A bit of Art: Andy Warhol

Besides this English course and the regular courses of Electronic Engineering I´m in an Art course called "The Appreciation of the Piece of Art" (CSX544). Our teacher, Coral Delgado, sent us an assignment which consist in making a presentation about a piece of art that we don´t really like with the objective to know more about the work of the artist, and then try to change our opinion. When you really understand why the artist is doing what he is doing then you can see it different, it doesn´t means you will like it, but most of the times your perception changes.

I hadn´t make my presentation but I already chose the artist who I´m going to talk about, and his name is Andrew Warhola, most known as Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928. Since very young he suffered of St. Vitus' dance and scarlet fever what made him became somewhat of a hypochondriac. He studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and moved to New York City where he became a succesful publicist and illustrator. He was also hired by the RCA Records to design album covers and promotional material.

"Andy Warhol's first New York solo Pop exhibit was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery in November 6-24th, 1962. The exhibit included the works "Marilyn diptych," "100 Soup Cans," "100 Coke Bottles" and "100 Dollar Bills." At the Stable Gallery exhibit the artist met for the first time John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, "Sleep," in 1963." (taken from Wikipedia).

Andy´s work quicly became controversial and very popular because it was completly different from the art conception of the time. He wanted to do something absolutly new. He started painting cartoon characters but he wanted to be totally different from what seen so far so he changed and started painting commercial products and artists, who were his friends or people he admired.

He died in 1987 and he was the most representative artist in the genre of Pop Art.

I chose Warhol because I found his work like mere imitations of simple pictures, I thought he was getting credits copying the faces from famous personalities and making "posters" from commercial products.

Presently I understand that he had a lot of influence from commercial products because he studied commercial art, that´s what he liked and what he did through his life. Even if I still don´t find Warhol´s art quite original or inspiring, now I understand why he did it. Artists and commerce where his life, and as he presented what he most liked in his pictures he deserves respect and admiration. He also made a revolutionary art and became the most important Pop artist from history.