_andy warhol's impact on art _
By: Anonymous
Page 1 Andrew Warhola was born August Sixth, 1928, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.
He was the youngest son of Julie and Andrej Warhola, both immigrants from
Czechoslovakia. After a quiet childhood spent alternately alone and in art
classes, Andrew went to college. He then got a job doing commercial art,
largely advertisements for large companies. Over time his name was shortened
and Andy Warhol changed the face of modern art. Through his silver lined
Factory and the many people who frequented it a revolution was born. This
paper will discuss some of these people and examine the impact they all made
on modern artRuska Dolina was a small Ruthenian suburb of Pittsburgh. It
was populated with, of course, eastern European immigrants. Andy Warhol was
born into this very close-knit neighborhood speaking his parent's native
tongue. Julia Warhola was herself a bit of an artist, in later years she would
collaborate with her youngest son. Andrej Warhola worked in the great steel
mills of Pittsburgh. The Warhola household was very typical of the times.
Julia would stay home, cook, and read to her boys while Mr. Warhola worked in
a steel mill sweatshop with hundreds of other immigrants. The family was
strictly Eastern Orthodox Catholics. On Sunday, the day of rest, no one was
allowed to move. These days were passed indoors with Mrs. Warhola telling
stories to the boys. Like most children, Andrew collected the pictures and
posters of various celebrities that would define such a body of his work in
later years. Andrew was a rather small boy. In interviews Andy Warhol said
that he was pale and scrawny and that he was thusly bullied on several
occasions by his classmates When he was fourteen Andrew's father died of
tuberculosis, a common malady of the times, especially for the profession.
This had a profound affect on young Andrew. As was the Orthodox tradition, the
body was laid out in the house for three days of mourning and visitation.
During this span Andrew hid under his bed refusing to look at his father's
body. Despite the poorly paying job, Andrej managed to set aside money for
college. However, he saved only enough to send one child, and the general
consensus was that this would be Andrew. In Fifth grade Andrew started
attending the free Saturday classes that the Carnegie Institute taught. It is
noted that even then young Andrew excelled at his art. Due to the bullying by
his classmates he stayed inside a great deal, working on his art. Due to his
aptitude in school, Andrew skipped two grades and was admitted into the
Carnegie Institute of Technology at the young age of 16. Once in the school
Andrew was admitted to the Department of Painting and Design. He studied
various aspects of commercial graphic design and after his graduation he moved
to New York to seek his fortune Page 2 Once out of college Andrew of
course had very little money and for a brief while he shared a basement
apartment with seventeen other individuals. Finding employment demanded a
never-ending series of portfolio submissions. In an interview Andrew said that
his name was accidentally changed to Warhol. He says that it was never a
conscious decision, it rather happened over time. Regardless, the name change
stuck, the first name was shortened, and the world-renowned artist was
forming. The basement with seventeen roommates did not last long; Andy was
rather fast at finding steady employment. In 1951, two years out of school,
Andy Warhol bought a nice apartment for himself. Shortly thereafter his mother
and her three cats showed up one evening. Julia Warhola was to live with the
son she adored so greatly for her remaining twenty years. During these two
decades Andy kept his home life strikingly separate from his public persona.
His time with his mother was cherished. Julia was in fact his first
collaborator in art. Andy helped her make a book about cats and "*censored*
heaven", where all cats went. This book was an interesting mixture of his
mother's folk art background and his unique styling. Over this time Andy
Warhol had his world famous silver covered "Factory" and his constantly
revolving entourage and hangers-on. One of the so-called crazy people that
Andy let hang around was Valerie Solanas. She surprised him one day in the
Factory and shot him twice with a thirty-two. The bullets ripped through his
stomach, spleen, liver, esophagus, and both lungs. At one point Andy Warhol
was pronounced dead, but it was not yet his time. The more reputable denizens
of the Factory, the people who both influenced and were influenced by Andy
Warhol, each in their own way made a contribution to art. Everyone who
frequented the Factory had his or her own futures and pasts, be it the guy
sweeping the floors or the Beat poets who dropped by. Celebrities and United
States Presidents, even foreign royalty knew Andy Warhol. This man's workshop
was both a breeding ground of art and a place for gathering and partying. In a
cool and withdrawn manner Andy Warhol governed an empire of art that stretched
in every conceivable direction. Curiously, the other prominent artists of the
time, such as Jasper Johns, avoided contact with Andy Warhol. This has been
largely attributed to his open stance on his homosexuality. At the time it was
considered more appropriate for the male painters to be macho. This can be
seen in Jasper Johns' cigarettes hanging out of his mouth as he paints his
canvases, and his macho stance in other aspects. All the while these prominent
artists were privately gay, but were rather scared of Warhol's stance on his
public life. This is rather inconsequential, however, as Warhol Page
3 much preferred the fringe of society. He practically collected the outcasts;
occasionally promoting artists, such as he did with Jean-Michel Basquait. Yet
the promotion and friendship did not stop at painting. Andy Warhol had an
association with the Velvet Underground, and was friends with the Rolling
Stones. Andy Warhol's commercial art background was still put to use after he
became the new art sensation. Perhaps the only reason he put these skills to
use was because of his involvement with his friends in the music industry, the
Velvet Underground and to some extent the Rolling Stones. Andy actively
participated in the rise of the Velvet Underground. In the early Seventies
they were quite stylish, in large part due to their interaction with Warhol
and his various associates. Andy Warhol even designed the cover for their
albums. One cover specifically evokes Pop Art. One might say the large, plain
banana with the dotted pattern more resembles Liechtenstein than Warhol.
Regardless, this was not the only album cover Andy Warhol did. He also did the
original work for the Rolling Stones album, Sticky Fingers. It featured an
actual canvas depiction of blue jeans complete with a working zipper. This was
more in line with Warhol, keeping with his shock value ideas. The Sticky
Fingers album cover was not the only interaction Andy Warhol had with the
Rolling Stones. Warhol did a number of unique portraits for his friends and
colleagues, largely as favors and gifts. The list perhaps reads like a virtual
who's who of the day. Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Princess Caroline and
Michael Jackson were in the number of the sitters for Andy Warhol. As
self-restrained and quiet Andy Warhol was, he still somehow managed to
interact with an amazing number of artists of the day. The list of Andy
Warhol's friends and colleagues is perhaps best started with Jed Johnson. Jed
was a very young man when he was adopted into the Factory. He was admitted on
the condition that he swept the floors daily. This he gratefully agreed to do.
Over time he and Andy Warhol grew very close, eventually he moved in with Andy
and his mother. Some say that they became lovers, but this is rather
inconsequential. It was discovered at some point that Jed Johnson was a great
interior decorator. Jed beautifully decorated the interior of Warhol's
spacious seventeen bedroom flat in New York. In later years Jed Johnson became
quite sought after, decorating for Mick Jagger, Barbra Striesand, and Richard
Gere. Jed's life, however, was cut short when he was traveling in the TWA
flight that wrecked off of New York in 1996. The next to be talked about,
perhaps the next adoption of the factory, was Jean-Michel Basquait. A high
school dropout at the age of seventeen, Basquait developed his unique style in
Page 4 the subway system of New York. Jean-Michel was absorbed in
the newest wave of fashion, graffiti. His style blended an eye catching
grouping of short poetic messages and odd symbols. Eventually he and Warhol
met, Basquait had a show, and moved onto marking on a variety of different
surfaces. The prevalent, reoccurring object in his work is an African-like
mask. His work was largely schematic and filled with interesting color
patterns. The colors and variety of lines and symbols gave his work an amazing
vibration. The work also meshed classical influences with an almost childlike
primitivism. Keith Haring was the other main graffiti artist on the scene at
the time. He also frequented the Factory, but was much less a fixture than
Basquait. Keith Haring's main schooling came in the subway system, as did
Basquait. Haring, however, also had formal teachings. This and his insatiable
appetite for tagging everything around him earned him the title of the Dean of
Graffiti. Eventually he got out of the subways and started showing his work.
Also like Basquait, there are certain things that remain prevalent in all of
his work. For example, the radiant baby and barking dog are repeated and
perfected. Keith Haring's style, like so many others from the Pop era, has
been copied over and over. The most recent duplication was perhaps by the
automobile conglomerate Honda for a commercial promoting one of their
vehicles. Regardless, Keith Haring had a uniqueness and productivity that
eventually became planted in the world psyche. Another artist that frequented
the Factory was Kenny Scharf. Kenny Scharf was also briefly a graffiti artist.
He, however, grew tired of this and moved on to create whole environments.
These environments were largely influenced by popular culture television; they
were filled with modified electronic gear and other appliances. Everything in
these environments was influenced by television science fiction, in that they
closely resembled the quasi-futuristic backdrops of shows such as Buck Rogers
and The Jetsons. At first Kenny Scharf worked in closet sized spaces, but he
moved on to do whole installations in galleries. One of his more famous
involved these mechanical and electronic objects painted uniformly with kitsch
items glued to them. For example, Kenny Scharf would glue plastic dinosaur
toys and robots and so on to the tops of the televisions and so on. While
Kenny Scharf was a rather regular visitor at the Factory, he and Warhol did
not have entirely too much in common with each other. Perhaps the artist most
similar in appearance to Andy Warhol was David Hockney. Much like Warhol,
Hockney's appearance brought him a great deal of notoriety and press coverage.
David Hockney also emerged at the same time as the Beatles and rode, perhaps,
on Page 5 their shock value. The early nineteen sixty's was a time
of artists coming into their own, the beginning of the explosion of the
artistic counterculture, with which Andy Warhol fit right in. Hockney wore
"granny glasses", gold lame, and peroxided his hair. He was perhaps destined
for stardom; he in fact already had notoriety before even emerging from
college. This was mostly due to his amazing productivity. His work had a
unique photographic quality, due, of course, mostly to the fact the he worked
largely from photos. He and Warhol were not exactly close friends but
nonetheless they had a bond, as can be seen in their personal style. The next
few artists had little really in common with Andy Warhol both stylistically
and personally. They did however frequent the Factory, which makes them
worthwhile to mention. It is not beyond speculation that the mere socializing
at Warhol's personal studio influenced them in some form or another. Richard
Serra had a very simple and very unique form of sculpture. He would balance
large sheets of lead or steal. These sheets were very rough both texturally
and visually. Richard Serra purposely left them this way; he did not feel that
they needed to be molested in any way. Rather, the beauty in his pieces was
that he would balance them in various ways. In one piece, entitled One ton
Prop, he balanced four five hundred-pound sheets of lead on each other. The
idea here was that they resembled a stack of cards. They completely belied
their weight; they appeared to be very light and easy to balance. Part of what
made his pieces so interesting is that they easily could have killed a man if
they were to be somehow knocked over. Bizarre as it is, this is apparently a
great appeal in art. Another strange idea for art belonged to Christo. This
Bulgarian-born artist escaped the Iron Curtain, went to Paris, and started
wrapping things in cloth. These wrapped objects varied greatly from a woman to
a chair, to nothing. In due time, his ideas expanded, and Christo moved on to
wrapping whole buildings. This couldn't last forever, as Christo's attention
again wavered, this time to nature. In southern California Christo and his
wife got permission to string together an amazingly long fence made of billowy
fabric. This fence stretched across flowing, rolling hilltops and valleys and
eventually terminated in the Pacific Ocean. But it doesn't end there, for
Christo's ambitious undertakings continue today. Another artist in this vein
is Marisol. The full name is Marisol Escobar, but this is not really of any
consequence. Marisol is a Paris-born Venezuelan artist who worked out of New
York. This rather amazing worldliness gave her a unique perspective. Her art
mostly consisted of making mixed media assemblages. These assemblages were
usually portraits of famous people, for instance Andy Warhol. Others she
immortalized include Linden Johnson and John Page 6 Wayne. Her work
usually consisted of wood, plaster, paint and whatever objects she happened to
find and like. The last artist of the type discussed above is Julian Schnabel.
Julian is Brooklyn born and yet raised in Texas. She in a way ignited the
Nineteen-Eighties. When she burst onto the scene art was rather static, rather
boring. She started showing with her epically scaled works. The sheer size and
the iconographic imagery shocked artist of the time, as did her cultural
archetypes. She came along at the end of Warhol's career; he didn't really
have time to be influenced by her. But her electric style certainly influenced
the people she would have seen when being around Andy Warhol and the people he
saw at the time. The last visual artist to be talked about is Roy
Lichtenstein. Roy Lichtenstein is easily the artist most like Andy Warhol
stylistically. They basically broke onto the art scene at the same time. They
each had an amazing simplistic approach. The difference between the two was
perhaps Lichtenstein's more detailed approach. While Andy Warhol loved the
silk screen and the repeatedly printed picture, Lichtenstein preferred to
majestically blow up single pictures. He grossly enlarged comic strip panels
from the time, including detail down to the dots used by newspaper printing
presses. This approach of the colored dots is called Ben Day, named after the
pioneer of the process. Roy Lichtenstein's most famous example is Whaam. This
amazing work of art is approximately fourteen feet across. The scale and skill
of this work is what set it apart. Also the use of limited, flat colors helped
to perfect the theme. It could be said also that Lichtenstein mildly parodied
these images so familiar to the American pop culture. In addition to these
painting, Roy Lichtenstein made both large adaptations of Pablo Picasso
paintings and sculpture. His sculpture echoed his love of the pure, solid
line. One could say that his sculptures were far more graphically oriented
than three-dimensionally oriented. These two amazing artists were no doubt
friends, if for nothing more than the common bond they shared in their bold
artistic statements, their establishment of a movement. The Beatniks were also
seen frequently around The Factory in the early days. The Factory must have
been the absolute best place to se and be seen, as can be judged from the
scope of people present there. The most important and popular Beatniks, Allen
Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey all frequented the Factory. These men
quite possibly influenced each other through their individual sense of
freedom. Each, however, had their own desires. Kerouac, for instance, did not
really know how to deal with celebrity, he simply wanted to be and do.
Page 7 When he wrote On the Road he simply wanted to chronicle the
adventures that he had travelling. He did not exactly want to shock anyone, as
Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsburg did. The fame that came with On the Road was
never very comfortable for Jack Kerouac. Allen Ginsburg, on the other hand,
had not problem with his celebrity. When he first publicly read Howl he got
exactly the response he was after. His book was banned in several places,
which gave him immediate notoriety. In this way he and Andy Warhol were alike.
They were both thoroughly open and frank in public; in fact it could be said
that both men enjoyed shocking the general public. Both led exceedingly
abnormal lives, enjoying the shock value of it all. The main difference was
that Ginsburg communicated with writing, while Warhol stuck mainly to his art.
Ken Kesey was also a Beatnik regular. Perhaps crazier than the rest, he still
managed to write arguably the most sensible book. When chronicled in On the
Road, Ken Kesey was the insane Dean Moriarty. Given this character, he most
likely would have fit right in at the hectic, hedonistic scene of the Factory
in the early Nineteen-Sixties. Each of the artists mentioned here met Andy
Warhol at different phases of his career. While the majority of them were seen
at the infamous Factory, some came both before and after. Regardless of where
they met and knew Warhol, they each had their own individual lessons and
impacts. Jean-Michel Basquait was perhaps the last artist to come around and
really know Andy Warhol. Julia Warhol was certainly the first. In between were
very many amazing artists, almost too many artists to talk about. The most
important, of course, have been mentioned in this paper. Andy Warhol is a man
still impacting art long after his death. His visionary style changed forever
the face of both commercial art and gallery art. Hopefully this paper
communicated a bit of that genius. ANDY WARHOL, THE FACTORY, AND THE IMPRINT
MADE IN ART
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