Tuesday, December 21, 2010

ABC Wednesday and Artist of the Week - Warhol

W is for Warhol
 Andy Warhol
(August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987)
American Pop Artist

"An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have."
~Andy Warhol


 (one of my favorite Warhol photos)


“I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say "figment."

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in a two-room row house apartment at 73 Orr Street in Pittsburgh. His parents, Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants Andrej and Julia Warhola, had three sons. Andy was their youngest.
Devout Byzantine Catholics, the family attended mass regularly and observed the traditions of their Eastern European heritage. Warhol’s father, a laborer, moved his family to a brick home on Dawson Street in 1934. Warhol attended the nearby Holmes School and took free art classes at Carnegie Institute (now The Carnegie Museum of Art). In addition to drawing, Hollywood movies enraptured Andy and he frequented the local cinema. When he was about nine years old, he received his first camera. Andy enjoyed taking pictures, and he developed them himself in his basement.  Read the rest of the biography here


"Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."
Andy Warhol





Self-Portrait

"I am a deeply superficial person." 
~Andy Warhol

Gold Marylin
1962
"I love it when you ask actors, 'What're you doing now?' and they say 'I'm between roles.' To be living life between roles.' That's my favorite."
 ~ Andy Warhol

 Eight Elvises
1963

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.[1]





 Jackie
1964 

"I think everybody should like everybody."

Velvet Underground album cover
Originally released in March 1967 by Verve Records. Recorded in 1966 during Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia event tour, The Velvet Underground & Nico would gain notoriety for its experimentalist performance sensibilities, as well as its focus on controversial subject matter expressed in many of their songs.


1969
"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest."
Andy Warhol



Flowers
1970

 Mao
1972

Andy Warhol's Mao Tse Tung (1972) is a silk-screen portrait of the Chinese leader that was made in many versions. It is one of the series of silk-screens that he made on the subject of fame. They began in the early 1960s with his many portraits of Marilyn Monroe whose sad death in 1962 led him to contemplation of what it meant to be famous and what it could possibly be worth. read the rest at Lots of Essays.com











Note:  best for last but chronologically out of order:  Warhol cats from the 1950's. I also like his little Christmas drawings which I hope to feature sometime in the coming week.






"It's all about your attitude."


Sources:





 Lots of Essay.com

The Modern Cat 

Thinkexist


See other participants at ABC Wednesday

13 comments:

  1. I have that VELVET UNDERGROUND album. I've seen the JACKIE piece in person. WARHOL shows up as a character in a number of films I've seen, but oddly, I've never seen a movie specifically about WARHOL.

    ROG, ABC Wednesday team

    ReplyDelete
  2. Terrific post. Love Warhols work - most of it anyway! He was a genius in his own way! Hope your week is going well, Gina! Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas!

    Sylvia

    ReplyDelete
  3. *Clap Clap*

    Yes, he was seminal (no snickering)

    Was thinking of you today, about the sphinx Riddle; we are different creatures in our different ages....strange to live it!


    Aloha from Hawaii

    Comfort Spiral

    ><}}(°>


    <°)}}><

    ReplyDelete
  4. Warhol was unique and ultra creative. Great interesting overview that I think was a lot of work for you to put together. I appreciate your effort.

    ReplyDelete
  5. His work was truly different at the time - I often don't think of his being a great artist, but occasionally I see a piece of his and realize how much talent he had.

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a wonderful retrospective of the work of a uniquely American genius.

    I experience Warhol as the visual analog to Lou Reed's sonic offerings, and have always marveled at their collaboration.

    Thanks, Gina, this was excellent fun!

    ReplyDelete
  7. what a fabulous post, gina, you packed this one with all sorts of things i want to follow up on...and you know, i never have seen the cats, isn't that strange? I adore this and lots of the other quotes you used too:

    "I love it when you ask actors, 'What're you doing now?' and they say 'I'm between roles.' To be living life between roles.' That's my favorite."

    thanks for posting this little illuminating piece on such a master of the quirky random wonder that is art. love the lipstick mao too but i like them all ...i'll be back tomorrow after marks surgery on his knee...fun stuff around here! xox

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great post. Andy Warhol's work captures an era of daring and change.

    My favoutites, here, are the cats; but the others are icons and deserve to stand as such.

    Wishing you a Happy Christmas!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thank you all so much! You are all among my favorite people on the blogs and I so appreciate you stopping by to enjoy this post with me. I appreciate each and every one of you and the contributions you make to the the blog world. It makes the hard work of putting these posts together, all the more worthwhile for me! That none of you are "art snobs" (and neither am I) means more to me than the comments of any snobby art world types, anywhere! Thank you and happy Solstice and Christmas to you all!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Warhol was amazing, I think. He understood his audience. I love the quotes you selected.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I well remember sitting through a large part (although not all) of one of his very long and strangely compelling films. That was when I began taking him seriously as an artist. His work with Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground was an incredible achievement.

    I love that you've posted the cat pictures.

    Happy Christmas, Gina. May all your dreams come true.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I have been fortunate to stumble upon his work a few times. One of my favorites is a Richard Nixon painting he did, and under it, like a campaign poster it says....VOTE MCGOVERN. It was in green at the Berkeley California Art Museum. Love what you did here today, as usual!
    http://www.artbrokerage.com/images/warholbook/warhol_votemcgovern.jpg You can at least get the idea as much as you love Mass! Have a great week. gin

    ReplyDelete
  13. Susan: I've not seen those early films, so that is something to tap into for fun! I had mixed feelings about his Frankenstein and Dracula movies but that was a long, long time ago. Assembling this post is making me curious about those earlier films, which I ran into on my net search for the post but still have not had time to check out.

    Love,
    Gina

    Gin: I will check it out, Gin, and get back to ya! Good holiday wishes to you and Bill. :-) I'll check into LWBI this weekend.

    Love,
    Gina

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to say you've been here.

I am sorry to say that I don't publish anonymous comments unless I know you through your initials, first name or blog name. I don't publish comments that have ANY kind of commercial or 'for sale' links.

You are Invited to Scroll Down! :-)

Please feel free to scroll down and look at the followers list, badges, photos and tons and tons of great links!

Search This Blog

In Memory of Bobbie

In Memory of Bobbie
Almost There

ARTLEX Art Dictionary

Kick Homophobia in The Butt: Add Your Name to the List of Supporters

Kick Homophobia in The Butt:  Add Your Name to the List of Supporters
click photo

Northampton Prop 8 Protest

Northampton Prop 8 Protest

It's Only Love

It's Only Love
See More Elopment Pictures here
Thoughts from an Evil Overlord

Million Doors for Peace

Lines and Colors

Lines and Colors
A New Art Resource I Just Discovered!

Emily Dickinson - The Belle of Amherst

Emily Dickinson - The Belle of Amherst
"When the Amherst sphinx styled herself a pagan, she meant she didn’t believe in the biblical God. What sort of deity, if any, she did believe in is hard to pinpoint."
-- Gary Sloan, "Emily Dickinson: Pagan Sphinx,"

National Protest Against Prop 8

National Protest Against Prop 8

My Daughters

My Daughters

Code Pink

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Love and compassion is the Universal religion. That is my religion.
~ The Dalai Lama

This site is certified 30% EVIL by the Gematriculator

Blog Archive

Fair Use

I believe that the images and writing posted here fall under the "fair use" section of the U.S. copyright law http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107, as they are intended for educational purposes and are not in a medium that is of commercial nature.

Labels

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin