Oberlin, Ohio
Andy Warhol was a very interesting Pop artist. Some
people called him "The King of Pop Art." He was the man who
did the Campbell's soup cans. The reason I wanted to study
about Andy Warhol is because I went to the Andy Warhol
museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I loved it so much I
wanted to learn more about Andy Warhol. Also, when I came to
class and talked about Andy Warhol people did not know who
he was so I want people to learn about him from my report. I
wanted to do a report this year about a person and Andy
Warhol was a great choice. When someone is studying a topic they expect to find some
particular facts. I hoped to learn a lot about about some of
the films he did and I found a little but not as much as I
expected. When I started my report and webbed, I thought I
could find information about his college art with pop art.
In the long run , what I hoped I would learn worked out.
Most of the time it turned out as I expected. One fact
surprised me and that is that Andy Warhol is gay. First , I
did not know if I should put it in the report but then I
realized that if I did not include that information an
important part of his life would be left out . There is one
more thing that was unexpected. Andy Warhol was once asked
to defend himself from criticism and he said,"I can't, they
are right." I am happy that most of what I hoped I would
learn turned out as I expected. Researching was fun for me this year. I found most of my
information in books. My own books were especially helpful.
Unlike last year, I found some good information on the
internet, but most of it was information that I already had.
I researched by reading a paragraph in the book and if it
had good information in it, I would write what I remembered.
Then, I would go back and clarify and expand. Finding
information was not hard for me. To me Andy Warhol had a really good childhood. He was
born on August 6,1928 in Pittsburgh. His original name was
Andrew Warhola. Andy Warhol exhibited artistic talent at an
early age. His mother supported his talent and, starting in
fourth grade, Andy took classes at the Carnegie Museum of
Art in Pittsburgh. When Andy Warhol was nine years old he
got Chorea (also known as St. Vitus' Dance) a nervous
disorder characterized by jerky movements. Strangely his
skin lost pigment and some think he became albino. The
illness kept him at home for two months. In 1942 Andy
Warhol's father died after a three year illness. Andy Warhol
was just fourteen years old. Andy Warhol studied Pictorial
Design at Carnegie Institute of Technology from 1945-1949.
All through college Andy Warhol's boyish personality made
him seem even younger than fifteen years old. He failed a
required course called "Thought and Expression". I think
Andy Warhol's childhood was really sad at some points
because his father died when he was young and at some points
I think his childhood was great because he had such great
art lessons. Andy Warhol's adulthood was spent in a very different
place than where he grew up. In the summer of 1949 Andy
Warhol moved to New York with a friend from Pittsburgh named
Philip Pearstien, who was a painter. Within a year of moving
to New York, Andrew Warhola dropped the "a" from his name
and started signing his art work Andy Warhol. One reason he
dropped the "a" from his name was because immigrants wanted
to be American. He americanized his name by dropping the
"a". Around 1954 Andy Warhol died his hair a straw color,
which it stayed until the day of his death. It was to be his
image all over the world. In 1956 The Museum of Modern Art
included one of his shoe drawings in a group show. The same
year Warhol embarked on a world tour with a friend, to whom
he announced a greater ambition. He wanted to be the next
Henri Matisse. When Andy warhol was living in New York, he
would call his older brother Jon every week to keep in
touch. Andy Warhol, in 1957, was awarded a further
prestigious prize for commercial artists. The Art Directors
Club Medal. By 1960 Andy Warhol was a rich and famous artist
who could afford a town house on Lexington Avenue, which he
quickly filled with his collections. But he was not yet
satisfied. Early 1963 Andy Warhol moved from his parlor to
an abandoned firehouse on the East 87th street. The place
had no telephone. Andy Warhol's life nearly came to a
violent end in June 1968. A would-be member of The Factory,
Valerie Solanas, shot and nearly killed Andy Warhol. Andy
had a very strange adulthood. Pop Art was a big part of Andy Warhol's life. Warhol
crammed three careers into one lifetime. He was a commercial
artist (1949-1960) for which he earned a minor artistic
reputation. Warhol was a Pop Artist (1960-1968) for which he
invented machines and became famous. Also, he was a Business
Artist (1968-1987) and capitalized on his celebrity status.
Pittsburgh influenced Andy Warhol a lot. He drew pictures of
Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh and he did a lot of work
with the Strip District, also in Pittsburgh. Andy Warhol got his first job as a commercial artist in
New York illustrating a story for Glamour Magazine called
"What is Success?" Warhol's blotted line submissions were an
instant success and he was called "A Hot Young Talent" by
art editors throughout the fashion and advertising worlds.
Warhol made it simple and plain and therefore was able to
create the icons of Pop Art. He wanted to provoke viewers
into saying, "I could do that." At the time Andy Warhol
chose to concentrate on Campbell's soup, it was America's
canned soup of choice. Four out of five bowls served were
Campbell's. Campbell's soup is easily recognizable as Warhol
himself wanted to be, and is. In fact, this made Andy Warhol
a brand-name Pop Artist. In 1956 Andy Warhol had a phase
where he did pictures of famous people's shoes, such as
Elvis Presley's and Kate Smith's. These drawings of shoes
made a pattern that is quiet familiar in his work. Andy Warhol moved away from conventional art and tried
mechanical art. He still had to make the same decisions that
any artist would make like size, color, and/or subject
matter. In 1960 Andy Warhol was 32 years old. he rose to the
top of his profession as a Commercial Artist. That same year
he made his first ambitious works on canvas. The images were
taken from funny papers and cheesy advertisements like you
see in a comic book. Some of them included Batman, Superman,
unappealing toe treatments, canned peaches, sale prices, and
wigs. On June 4, 1962 Warhol got the idea of painting "129
Die In Jet" from his friend named Henry Geldzahler. Warhol
had already done some paintings of the covers of newspapers,
so Geldzahler handed him a copy of The New York Mirror. It
was slashed with a story of a plane crash and Henry
suggested that he paint it. Andy really created the world of
Pop Art. One of the most common medium Andy Warhol used was
silk-screen. The silk-screen method of printing is where
paint is pushed through holes in a cutout stencil to create
an image. A fine mesh screen is stretched over the stencil.
Originally this screen was made of silk, but now it is
usually made of artificial fibers. One color of paint or ink
is poured over the screen, pushed through the mesh and onto
a blank sheet of paper. Where the stencil is, the paper
remains white. Many copies of the image can be made this
way. Different areas of color can be added by cutting out
new stencils and printing from them using different colors.
Silkscreen printing creates flat areas of limited colors.
This was just the kind of expression that Andy Warhol wanted
to make. At the same time Andy Warhol was creating a Pop Art
revolution, he began shooting 16 mm films. Among them the
Landmark Empire, The Chelsea Girls, and Lonesome Cowboys. He
also directed and produced The Exploding Plastic, featuring
the influential rock group, the Velvet Underground. In 1963
Andy Warhol started making his underground film productions.
The first films were Sleep, which lasted six hours and
Empire which ran eight hours. In the following years he
produced more than seventy five films. The films Flash, made
in 1968 and Trash, made in 1969, became big box office
successes. Andy Warhol wanted his films to be different and
not what people expected. He wanted to make films where you
could get up and leave, go talk with your friends, come
back, and not miss anything. After creating The Chelsea
Girls, Warhol handed over more and more of the film work to
his assistant Paul Morrissey. The films from The Factory
became more and more professional and at the same time more
conventional as they slowly adopted the patterns of
narrative films. It is hard to imagine he balanced Pop Art
and films at the same time. Andy Warhol saved "everything." The highlight of the
archives was Warhol's time capsules. This work spanning over
thirty years from the 1930's to the late 1980's consists of
six hundred ten cardboard boxes. Warhol began filling the
boxes in 1974, sealed them and sent them to storage.
Photographs, newspapers, and magazines, fan letters,
business and personal correspondence, artwork, books,
exhibition catalogs, and phone messages. These things were
put on an almost daily basis into boxes kept at the end of
his desk. The archives consist of over 8,000 cubic feet of
material. The collections include scrapbooks of press
clippings related to Warhol's work and his private and
public life; art supplies and materials used by Andy Warhol;
and posters adverting his work and films. Also, there are
over 4,000 audio tapes of conversations and interviews with
friends and associates. There are a lot of photographs,
clothing, and his silver-white wigs. To me the things he
kept were weird. Andy Warhol had many friends that were celebrities. Andy
loved hanging out with celebrities and he loved to meet
people and socialize. In 1963 Warhol hung out with movie
stars at a party thrown in his honor by the actor and
photographer Denis Hopper. Andy Warhol, in 1975, painted
Mick Jagger. To the silk-screen portraits he added
Expressionistic painting. Andy Warhol actually paid his
friends to mass produce his artwork. Andy Warhol had some
really famous friends. There are many different quotes that Andy Warhol has
said. One of his most famous quotes is, "In the future
everybody will be famous for 15 minutes." Another quote that
Andy Warhol used to say about himself is, "If you want to
know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my
paintings and films and me, there I am, there is nothing
behind it." One of my favorite quotes is, "The most
beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. The most beautiful
thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing
in Florence is McDonald's. Peking and Moscow don't have
anything beautiful yet." There was a quote that told what
Andy Warhol thought about this country, "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 Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke,
and just think, you can drink Coke too." I found a very
interesting quote from Andy Warhol about his paintings, "My
paintings never turn out the way I expect them to, but I'm
never surprised." Andy Warhol once said, "A lot of people
thought it was me that everyone at the factory was hanging
around, that I was some kind of big attraction, that
everyone came to see, but that 's absolutely backward. It
was me who was hanging around everyone else." Another quote
from Andy Warhol was, "Once you 'got' pop you could never
see a sign the same way again. And once you 'thought' pop
you could never see America the same way again." The last
quote I found by Andy Warhol was, "They always say time
changes everything, but you actually have to change it
yourself." A lot of the quotes Andy Warhol said were
interesting. I found a lot of surprising things about this famous
artist. Andy Warhol was cheap, he kept a detailed list of
how much he spent. He was also afraid of people breaking
into his house and stealing something. Andy Warhol skipped
eleventh grade and graduated from high school with a
yearbook saying, "As genuine as a fingerprint." Once Andy
Warhol was asked to defend his art from criticism and he
said, "I can't, they are right." Though Andy Warhol never
missed out on any party or public event, he loved to be
represented by a double. Andy Warhol had done lectures for
colleges and had given the job over to Allen Midgut. Warhol
was easy to mimic, he often had dark sunglasses and a white
wig. Andy Warhol was a Byzantine Catholic and religion was
important to him. One of the astonishing things to me was
Andy Warhol was openly gay, something which the Catholic
Church does not permit. When Warhol had collectors over, he
would answer the door with an eighteenth century mask with
feathers. He played the same song very loud over and over
again. The collector's bought his works of art and Warhol
learned his crazy approach to collector's worked. Andy
Warhol was approached about building a museum in New York
for his artwork. He wanted his museum to be in New York, but
the cost of real estate was too high, so his museum is in
his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Andy Warhol died February
22, 1987 following gall bladder surgery. Which means he was
fifty-nine when he died. Five years after his death The Andy
Warhol Museum opened in Pittsburgh, PA. Andy Warhol had a
very different life than most people. There are many jobs Andy Warhol inspired. One would be a
pop artist, a silk-screen artist or just an artist. You
could get a job in a museum as a docent, a tour guide.
Another job connected to Andy Warhol would be an advertiser.
You would have to go to college and take classes. There are
many jobs connected with Andy Warhol. My experience was enjoyable. At times the report was
difficult for me but most of the time it was easy doing the
report. Getting fact cards this year was easier and more fun
than last year. I think doing this project has shown me that
there are very different people out there. It also has
showed a little behind the scenes of what a celebrity is
like. If I had more time, I would try to find out more about
Interview Magazine, which he started. I would also like to
find out about his college years and the artwork he did
those years. Overall, Andy Warhol was a great topic for
me. Glossary albino - a person whose skin, hair, and eyes lack color
because of genetic factors. archives - a place in which public records or historical
documents are stored. business art - one who capitalizes on celebrity. Chorea - a nervous disorder characterized by jerky
movements. commercial art - one who earns a minor artist
reputation. conventional art - art that was thought to be unique,
visionary, serious, meant to convey emotion, and be
priceless. Factory - Andy Warhol's home and studio on 47th street in
New York. mechanical art - art which can be mass produced, uses
preexisting images, noncommittal, and priced accordingly by
small, medium, and large. medium - the material or technical means of artistic
expression. New York Mirror - a newspaper in New York. Phipps Conservatory - a greenhouse for growing or
displaying plants, located in Pittsburgh, PA. pigment - any color matter in cells or other tissues of
animals, plants, or humans. Pop Art - art in which common place objects are used as
subject matter. Pop Artist - a person who makes Pop Art. silk-screen - a stencil process in which ink is forced
onto the material to be printed through a screen made of
silk. Bibliography Bolton, Linda. (2000). Pop Art. Liconwood,
Illinois. Honnef, Klaus. (2000). Warhol. Germany. Katz, Jonathan. (1993). Andy Warhol. New York,
NY. Mason, Antony. (2002). In The Time of Andy Warhol.
London, England. Schaffner, Ingrid. (1999). The Essential Andy
Warhol. New York, NY.
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John Memmott at
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or Kim Koos at
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