Marilyn Monroe, 1962
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol painted icons. He painted Marilyn Monroe only after she took her own life. These images deliver a big punch. Mortality stares us in the face…Marilyn’s mortality and our own.
Jackie, 1964
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol painted history in the making. He uses boxes of silk-screened photographs to record Jackie Kennedy’s courageous encounter with death.
Love him or hate him, Andy Warhol was just the latest in the long line of artists documenting our times.
Portrait of George Washington, 1797
Gilbert Stuart
Jimmy Carter, 1976 and Richard Nixon, 1972
Andy Warhol
Warhol presents these presidential images in wild colors. They are silk-screened, an ancient method of print-making using stencils and ink on silk. Many of his works are huge in size.
Derrick Cartwright, Ph.D., states, “What I think is most essential about Warhol was his canniness in identifying images from the media, repeating them and recirculating them as art before many others recognized them as history.”
The colors, the odd blurring of lines, the uncompromising images startle us.
We, the viewers, first see Andy Warhol’s art. Then we experience history, our own history.
Watch Andy Warhol in Action! Click here if unable to view the video.
We cannot fully understand how an artist’s mind works!
It is absolute amazing!
It seems Warhol understood marketing as well as he understood art. If art is for the people, then it helps to have artists that understand how to reach the people, and Warhol obviously did. It is great to review, thanks to your blog, the inspiring contributions of this icon from the 1960s. All the best.
Thanks, Kirby. Sometimes I think it would just be beautifully simple to know what appeals to ones senses. Sometimes if I have to work too hard to decide whether or not I like a piece of art, then I begin to wonder why I’m doing that. Sometimes I’m pretty sure an artist has a lot more fun and satisfaction from doing his or her work than the viewer can be expected to appreciate. There are so many “sometimes” in appreciating art!
What a surprising viewpoint, Lydia. I have never considered the frustration a viewer might have. Thanks for the comment
In answer to your question, “Andy Warhol…Why is he an important artist?”, I would posit that anyone who can take a tomato soup can and turn it into art is either a magician or a charlatan. Perhaps time (history) will prove the pudding. Provocative, as always, Kirby. Thanks.