Born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol was a successful magazine and ad illustrator who became a leading artist of the 1960s Pop art movements. He ventured into a wide variety of art forms, including performance art, filmmaking, video installations and writing, and controversially blurred the lines between fine art and mainstream aesthetics. Warhol died on February 22, 1987, in New York City.
When he graduated from college with his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1949, Warhol moved to New York City to pursue a career as a commercial artist. It was also at this time that he dropped the "a" at the end of his last name to become Andy Warhol. He landed a job with Glamour magazine in September, and went on to become one of the most successful commercial artists of the 1950s. He won frequent awards for his uniquely whimsical style, using his own blotted line technique and rubber stamps to create his drawings. |
DocumentaryA brief documentary into Andy Warhol's life and art works.
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Skill TwoThe album cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico is recognizable for featuring a Warhol print of a banana. Early copies of the album invited the owner to "Peel slowly and see"; peeling back the banana skin revealed a flesh-colored banana underneath. A special machine was needed to manufacture these covers (one of the causes of the album's delayed release), but MGM paid for costs figuring that any ties to Warhol would boost sales of the album. Most reissued vinyl editions of the album do not feature the peel-off sticker; the original copies of the album with the peel-sticker feature are now rare collector's items. A Japanese re-issue LP in the early 1980s was the only re-issue version to include the banana sticker for many years. On the 1996 CD reissue, the banana image is on the front cover while the image of the peeled banana is on the inside of the jewel case, beneath the CD itself. The album was re-pressed onto heavyweight vinyl in 2008 and this edition also features the banana sticker. The original British release was a single sleeve and did not have a banana on the front but featured the reverse of the American issue.
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Skill ThreeThis is a painting of Marilyn Monroe. It is part of a series of 5 images Warhol painted of Marilyn that had different brightly coloured backgrounds: red, orange, light blue, sage blue, and turquoise. All five were painted in a 40-inch square format. This image’s title was prefixed with the word “shot,” because it was literally shot through with a bullet from a revolver by Dorothy Podber. In 1964 Podber visited Warhol at his studio where 4 of the paintings in the series of 5 were stored against the wall (the turquoise one was not with them). Podber asked Warhol is she could “shoot” them. Thinking she meant to photograph them, he agreed.
The Marilyn series of images combines Warhol’s obsessions with celebrity and death by celebrating a Hollywood star after she died. The Shot Marilyn Series has a double impact as far as death is concerned as it involved a woman coming to Warhol’s studio and shooting his works of art. This would later be almost repeated when Valerie Solanas came to Warhol’s studio four years later in 1968, only this time she shot the artist himself. |