FREE ESSAY ON ANDY WARHOL'S IMPACT ON ART

ANDY WARHOL'S IMPACT ON ART

andy warhol's impact on art 
Page 1 Andrew Warhola was born August Sixth, 1928, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He was the
youngest son of Julie and Andrej Warhola, both immigrants from Czechoslovakia. After a
quiet childhood spent alternately alone and in art classes, Andrew went to college. He
then got a job doing commercial art, largely advertisements for large companies. Over
time his name was shortened and Andy Warhol changed the face of modern art. Through his
silver lined Factory and the many people who frequented it a revolution was born. This
paper will discuss some of these people and examine the impact they all made on modern
art. Ruska Dolina was a small Ruthenian suburb of Pittsburgh. It was populated with, of
course, eastern European immigrants. Andy Warhol was born into this very close-knit
neighborhood speaking his parent's native tongue. Julia Warhola was herself a bit of an
artist, in later years she would collaborate with her youngest son. Andrej Warhola worked
in the great steel mills of Pittsburgh. The Warhola household was very typical of the
times. Julia would stay home, cook, and read to her boys while Mr. Warhola worked in a
steel mill sweatshop with hundreds of other immigrants. The family was strictly Eastern
Orthodox Catholics. On Sunday, the day of rest, no one was allowed to move. These days
were passed indoors with Mrs. Warhola telling stories to the boys. Like most children,
Andrew collected the pictures and posters of various celebrities that would define such a
body of his work in later years. Andrew was a rather small boy. In interviews Andy Warhol
said that he was pale and scrawny and that he was thusly bullied on several occasions by
his classmates. When he was fourteen Andrew's father died of tuberculosis, a common
malady of the times, especially for the profession. This had a profound affect on young
Andrew. As was the Orthodox tradition, the body was laid out in the house for three days
of mourning and visitation. During this span Andrew hid under his bed refusing to look at
his father's body. Despite the poorly paying job, Andrej managed to set aside money for
college. However, he saved only enough to send one child, and the general consensus was
that this would be Andrew. In Fifth grade Andrew started attending the free Saturday
classes that the Carnegie Institute taught. It is noted that even then young Andrew
excelled at his art. Due to the bullying by his classmates he stayed inside a great deal,
working on his art. Due to his aptitude in school, Andrew skipped two grades and was
admitted into the Carnegie Institute of Technology at the young age of 16. Once in the
school Andrew was admitted to the Department of Painting and Design. He studied various
aspects of commercial graphic design and after his graduation he moved to New York to
seek his fortune. Page 2 Once out of college Andrew of course had very little money and
for a brief while he shared a basement apartment with seventeen other individuals.
Finding employment demanded a never-ending series of portfolio submissions. In an
interview Andrew said that his name was accidentally changed to Warhol. He says that it
was never a conscious decision, it rather happened over time. Regardless, the name change
stuck, the first name was shortened, and the world-renowned artist was forming. The
basement with seventeen roommates did not last long; Andy was rather fast at finding
steady employment. In 1951, two years out of school, Andy Warhol bought a nice apartment
for himself. Shortly thereafter his mother and her three cats showed up one evening.
Julia Warhola was to live with the son she adored so greatly for her remaining twenty
years. During these two decades Andy kept his home life strikingly separate from his
public persona. His time with his mother was cherished. Julia was in fact his first
collaborator in art. Andy helped her make a book about cats and *censored* heaven, where
all cats went. This book was an interesting mixture of his mother's folk art background
and his unique styling. Over this time Andy Warhol had his world famous silver covered
Factory and his constantly revolving entourage and hangers-on. One of the so-called crazy
people that Andy let hang around was Valerie Solanas. She surprised him one day in the
Factory and shot him twice with a thirty-two. The bullets ripped through his stomach,
spleen, liver, esophagus, and both lungs. At one point Andy Warhol was pronounced dead,
but it was not yet his time. The more reputable denizens of the Factory, the people who
both influenced and were influenced by Andy Warhol, each in their own way made a
contribution to art. Everyone who frequented the Factory had his or her own futures and
pasts, be it the guy sweeping the floors or the Beat poets who dropped by. Celebrities
and United States Presidents, even foreign royalty knew Andy Warhol. This man's workshop
was both a breeding ground of art and a place for gathering and partying. In a cool and
withdrawn manner Andy Warhol governed an empire of art that stretched in every
conceivable direction. Curiously, the other prominent artists of the time, such as Jasper
Johns, avoided contact with Andy Warhol. This has been largely attributed to his open
stance on his homosexuality. At the time it was considered more appropriate for the male
painters to be macho. This can be seen in Jasper Johns' cigarettes hanging out of his
mouth as he paints his canvases, and his macho stance in other aspects. All the while
these prominent artists were privately gay, but were rather scared of Warhol's stance on
his public life. This is rather inconsequential, however, as Warhol Page 3 much preferred
the fringe of society. He practically collected the outcasts; occasionally promoting
artists, such as he did with Jean-Michel Basquait. Yet the promotion and friendship did
not stop at painting. Andy Warhol had an association with the Velvet Underground, and was
friends with the Rolling Stones. Andy Warhol's commercial art background was still put to
use after he became the new art sensation. Perhaps the only reason he put these skills to
use was because of his involvement with his friends in the music industry, the Velvet
Underground and to some extent the Rolling Stones. Andy actively participated in the rise
of the Velvet Underground. In the early Seventies they were quite stylish, in large part
due to their interaction with Warhol and his various associates. Andy Warhol even
designed the cover for their albums. One cover specifically evokes Pop Art. One might say
the large, plain banana with the dotted pattern more resembles Liechtenstein than Warhol.
Regardless, this was not the only album cover Andy Warhol did. He also did the original
work for the Rolling Stones album, Sticky Fingers. It featured an actual canvas depiction
of blue jeans complete with a working zipper. This was more in line with Warhol, keeping
with his shock value ideas. The Sticky Fingers album cover was not the only interaction
Andy Warhol had with the Rolling Stones. Warhol did a number of unique portraits for his
friends and colleagues, largely as favors and gifts. The list perhaps reads like a
virtual who's who of the day. Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Princess Caroline and Michael
Jackson were in the number of the sitters for Andy Warhol. As self-restrained and quiet
Andy Warhol was, he still somehow managed to interact with an amazing number of artists
of the day. The list of Andy Warhol's friends and colleagues is perhaps best started with
Jed Johnson. Jed was a very young man when he was adopted into the Factory. He was
admitted on the condition that he swept the floors daily. This he gratefully agreed to
do. Over time he and Andy Warhol grew very close, eventually he moved in with Andy and
his mother. Some say that they became lovers, but this is rather inconsequential. It was
discovered at some point that Jed Johnson was a great interior decorator. Jed beautifully
decorated the interior of Warhol's spacious seventeen bedroom flat in New York. In later
years Jed Johnson became quite sought after, decorating for Mick Jagger, Barbra
Striesand, and Richard Gere. Jed's life, however, was cut short when he was traveling in
the TWA flight that wrecked off of New York in 1996. The next to be talked about, perhaps
the next adoption of the factory, was Jean-Michel Basquait. A high school dropout at the
age of seventeen, Basquait developed his unique style in Page 4 the subway system of New
York. Jean-Michel was absorbed in the newest wave of fashion, graffiti. His style blended
an eye catching grouping of short poetic messages and odd symbols. Eventually he and
Warhol met, Basquait had a show, and moved onto marking on a variety of different
surfaces. The prevalent, reoccurring object in his work is an African-like mask. His work
was largely schematic and filled with interesting color patterns. The colors and variety
of lines and symbols gave his work an amazing vibration. The work also meshed classical
influences with an almost childlike primitivism. Keith Haring was the other main graffiti
artist on the scene at the time. He also frequented the Factory, but was much less a
fixture than Basquait. Keith Haring's main schooling came in the subway system, as did
Basquait. Haring, however, also had formal teachings. This and his insatiable appetite
for tagging everything around him earned him the title of the Dean of Graffiti.
Eventually he got out of the subways and started showing his work. Also like Basquait,
there are certain things that remain prevalent in all of his work. For example, the
radiant baby and barking dog are repeated and perfected. Keith Haring's style, like so
many others from the Pop era, has been copied over and over. The most recent duplication
was perhaps by the automobile conglomerate Honda for a commercial promoting one of their
vehicles. Regardless, Keith Haring had a uniqueness and productivity that eventually
became planted in the world psyche. Another artist that frequented the Factory was Kenny
Scharf. Kenny Scharf was also briefly a graffiti artist. He, however, grew tired of this
and moved on to create whole environments. These environments were largely influenced by
popular culture television; they were filled with modified electronic gear and other
appliances. Everything in these environments was influenced by television science
fiction, in that they closely resembled the quasi-futuristic backdrops of shows such as
Buck Rogers and The Jetsons. At first Kenny Scharf worked in closet sized spaces, but he
moved on to do whole installations in galleries. One of his more famous involved these
mechanical and electronic objects painted uniformly with kitsch items glued to them. For
example, Kenny Scharf would glue plastic dinosaur toys and robots and so on to the tops
of the televisions and so on. While Kenny Scharf was a rather regular visitor at the
Factory, he and Warhol did not have entirely too much in common with each other. Perhaps
the artist most similar in appearance to Andy Warhol was David Hockney. Much like Warhol,
Hockney's appearance brought him a great deal of notoriety and press coverage. David
Hockney also emerged at the same time as the Beatles and rode, perhaps, on Page 5 their
shock value. The early nineteen sixty's was a time of artists coming into their own, the
beginning of the explosion of the artistic counterculture, with which Andy Warhol fit
right in. Hockney wore granny glasses, gold lame, and peroxided his hair. He was perhaps
destined for stardom; he in fact already had notoriety before even emerging from college.
This was mostly due to his amazing productivity. His work had a unique photographic
quality, due, of course, mostly to the fact the he worked largely from photos. He and
Warhol were not exactly close friends but nonetheless they had a bond, as can be seen in
their personal style. The next few artists had little really in common with Andy Warhol
both stylistically and personally. They did however frequent the Factory, which makes
them worthwhile to mention. It is not beyond speculation that the mere socializing at
Warhol's personal studio influenced them in some form or another. Richard Serra had a
very simple and very unique form of sculpture. He would balance large sheets of lead or
steal. These sheets were very rough both texturally and visually. Richard Serra purposely
left them this way; he did not feel that they needed to be molested in any way. Rather,
the beauty in his pieces was that he would balance them in various ways. In one piece,
entitled One ton Prop, he balanced four five hundred-pound sheets of lead on each other.
The idea here was that they resembled a stack of cards. They completely belied their
weight; they appeared to be very light and easy to balance. Part of what made his pieces
so interesting is that they easily could have killed a man if they were to be somehow
knocked over. Bizarre as it is, this is apparently a great appeal in art. Another strange
idea for art belonged to Christo. This Bulgarian-born artist escaped the Iron Curtain,
went to Paris, and started wrapping things in cloth. These wrapped objects varied greatly
from a woman to a chair, to nothing. In due time, his ideas expanded, and Christo moved
on to wrapping whole buildings. This couldn't last forever, as Christo's attention again
wavered, this time to nature. In southern California Christo and his wife got permission
to string together an amazingly long fence made of billowy fabric. This fence stretched
across flowing, rolling hilltops and valleys and eventually terminated in the Pacific
Ocean. But it doesn't end there, for Christo's ambitious undertakings continue today.
Another artist in this vein is Marisol. The full name is Marisol Escobar, but this is not
really of any consequence. Marisol is a Paris-born Venezuelan artist who worked out of
New York. This rather amazing worldliness gave her a unique perspective. Her art mostly
consisted of making mixed media assemblages. These assemblages were usually portraits of
famous people, for instance Andy Warhol. Others she immortalized include Linden Johnson
and John Page 6 Wayne. Her work usually consisted of wood, plaster, paint and whatever
objects she happened to find and like. The last artist of the type discussed above is
Julian Schnabel. Julian is Brooklyn born and yet raised in Texas. She in a way ignited
the Nineteen-Eighties. When she burst onto the scene art was rather static, rather
boring. She started showing with her epically scaled works. The sheer size and the
iconographic imagery shocked artist of the time, as did her cultural archetypes. She came
along at the end of Warhol's career; he didn't really have time to be influenced by her.
But her electric style certainly influenced the people she would have seen when being
around Andy Warhol and the people he saw at the time. The last visual artist to be talked
about is Roy Lichtenstein. Roy Lichtenstein is easily the artist most like Andy Warhol
stylistically. They basically broke onto the art scene at the same time. They each had an
amazing simplistic approach. The difference between the two was perhaps Lichtenstein's
more detailed approach. While Andy Warhol loved the silk screen and the repeatedly
printed picture, Lichtenstein preferred to majestically blow up single pictures. He
grossly enlarged comic strip panels from the time, including detail down to the dots used
by newspaper printing presses. This approach of the colored dots is called Ben Day, named
after the pioneer of the process. Roy Lichtenstein's most famous example is Whaam. This
amazing work of art is approximately fourteen feet across. The scale and skill of this
work is what set it apart. Also the use of limited, flat colors helped to perfect the
theme. It could be said also that Lichtenstein mildly parodied these images so familiar
to the American pop culture. In addition to these painting, Roy Lichtenstein made both
large adaptations of Pablo Picasso paintings and sculpture. His sculpture echoed his love
of the pure, solid line. One could say that his sculptures were far more graphically
oriented than three-dimensionally oriented. These two amazing artists were no doubt
friends, if for nothing more than the common bond they shared in their bold artistic
statements, their establishment of a movement. The Beatniks were also seen frequently
around The Factory in the early days. The Factory must have been the absolute best place
to se and be seen, as can be judged from the scope of people present there. The most
important and popular Beatniks, Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey all
frequented the Factory. These men quite possibly influenced each other through their
individual sense of freedom. Each, however, had their own desires. Kerouac, for instance,
did not really know how to deal with celebrity, he simply wanted to be and do. Page 7
When he wrote On the Road he simply wanted to chronicle the adventures that he had
travelling. He did not exactly want to shock anyone, as Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsburg
did. The fame that came with On the Road was never very comfortable for Jack Kerouac.
Allen Ginsburg, on the other hand, had not problem with his celebrity. When he first
publicly read Howl he got exactly the response he was after. His book was banned in
several places, which gave him immediate notoriety. In this way he and Andy Warhol were
alike. They were both thoroughly open and frank in public; in fact it could be said that
both men enjoyed shocking the general public. Both led exceedingly abnormal lives,
enjoying the shock value of it all. The main difference was that Ginsburg communicated
with writing, while Warhol stuck mainly to his art. Ken Kesey was also a Beatnik regular.
Perhaps crazier than the rest, he still managed to write arguably the most sensible book.
When chronicled in On the Road, Ken Kesey was the insane Dean Moriarty. Given this
character, he most likely would have fit right in at the hectic, hedonistic scene of the
Factory in the early Nineteen-Sixties. Each of the artists mentioned here met Andy Warhol
at different phases of his career. While the majority of them were seen at the infamous
Factory, some came both before and after. Regardless of where they met and knew Warhol,
they each had their own individual lessons and impacts. Jean-Michel Basquait was perhaps
the last artist to come around and really know Andy Warhol. Julia Warhol was certainly
the first. In between were very many amazing artists, almost too many artists to talk
about. The most important, of course, have been mentioned in this paper. Andy Warhol is a
man still impacting art long after his death. His visionary style changed forever the
face of both commercial art and gallery art. Hopefully this paper communicated a bit of
that genius. ANDY WARHOL, THE FACTORY, AND THE IMPRINT MADE IN ART 
Bibliography:
Books:
Klaus Honnef. Andy Warhol 1928-1987, Taschen, 1993
Ultra Violet. Famous for Fifteen Minutes, Methuen, 1989
Feldman/Shiellmann. Andy Warhol prints, Abveille, 1989
Paul Alexander, Death and Disaster, Villard, 1994
Geldzahler/Raushemblum, Andy Warhol Portaits, Thames ans Hudson, 1993
Jacob Bal-Teshuva. Andy Warhol, A retrospective, MOMA, 1989
Steven Henry Maloff. Pop Art, A Critical History, Regents of the University of Canada,
1997 
Richard Leslie. Pop Art, A New Generation of Style, Tiger, 1997
Boy George, Boy George…..