Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was the artist, writer, actor, film director, film and music producer, and fashion icon responsible for the Pop Art phenomenon. From the 1950s to the 1980s his ubiquitous presence in the American media made him one of the best known creative artists ever. He died in 1987, yet retains cult status and has been the subject of numerous paintings, books, and films.

Andrew Warhol was born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh. His parents were Slovak immigrants, his father a coal miner who died in an accident when Warhol was just thirteen years old. As a child, Warhol caught St. Vitus' disease, which damaged his nerves and left him with a permanently odd appearance. His mother nursed him back to health with Campbell's condensed soup. He was later to use paintings of the soup tins he loved in his first major exhibition.

Warhol's artistic talent became apparent early in his life, and he attended Carnegie Mellon University to study commercial art, continuing on to develop a successful career as an illustrator. His ambition, however, extended beyond simply making a good living. Already admired for his ink drawings of shoes, he concentrated on creating artistic representations of everyday objects in American culture, such as bananas and money. Warhol aimed to break down the barriers between commercial art and fine art, and always saw his artistic endeavors as a business venture. In 1963 he opened New York City studio The Factory, employing the likes of Brigid Berlin, Candy Darling, Viva, Nico, Edie Sedgewick, and Jackie Curtis to help him with his work. He used silk screen techniques to experiment with color, creating iconic portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger, and Brigitte Bardot. He also adopted and encouraged several younger experimental artists, including Helmut, Julian Schnabel, Enzo Cucchi, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Yet his influence was such that it also attracted trouble. In 1968 Warhol was shot in the chest by Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) manifesto, who protested that she was compelled to do it because he had too much control over her life. Though he survived, Warhol never fully recovered from the attack, and had to wear support bandages for the rest of his life.

Besides his artistic career, which included drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and conceptual work, Warhol worked extensively in other media. He founded the still flourishing Interview magazine with poet Gerard Malanga and published five books, including his diaries. He made more than sixty films, many of them short experimental works, including Chelsea Girls, in which two stories play simultaneously; Sleep, in which Warhol's then lover, port John Giorno, sleeps for eight hours; and Vinyl , an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, which was later to be filmed by Stanley Kubrick. He later executive produced several films by Paul Morrissey, starring Joe Dallesandro.

Warhol's involvement in music centered on The Velvet Underground, whose first album he produced. He later had a falling out with Lou Reed, but received an apology on the album Songs for Drella, Drella being one of Warhol’s nicknames (a combination of 'Dracula' and 'Cinderella'). He was friends with many other musicians, including Bob Dylan and John Lennon.

Warhol died on February 22, 1987, due to complications during routine gall bladder surgery. Although his homosexuality meant he had never been fully accepted by the church, he was a lifelong Byzantine Catholic, and was interred at St. John the Baptist Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. The artist Yoko Ono spoke at his funeral. The Andy Warhol museum was subsequently established in Pittsburgh, holding over four thousand of his works, and a Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art was set up in Medzilaborce, Slovakia, close to his mother's birthplace. Warhol had so many possessions that it took Sotheby's nine days to auction them all, raising over twenty million dollars, much of which was donated to the homeless shelters where Warhol had been a frequent volunteer.

Since his death, Warhol has been portrayed in film by actors including Crispin Glover, Jared Harris, and David Bowie. Gus Van Sant had planned to make a biopic about him starring River Phoenix just before the young actor died. Warhol is perhaps best known for his statement that everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.

YUDDY