York art scene and Hitchcock as ‘The Master of Suspense,’ but both were rather private men. Such contradiction comments on their two poles of creative energy as both the artist and the artwork. in this work, Warhol is able to show us through a unique gaze, Hitchcock himself as the masterpiece.
About The Artist:
He was one of the most enigmatic figures in American art. His work became the definitive expression of a culture obsessed with images. He was surrounded by a coterie of beautiful bohemians with names like Viva, Candy Darling, and Ultra Violet. He held endless drug- and sex-filled parties, through which he never stopped working. He single-handedly confounded the distinctions between high and low art. His films are pivotal in the formation of contemporary experimental art and pornography. He spent the final years of his life walking around the posh neighborhoods of New York with a plastic bag full of hundred dollar bills, buying jewelry and knick knacks. His name was Andy Warhol, and he changed the nature of art forever.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh. He received his B.F.A. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in 1949. That same year, he moved to New York, where he soon became successful as a commercial artist and illustrator. During the 1950s, Warhol’s drawings were published in Glamour and other magazines and displayed in department stores. He became known for his illustrations of I. Miller shoes. In 1952, the Hugo Gallery in New York presented a show of Warhol’s illustrations for Truman Capote’s writings.
During this time, Warhol had also been working on a series of pictures separate from the advertisements and illustrations. It was this work that he considered his serious artistic endeavor. Though the paintings retained much of the style of popular advertising, their motivation was just the opposite. The most famous of the paintings of this time are the thirty-two paintings of Campbell soup cans. With these paintings, and other work that reproduced Coca-Cola bottles, Superman comics, and other immediately recognizable popular images, Warhol was mirroring society’s obsessions. Where the main concern of advertising was to slip into the unconscious and unrecognizably evoke a feeling of desire, Warhol’s work was meant to make the viewer actually stop and look at the images that had become invisible in their familiarity. These ideas were similarly being dealt with by artists such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg — and came to be known as Pop Art.
Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Warhol produced work at an amazing rate. He embraced a mode of production similar to that taken on by the industries he was mimicking, and referred to his studio as “The Factory.” The Factory was not only a production center for Warhol’s paintings, silk-screens, and sculptures, but also a central point for the fast-paced high life of New York in the ’60s. Warhol’s obsession with fame, youth, and personality drew the most wild and interesting people to The Factory throughout the years. Among the regulars were Mick Jagger, Martha Graham, Lou Reed, and Truman Capote. For many, Warhol was a work of art in himself, reflecting back the basic desires of an consumerist American culture. He saw fame as the pinnacle of modern consumerism and reveled in it the way artists a hundred years before reveled in the western landscape. His oft-repeated statement that “every person will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” was an incredible insight into the growing commodification of everyday life.
By the mid-’60s, Warhol had become one of the most famous artists, in the world. He continued, however, to baffle the critics with his aggressively groundbreaking work. His paintings were primarily concerned with getting the viewer to look at something for longer than they otherwise would.
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Warhol produced hundreds of portraits, mostly in silk screen. His images of Liza Minnelli, Jimmy Carter, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Taylor, and Philip Johnson express a more subtle and expressionistic side of his work.
Following routine gall bladder surgery, Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987. After his burial in Pittsburgh, his friends and associates organized a memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York that was attended by more than 2,000 people.
For more information and price please contact the gallery at info@gsfineart.com
Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art’s Warhol Show, Withstanding the Test of Time, Features in ArtDistricts Miami
http://artdistricts.com/andy-warhol-withstanding-the-test-of-time/#more-6329
WOW! – Work of the Week 4/13/15
Andy Warhol, Flowers FS II.68
Andy Warhol Flowers FS II.68 1970
Andy Warhol
Flowers FS II.68
1970
Screenprint on paper
36 x 36 in.
This piece is signed in ball-point pen and numbered with a rubber stamp on verso.
About This Work:
Warhol’s Flowers paintings were initially inspired by a photograph of several hibiscus flowers taken by Patricia Caulfield, the then executive editor of Modern Photography magazine. Her article focused on how new, available photographic technology could be used to manipulate color. Warhol appropriated her image of the flowers, cropped, copied, enhanced the contrast and eventually settled on a square format, where the artworks could be viewed from any orientation. Flowers reveal Warhol’s vibrant color palate and bold graphic sensibilities.
About Andy Warhol:
He was one of the most enigmatic figures in American art. His work became the definitive expression of a culture obsessed with images. He was surrounded by a coterie of beautiful bohemians with names like Viva, Candy Darling, and Ultra Violet. He held endless drug- and sex-filled parties, through which he never stopped working. He single-handedly confounded the distinctions between high and low art. His films are pivotal in the formation of contemporary experimental art and pornography. He spent the final years of his life walking around the posh neighborhoods of New York with a plastic bag full of hundred dollar bills, buying jewelry and knick knacks. His name was Andy Warhol, and he changed the nature of art forever.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh. He received his B.F.A. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in 1949. That same year, he moved to New York, where he soon became successful as a commercial artist and illustrator. During the 1950s, Warhol’s drawings were published in Glamour and other magazines and displayed in department stores. He became known for his illustrations of I. Miller shoes. In 1952, the Hugo Gallery in New York presented a show of Warhol’s illustrations for Truman Capote’s writings.
During this time, Warhol had also been working on a series of pictures separate from the advertisements and illustrations. It was this work that he considered his serious artistic endeavor. Though the paintings retained much of the style of popular advertising, their motivation was just the opposite. The most famous of the paintings of this time are the thirty-two paintings of Campbell soup cans. With these paintings, and other work that reproduced Coca-Cola bottles, Superman comics, and other immediately recognizable popular images, Warhol was mirroring society’s obsessions. Where the main concern of advertising was to slip into the unconscious and unrecognizably evoke a feeling of desire, Warhol’s work was meant to make the viewer actually stop and look at the images that had become invisible in their familiarity. These ideas were similarly being dealt with by artists such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg — and came to be known as Pop Art.
Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Warhol produced work at an amazing rate. He embraced a mode of production similar to that taken on by the industries he was mimicking, and referred to his studio as “The Factory.” The Factory was not only a production center for Warhol’s paintings, silk-screens, and sculptures, but also a central point for the fast-paced high life of New York in the ’60s. Warhol’s obsession with fame, youth, and personality drew the most wild and interesting people to The Factory throughout the years. Among the regulars were Mick Jagger, Martha Graham, Lou Reed, and Truman Capote. For many, Warhol was a work of art in himself, reflecting back the basic desires of an consumerist American culture. He saw fame as the pinnacle of modern consumerism and reveled in it the way artists a hundred years before reveled in the western landscape. His oft-repeated statement that “every person will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” was an incredible insight into the growing commodification of everyday life.
By the mid-’60s, Warhol had become one of the most famous artists, in the world. He continued, however, to baffle the critics with his aggressively groundbreaking work. His paintings were primarily concerned with getting the viewer to look at something for longer than they otherwise would.
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Warhol produced hundreds of portraits, mostly in silk screen. His images of Liza Minnelli, Jimmy Carter, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Taylor, and Philip Johnson express a more subtle and expressionistic side of his work.
Following routine gall bladder surgery, Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987. After his burial in Pittsburgh, his friends and associates organized a memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York that was attended by more than 2,000 people.
WOW! – Work of the Week 4/6/15
Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Kennedy II
Andy Warhol Jacqueline Kennedy 1966
Andy Warhol
Jacqueline Kennedy II
1966
Screenprint on paper
24 x 30 in.
This piece is signed with a rubber stamp and numbered in pencil on verso.
About This Work:
This work captures first lady, Jackie Kennedy at her husband’s funeral. Andy Warhol chose this image of Jackie because of her expressionless state. Upon close inspection the viewer sees the doubled lack of emotion and feeling in her facial expression and her dead stare into space.
She had just lost her husband, and the country their beloved President JFK. Her blank stare and somber being symbolizes how America felt int his time of loss. America in a time of uncertainty and mourning was just as lost without JFK as Jackie Kennedy was without her husband.
About Andy Warhol:
He was one of the most enigmatic figures in American art. His work became the definitive expression of a culture obsessed with images. He was surrounded by a coterie of beautiful bohemians with names like Viva, Candy Darling, and Ultra Violet. He held endless drug- and sex-filled parties, through which he never stopped working. He single-handedly confounded the distinctions between high and low art. His films are pivotal in the formation of contemporary experimental art and pornography. He spent the final years of his life walking around the posh neighborhoods of New York with a plastic bag full of hundred dollar bills, buying jewelry and knick knacks. His name was Andy Warhol, and he changed the nature of art forever.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh. He received his B.F.A. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in 1949. That same year, he moved to New York, where he soon became successful as a commercial artist and illustrator. During the 1950s, Warhol’s drawings were published in Glamour and other magazines and displayed in department stores. He became known for his illustrations of I. Miller shoes. In 1952, the Hugo Gallery in New York presented a show of Warhol’s illustrations for Truman Capote’s writings.
During this time, Warhol had also been working on a series of pictures separate from the advertisements and illustrations. It was this work that he considered his serious artistic endeavor. Though the paintings retained much of the style of popular advertising, their motivation was just the opposite. The most famous of the paintings of this time are the thirty-two paintings of Campbell soup cans. With these paintings, and other work that reproduced Coca-Cola bottles, Superman comics, and other immediately recognizable popular images, Warhol was mirroring society’s obsessions. Where the main concern of advertising was to slip into the unconscious and unrecognizably evoke a feeling of desire, Warhol’s work was meant to make the viewer actually stop and look at the images that had become invisible in their familiarity. These ideas were similarly being dealt with by artists such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg — and came to be known as Pop Art.
Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Warhol produced work at an amazing rate. He embraced a mode of production similar to that taken on by the industries he was mimicking, and referred to his studio as “The Factory.” The Factory was not only a production center for Warhol’s paintings, silk-screens, and sculptures, but also a central point for the fast-paced high life of New York in the ’60s. Warhol’s obsession with fame, youth, and personality drew the most wild and interesting people to The Factory throughout the years. Among the regulars were Mick Jagger, Martha Graham, Lou Reed, and Truman Capote. For many, Warhol was a work of art in himself, reflecting back the basic desires of an consumerist American culture. He saw fame as the pinnacle of modern consumerism and reveled in it the way artists a hundred years before reveled in the western landscape. His oft-repeated statement that “every person will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” was an incredible insight into the growing commodification of everyday life.
By the mid-’60s, Warhol had become one of the most famous artists, in the world. He continued, however, to baffle the critics with his aggressively groundbreaking work. His paintings were primarily concerned with getting the viewer to look at something for longer than they otherwise would.
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Warhol produced hundreds of portraits, mostly in silk screen. His images of Liza Minnelli, Jimmy Carter, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Taylor, and Philip Johnson express a more subtle and expressionistic side of his work.
Following routine gall bladder surgery, Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987. After his burial in Pittsburgh, his friends and associates organized a memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York that was attended by more than 2,000 people.