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Abstract: This paper is focused on Warhol’s works in 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The reflection of what his works reveals and the meaning of his works relates to his personal backgrounds. Key words: consumerism, pop art, celebrities
Andy Warhol grew up in a slum ghetto and his parents were poor Slovakian immigrants during the Great Depression of the ‘30s in Pittsburgh. Food was often scarce, and Andy’s mum would sometimes make soup out of water and ketchup. A tin of Campbell’s tomato soup was real treat.
During those grey Depression years these formed the rich
imagery of his childhood. It seems to me that Andy’s two childhood passions – Catholic religion and the movie stars in his magazines, later fused in with his complex feelings of celebrities.
In 1949, Andy
moved to New York, aged 21, with only a small suitcase and some samples of his work. He dreamt of becoming a famous artist, but in the meantime, just hoping to make a living as a commercial illustrator. He was desperate to join in this glamorous world. It was tantalizingly close, but still out of reach. He went knocking doors and finally found his job in Glamour magazine. In there, Tina Frederick commissioned him to draw shoes for her magazine.
Andy’s persistence
began to pay off when Glamour magazine asked him to illustrate a feature aptly called Success is A Job in New York. They liked his whimsical drawing, with their quirky, charming figures.
By the mid-1950s,
Andy’s career in commercial illustration was really taking off. He made more than 100,000 a year, which was a big money in the ‘50s. But he still dreamt of being a real artist. The cutting-edge artists of
the 1950s were people like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, who flung paint across the whole canvas, which looks kind of messy. It, by their saying, demonstrated the inner turmoil of a human being and often involved some serious issues like nationalism. However, the public often found it mysterious, hard to understand and Warhol did’t appreciate this Abstract Expressionism at all.
In his later career, Warhol
consciously made little distinction between art and commerce, but when he was given his first one-man gallery shows in the early 1950s, he exhibited drawings based on the work of Truman Capote, serious of drawn figures and dancers. In this Period, Warhol’s work was delicate yet fey, boarding on controversy. And it didn’t make any impression in the serious world
of art, which was much taken by the Abstract Expressionism.
This poor kid who had grown
up during the Great Depression was obsessed by the ‘50s consumer revolution. The glossy commercials for shiny cars, the new supermarket crammed with undreamt-of varieties of food. He loved this mass-produced world of plenty. With his
commercial background, Andy thought he could create art that reflected it.
It might not seem like much, but deciding to depict a
commercial object on canvas and deciding to present it in this very clean, graphic, mechanical mode was huge deal in the art world at the time, and this turned Andy into the champion of a new movement called Pop art.
And with that thought, in 1960, he
painted his first Pop Painting, using images of Superman, Batman and Coca-Cola bottles. However, he did’t break the ground.
It was the 32 cans of Campbell’s
tomato soup that let the world know the name of Warhol and made a bold move in America’s modern art history. Most people thought they were a joke and the expressionists were outrageous to even think about the the ordinary cans can be
put on the wall of American’s great art museum. But some really mark Andy’s coming –of-age as a pop painter. The bright colors, the crisp, mechanical technique, they were all things Andy would play with again and again.
Some people claim that they can see
the profound democracy in Warhol’s work. It takes ordinary, everyday life as its inspiration and celebrates consumerism and the mass media. It is a subversion to the serious, high art represented by Abstract expressionism in 1960s in America. The oscillation between great themes like nationalism and the banal daily object like bottles, the confrontation between seriousness and playful depiction, and the opposition between the high and the low, are what had always drawn people to Warhol’s work. It challenged the view of traditional art after WWII and gave
art to its ordinary form which can be related to every Americans. And with that, Andy Warhol truly became the king of pop art.
Warhol’s impoverished,
immigrant background sort of made him asserted about wealth and success. However, it seemed impassible for a poor-educated young man to participate any of his dream. Consumption seemed to be one obvious solution since whether rich or poor, all people can afford a bottle of Coca-Cola. In his view, Its a representation of democracy. It may also thank to the boosting economy that made consumption so prevail. It
seems that， in this case, the subject matter chose him more than the other way around. It makes sense that why there are so many objects like soup cans, Coke bottles, Green Stamps in his works which represents the American society of his time. And he used his own way to make this theme lightly, perhaps even frivolously.
However, his work had
also been questioned to his originality since he’s been famous was copying common items. To reinforce his rejection of originality in his art, Andy started calling his studio The Factory, an ironic blow to those who stood against him. He removed himself almost completely from the hands-on creation of his work, beginning to use an industrial process he had discovered in the early 1960s called silkscreen printing.
It was perfect for making mass-produced art about a mess-produced world. The technique allows the artist to build up multiple layers of color, transforming the original photograph into something new, showing us how the artist sees the subject.
In August 1962,
movie star Marilyn Monroe died of an
overdose, and Andy immediately decided to make a series of portraits of her with the exciting new silkscreen technique.
At first glance, Marilyn looks incredibly beautiful, even
precious, like one of the religious icons that Andy saw in church as a boy. “But something isn’t right. The silkscreen allowed him to offset the layers of paint, so the edges smudge and blur, creating an eerie, haunting quality. The colorful mask covers the colorless photograph, echoing Marilyn’s glittering media-created image that hid the profound sadness beneath. The colors of her eyelids and lips look like make-up applied by a child.” commented by BBC critics. As some people claimed, Marilyn’s face is distorted, just as the media distorted her image. Maybe the sadness that
echoes from this imagine is what Warhol felt about the demise of the great actress and the disappointment of mass media.
Warhol’s obsession towards celebrity may also stem from his
child experience and his view of mass production. For him portraying celebrities may be the same as portraying an atom bomb.
The mass media producing news 7/24 constantly bombing people is no difference than the movie producers selling their stars like the manufactured tin of Campbell’s tomato soup he used to carve.
In any case, people can find
that not all Warhol’s subject matter mundane. In his Death and Disaster series, he used images of race riots, car crashes, the electric
chair and even the John F. Kennedy assassination. The imageries give people a sense of depression and seriousness, which I find a little bit sarcastic since it’s the unwillingness to follow the path of serious abstract fine art that made him go to the other way, becoming a pop artist.
Anyhow, Andy was surely
really ahead of his time in replicating our image changes how people see ourselves and stuff. Even now people still influence but the Warhol’s art. Facebook is an obvious example. Back then 50s, people thought the idea of brand-like replication of personal portrayal was kind of nauseous and artificial but now everybody is putting pictures of themselves online and expressing themselves on Twitter
and Facebook and lots of different platforms. And, isn’t the filters in our smartphones look like the works of Warhol? A way to Warholize ourselves? Therefore, inevitably, whether or not, some people think they are creating a brand which is analogous to Andy’s endlessly replicated imagery.
Reference: 1) https://www.artsy.net/artist/andy-warhol?period=1960
2) Andy Warhol (the never ending 15 minutes), by Geoff Nicholson
3) BBC documentary: Modern Masters—Andy Warhol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9AGox-iP60
