“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
TRQ: Andy Warhol, Born August 6, 1928
Artist, filmmaker and producer Andy Warhol, most widely known for his pop art paintings of grocery store commodities and celebrity portraits, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6, 1928.
Though he grew up in a devoutly Catholic family who attended religious services regularly, Warhol obsessed over comic books and magazines that told of the glamorous lives of Hollywood stars. As a boy he had Sydenham chorea, known as St. Vitus’ Dance, which caused involuntary movements and sometimes kept him from going to school. During those times he would collect pictures of movie stars, draw, and listen to music.
In 1932, during the Depression, his parents bought him his first camera. When he graduated from Schenley High School in 1945, first considered becoming an art teacher, but decided to attend Carnegie Institute of Technology to study commercial art and pictorial design. After graduating from art school, he moved to New York City to work as a magazine and advertising illustrator.
Warhol first illustrated the story “What is Success?” for Glamour magazine in 1949. Specialising in an inky drawing style known as the “blotted line” technique, Warhol won several illustration awards throughout the 1950’s working for Tiffany & Co., Vogue Israel Miller, Fleming-Joffee, and Columbia Records.
He would soon start to balance his commercial work with more artistic, avant- garde endeavours, which were not without their challenges. Warhol, openly gay, and described as “too swish” by gay artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, was the opposite of the macho artists celebrated by the art world at the time.
Even in the early years of his career, Warhol embraced the beauty and humour of male form. In 1956 he showed drawings of men and male nudes in a solo exhibit called “Studies for a Boy Book” at the Bodley Gallery.
Warhol is known for his experiments across media: from silkscreen to magazine publishing, film, music production, television, and even theatre. As he pushed into working with new media, he continued to balance the avant- garde with the more commercial. His art studio in New York was known as The Factory, where friends, drag queens, intellectuals, celebrities and wealthy socialites would spend time while Warhol worked. At any one time, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Truman Capote would be spending time with Warhol “superstars” Edie Sedgwick, Brigid Berlin, and Candy Darling.
In the 1960’s, his approach to pop art lead him back to comic books and commercial advertising, which he would begin making into silkscreened paintings in 1962. Soon he was painting series of Campbell’s Soup Cans and celebrity portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. He first showed these at his solo show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.
When he moved into making films, Warhol would shoot hours of nude actors often engaged in raw depictions of sexuality. In Sleep, shot in 1963, Warhol filmed poet and boyfriend John Giorno sleeping naked for almost six hours. With plenty of nudity and no plot, Chelsea Girls, shot in 1966, was his first commercially and critically successful film. The movie played in connection with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Warhol’s performance art piece that included performances by The Velvet Underground, film projections, lighting effects and dancers. His Blue Movie (1969) features sex between Viva and Louis Waldon, two actors appearing frequently in Warhol movies.
Warhol, his Factory and those who spent time there would increasingly find themselves at the center of scandal, outrage and controversy. On June 3, 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, a disgruntled writer who had appeared in his movie I, a Man in 1967. This marked a change in Warhol’s approach to work, as he moved away from the Factory and the underground, to focusing on fashion and celebrity culture in his paintings, television work, and Interview, his magazine.
In the 1970’s, his Sex Parts and Torso series featured both male and female nudes. Warhol’s work often faced censorship and outright banning. He also spent more time at the New York nightclub Studio 54.
During the 1980’s he produced Andy Warhol’s T.V. (1980-83) and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes (1985-1987) for MTV, along with multiple music videos. He collaborated with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Warhol also began appearing on television shows and commercials. He even modelled in fashion runway shows.
Warhol published books during his career. These include a, A Novel (1968), The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again) (1975), Popism: the Warhol Sixties (1980), and The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989).
On February 22, 1987, at New York Hospital, Warhol died after complications following a gall bladder surgery. He is buried at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery, next to his mother and father in Pittsburgh.
Through his will, Warhol established the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, for the “advancement of the visual arts.” His work is housed in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
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