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Andy Warhol

Pop art is a movement that occurred near the end of the 1950s. It was a reaction

to the seriousness of Abstract Expressionism. Pop art emphasized contemporarysocial values, the sprawl of urban life, the vulgar, the superficial, and the flashy.

Advertising provided a number of starting points for the subjects. A particularfavorite advertisement form that Warhol likes to use was product labels. You

will see quite a few examples of this in some of his work. (Grolier 1996)Warhol did most of his well-know works in a four year span from 1960 to 1964.

He started out by reproducing images such as comic strips on much larger

canvases. Some examples of these would be Nancy, Dick Tracy, Superman, andPopeye. He later became much more interested in reproducing labels of products

and some people. This became a standard procedure for Warhol during this

period. He later began to make movies and photography. (Coplans pg 47-48)At the beginning of his work, he started out with the making comic strip

reproductions. They really shouldnt be considered reproductions because

they arent always an extremely accurate portrayal of the product. Some of hispieces such as the thirty-two painting collection of Campbells Soup Cans, are

almost identical to the models he used. While others have a looser quality and

are merely starting points on which to begin. (Coplans pg 47)

He accomplished the mass amounts of the same subject through many methods.Sometimes he would just paint each of the subjects by hand, one by one. Other

times he would use stamp molds and silk-screening. The silk-screening process

is very similar to that of an intricate and sophisticated stencil. There is a screenmade of fine silk or similar material that is made impermeable to all places

except that of the area wanted to be colored. This is done photomechanically, a

process that makes photographs into silkscreen. The silk-screening process is

fairly simple. You pour ink or paint into the silk-screen, and then you run asqueegee across it so it goes through the open pores of the screen. You repeat

this procedure for each of the colors to be used. An advantage to this it that you

can used them more than once. To date, silk-screening is the cheapest and mosteffective means of reproducing many products of it type and quality. (Coplans

pg 50) (Crone pg 11)

The main focus of serial imagery is redundancy. (Coplans) There are many waysin which serial painting differs from traditional painting. Some of these

differences include that of theme, uniqueness, and variation. It is not important

for serial paintings to be unique, the structure and composition are meant to besimilar to the other members of the series. The objects of the serial paintings,

like in the Campbell Soup series is show almost eternity or the feeling of never-

ending. (Coplans pg 49)Some of the portraits that were done by Warhol began with Troy Donahue and

Warren Beatty, and Elvis Presley. Then later on came Marilynn Monroe and

Jackie Kennedy. There was also a series of car crash pictures done around this

time. The Jackie Kennedy portraits were done very shortly after theassassination of President Kennedy. They mirrored the mourning face of Jackie

that was shown time and time again in the media. There were eight different

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images that were all taken from different newspapers at the time. The number of

works in this series is still unknown. (Crone pg 29)

The car crash pictures had an extreme amount of variation. They ranged fromhaving one picture to a canvas to having up to twenty on the same canvas at one

time. There are many different colored pictures in this set. The most majorchange from one to another is the background color. It is difficult for critics to

place the origination of the meaning of this set of works. (Crone pg 29)The series involving the electric chairs has a very serious political statement. It

is a symbol of misuse of governmental sovereignty; it has also been considered

and open confession of a deficiency in cultural development. (Crone) About thesame time as the electric chair pictures were being shown there were many other

quite disturbing sets of pictures being shown. They were of race riots and many

were taken directly from newspaper articles of the Nazi Germany and Castrosrevolution in Cuba. (Crone pg 29)

One of the last serial sets that Warhol created before moving on from painting

was of flowers. The flowers were produced in an extreme variety of sizes andquantities. These were on display in 1964. The original flowers were taken from

a women magazine. Unlike most of his earlier works, these reproductions were

touched up by hand on the screen. These are also different in that they do not

represent anything to Warhol. They are strictly decorative. The colors used inthe painting arent used to symbolize anything but just to bring out color in

decoration. In all there were about nine hundred of the flower painting made in

Warhols studio, The Factory. These were among the very last of Warholspaintings, in the remainder of his life he concentrated on movie making. (Crone

pg 30)

During Warhols life his work has been controversial. He has become more

recognized and famous after his death in 1987. I think that his purpose for beingan artist seemed to be different from that of other artists. Im not convinced he

painted and filmed for the love of the art or so much for his purpose in doing it. I

think he had a message he wanted to get across and this was the mediumthrough which he chose to express himself.