Andy Warhol Essay: King Of Pop Art

 

Andy Warhol EssayPop Art is a direction, which prevailed first in contemporary art, and then in various spheres of mass culture of 20-th century. Pop art emerged in the 50-s centuries of 20-th century in the USA and UK and finally won nice place at the exhibition in Venice in 1964, defeating abstractionism. Andy Warhol is rightly considered as king of pop art. Creational career of Andy Warhol and his impact in development of pop art will be examined in this Andy Warhol essay.

Birth of Pop Art’s Legend

Our site specializes on writing of qualitative English essay for you. Smartwriters.org wants to tell you about the main person of pop art today. Andy Warhol is actually nickname of Andrew Warhola. He was versatile personality. He was not only talented artist, but also had passion to the direction and writing. During his 58-year life, he became that person, which achieved great success in the sphere of pop art and modern art at all. Artist was also the founder of the ideology “homo universale”, as well as an author of art creation, that become as synonym for definition “commercial pop art”. In 1960 he was the manager and producer of first alternative rock band “Velvet Underground”. Several feature and documentary films are shot about the life of artist.

It is difficult to say strict date of birth of artist. Various figures are told, such as 1927, 1928, and 1930 years. Author himself considers that he was born on 6 August 1928. He deliberately confused the journalists all his life, referring to different dates and places of birth. Perhaps, that was due to fact that artist’s temperament did not allow him to accept the fact that he was the son of ordinary immigrants from Transcarpathia. Author chose Hollywood as the place of his birth, because the true circumstances of his birth and origin did not fit his legend, which he created and wanted to believe. He was the youngest among three children in the family. His childhood was during the years of Great Depression, which resulted in unemployment, poverty and hunger. He was a shy, ugly child with very blond hair and skin. Warhol suffered from a disease called “Dance of St.Vittus”. It is a disease of the nervous system, when the muscles start to contract spasmodically and involuntarily. After an attack of illness, Andy used to spend two months in the bed. That is why, he looked glossy magazines and comics for a long time and cut out pictures of celebrities. Later, artist drew his inspiration from the faces of celebrities for his creation. Warhol draw the idol of youth Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, which he admired.

The love of drawing was passed on to him from his mother. She drew herself and taught his son the art of drawing. Andy graduated the school with 51 points from existing 278. Andrew Warhola had difficulties with reading and writing.

Andrew decided to enroll at the art department of Carnegie Mellon University, probably because Joseph Fitzpatrick was one of the teachers at the institute. Joseph also gave lessons in the fine arts in the school, where future artist studied. Still, it was a familiar person for the shy and unsociable young man, and it was better than nothing. Sympathetic professors struggled for a talented student. They did not want talented student to be expelled from the university. Andy Warhol draw children, picking in their noses or beggars instead of classical models.

Creational Career Of Andy Warhol and His Impact on Pop Art

In 1949, Andrew Warhola graduated Carnegie Mellon University in the sphere of graphic design. He was awarded with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In the same year, he went to New York, where he was engaged first years in graphic design of commercial advertisement. He mainly made drawings of women’s shoes for magazines of fashion and advertising application “New York Times”. His work in commercial advertisement brought fame and creational pseudonym to Warhola. One-day signature under his picture was typed incorrectly. That is how Andrew Warhola has become as Andy Warhol.

Already by 1950, success came to him after effective registration of advertisement about shoe’s company. Andy was considered as qualitative specialist in the branch of advertising business in the USA. He got by with any orders in such magazines as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

In 1956, artist was awarded the special prize from the “Club of art editors”.

Warhol was already a king of pop art by 1968. His exhibitions were everywhere in the world. There were not so many artists, which were as popular as this genius was. It was a record of that time. None of his contemporaries got so much money. However, Warhol got his fame thanks to not only paintings or films, but also for his scandalous interviews, which he gave for mass media. He stated that he did not want to be born and his works were cheap and common. Andy Warhol also said that he actually did not like his creation. These statements were the core of his scandal interviews. Whole art of Warhol turned into a systematic business process, outsourcing benefit.

A series of pencil drawings, depicting dollar bills and colored cans of soup Campbell brought scandal fame to Warhol. The exhibition of these works in New York gallery Stable was a sensation in 1962. He applied layers on cans with the help of paintbrush’s strokes. Nevertheless, he began to use silk-screen printing by 1963. Since then the majority of his works was performed in this manner. Absolutely impersonal and adapted to mass production, silk-screen printing proofs ideally situated for this purposes.

Technique of silk-screen printing has become defining in Warhol’s works. Monotonous repetition abrades pseudo-images, which are offered by environment as exceptional:

  • endless rows of Coca Cola’s bottles;
  • portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, Elvis Presley.

A striking example of Warhol’s creation is his work, which has name “Flash” (1963-1968).  This a series of 11 prints, which presented as a narrative and accompanied by the text. This text was taken from news notes at the day of President’s Kennedy assassination. It was not the illustration of event. Warhol presented a series of images, where the link between them is not as important as their ability to convey the pathos of dramatic event. In addition, the ability of artist to choose pictures enhances the value of coverage by the media, shaping public opinion, Warhol used a number of different Kennedy’s images. In addition, he used very famous portraits. It was stylistic device, which was rarely found in his works. The prints in “Flash” show the ability of the author to manipulate found images, changing their size and clarity. However, “Flash” is not the best example of works’ group, marked by serious author’s passion for portraits and located among his best works. There were famous works in his creation:

  • Marilyn Monroe (1967);
  • Campbell's soup I, II (1968-1969);
  • Flowers (1970);
  • Electric Chaine (1971);
  • Mao(1972).

Each of these works contains 10 prints, based on key images, created by Warhol at the beginning of his career. In contrast to his works based on the narrative, these static images are free from any narrative context. Each of them conveys strong image, which is expanded by repetition. These works are retelling of the previous Warhol’s appeals to his main themes of the 1960s:

  • portraits;
  • consumption;
  • decoration;
  • death.

These themes were often repeated in his works and became central in his creation.

Thanks to the works of Warhol specially treated illustrations, vivid psychedelic colors and many times repeated images became widely used in posters and advertisements. Technical replicating in many aspects bred ironic attitude to the object of advertisement.  Andy Warhol achieved his goal. He challenged society of mass consumption, which just supported him. Finally, Warhol rid society of hypocrisy. He was the first person, who publicly acknowledged that money is no less important part of the profession than creativity. By the way, you can realize how to increase creativity in one of our essays.

Warhol opened the studio in the center of Manhattan, which got name “Factory” in 1963. The studio was set up as a commercial enterprise. Enterprise used technique of silkscreen printing. A team of workers did their job on it. The aim of studio was to release a big amount of production, which was manifested in portraits of famous people. Creation of Andy Warhol made a great impact on pop art and modern art. His works are the symbol of American culture in the 20-th century.

Conclusion

Andy Warhol is one of the greatest artists of our time. His creation is inseparable from such term as “mass culture”. Andy did much to art in order to allow it to masses. He also did it with aim to learn people to see the beauty of everyday things. Warhola knew that everything, which surrounds a person, is beautiful indeed. Andy Warhol is a “man of world”, which managed to show us this world in all its splendor and diversity. Creation of artist still attracts many people. It should be noted, that Andy Warhol made a huge impact on pop art, what is described in this essay.

Services of our site offer you not only qualitative writing of papers, but also grading of them. If you want us to check your paper, we will be glad to help. All that you need to do is to place the order.