ANDY WARHOL: 5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS

After Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol is the most famous and important artist of the 20^th century.
His works have become icons of the contemporary era, and he celebrated Western consumerist and pop lifestyle, using photography in a new way, by choosing acid colours and mixing and fusing advertising with art.

Warhol’s expression about 15 minutes of fame was prophetic, and today, in the era of social media is a reality.
However, Andy Warhol was not only a visionary artist, but also a source of inspiration for other artists, photographers, fashion designers, musicians and intellectuals from all over the world.

In this post I’ll tell you 5 things you have to know about the life and the works of Andy Warhol.

1. MASS PRODUCTION OF HIS ARTWORKS

Warhol made a well-known technique as screen printing popular in order to mass-produce his works and spread them on a large scale.
The basic idea was that of making art a consumer product like those sold at the malls, by rendering it meaningless and modifying the concept of unique work of art.

2. POP ART

Andy Warhol is the father of Pop Art.
He transformed ordinary objects and the protagonists of American popular culture into works of art and, as a consequence, inserted the artwork into market trends.
After all, his career had begun in the fashion and advertising world, by contributing to magazines such as Vogue and Glamour.

With Pop Art attention focuses not on reality but on modern objects and modern myths, that is celebrities.

Andy Warhol all’interno della Factory

3. ANDY WARHOL’S FACTORY

Andy Warhol transferred the idea of Renaissance workshop to the world of contemporary artistic production.
In fact, Warhol founded “The Factory”, which was a studio-atelier where artists met and created works of art in a collaborative way, but always under his direction.
This method completely overturned the idea that the artist should be a solitary creator of artworks. With Warhol the artist became more similar to an architect or a designer who designs but doesn’t create his work with his own hands.

The Factory quickly became the meeting place for celebrities, intellectuals, musicians and artists.

4. ANDY WARHOL’S WORKS

The most famous works by Andy Warhol are the silkscreen paintings portraying “Marilyn Monroe”’s face, “Campbell’s Soup” Cans and the series dedicated to “Coca-Cola” bottles.
His feature is the repetition along with the representation of great events such as the series dedicated to JFK’s assassination, on November 22^nd 1963.

La Campbell’s Soup di Warhol

5. ANDY WARHOL AND MUSIC

In 1965 Warhol designed the album cover for “Velvet Underground & Nico” which features the famous banana.
Actually, he not only designed the cover, but he also produced the record which is considered still today one of the most eminent and influential albums of rock music.

That explains more than a thousand words the importance of Warhol and his creativity: he was an all-round artist and capable of making a major contribution to each artistic field, from music to cinema (he produced experimental full-length movies) and supported artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

READ ALSO: Tuttomondo, The Pisa’s mural in Pisa by Keith Haring.

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