Andy Warhol American Pop Artist
The Artwork of Warhol Includes Portraits and Pop Culture
A brief look at the artwork of Pittsburgh native and New York City transplant Andy Warhol. What is the artistic significance of his work?
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) is an artist from the world of art history who has a high like/dislike factor. Many either love Warhol, or demonize him, but influentially he is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
What is Pop Art? Warhol is considered one of the major artists in the Pop Art movement in the United States. What is Pop Art? Pop art began in the 1950s and was about artists using images and techniques from mass-produced, popular culture such as advertising and comic books.
Why Soup Cans? Perhaps Warhol’s most recognized works are his Campbell’s Soup Can art screen prints from 1968.What is the artistic significance of the soup prints? Warhol was acutely aware of the aesthetics of popular culture and re-presented the humble soup can as a large piece of art to be enjoyed and admired. The soup can is presented large and icon-like perhaps suggesting a parallel between consumerism and religion.
Warhol and Branding • Today, Warhol’s artworks also speak of the concept of branding in advertising. Warhol sledgehammers the Campbell’s branding home by reproducing it large and in authentic detail. The scripty Campbell’s name is reversed-out on a red background. The label is dramatically divided in two horizontally, a gold medallion poised betwixt the red and white planes to hold them together, like a circular mailing wafer. There is an elegant and balanced beauty in this label. Warhol saw it and has reflected it back to us as art.
Famous Faces • Warhol is also well known for his style of portraiture. Using photographs of his subject matter, he would flatten the planes of color, and repeat the portrait, to create large, silk-screened masterpieces of shape and color, like this Marilyn Monroe. Bright color is printed purposefully off-register, to hit home the medium that is being used to create the portrait, one color at a time.
Conceptual Work • Warhol’s work is also somewhat conceptual in that there is a process or context that must be considered. For example, Warhol created a series of “piss paintings”. These were canvases that were treated with copper paint. Andy would then urinate on the canvasses, and where the urine fell, the copper would verdigris in splashes of expressionistic color.
Much disdain is given to Warhol in the halls of Fine Art institutions. “Too commercial”, some scoff. The reality is that Andy Warhol was an excellent artist, businessman, and networking player. Perhaps Warhol’s studio should have been called The Corporation, not The Factory. While Warhol employed others to create his prints, the ideas, the shapes, the colors, the compositions are all his.
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a great place to get an introduction to the life and work of the artist.
