Andy Warhol Essay -- essays research papers

Andy Warhol Never before have I encountered more intriguing works of art than those done by Andy Warhol. I have been curious about his life ever since I saw his work in Milwaukee. I saw his famous work of the Campbell's Soup Can. By viewing this, one can tell he is not your average artist. I'm sure his life is full of interesting events that shaped him into who he was. As an artist myself, I would like to get to know the background of his life. I may then be able to appreciate his styles and understand why and how his works were created. His life is as interesting as his artistic masterpieces. Andrew Warhola (his original name) was born one of three sons of Czech immigrants, somewhere in Pennsylvania on either August 6, 1928 or on September 28, 1930 (the date on his birth certificate). His father died when Andy was at a very young age. Thus, it forced Andy into a deep depression containing lack of self confidence. Much of his young life has been kept secret. However, he did report being very shy and depressed because he never felt comfortable with his homosexuality. His childhood life may have been full of the torture that children threw at him for being the different person he was. He was able to attend college. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in pictorial design from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949, he went to New York City with Philip Pearlstein, who was a fellow student that later became a well-known realist painter. In 1960, Warhol finally began to paint in earnest and to view art seriously as a career. He began his career with commercial drawings of women's shoes. In 1961, an early manifestation was his Dick Tracy, an enlarged version of the comic strip that was placed in the window of Lord & Taylor's department store. He followed in his own footsteps to keep going in the ever-so-famous "pop art" track. Warhol's use of images are so close to the images themselves, thanks to the photographic silkscreen technique, which is a process of applying the same image over and over again without changing the original. In 1963, he began turning film into his next aesthetic. He was the recorder of the world around him. Warhol saw this world as populated by hustlers of various sorts, motivated largely by money and the goods it would buy. Later that next year, he started to experiment in underground film. In the late 70's he ... ...Amis 1732). Others saw the diaries as a simplistic record of events. "His diaries are more or less just records of who went where and did what with whom, that anybody else who'd been along could have kept" (Plagens 1732). It's too bad he didn't start the diaries earlier in his life, such as the 60's, "when it would have been more interesting to know what he did and whom he was with, instead of waiting until 1976 to begin" (Plagens 1732). Some even complained of the editing job done by Pat Hackett. "One problem with the diaries is their postmodern polish, such as the casual proofreading and editing" (Trebay 1732). The reason the editor didn't fit up to par was the mere fact she wanted it to sound how Andy explained the day. "...still the book is great social history with its lip-smacking tales of loveless, sexless marriages, its gimlet-eyed view of other people's success, and its rampant unclosetings" (Trebay 1732). I, myself, found the book very entertaining and a great nonchalant look at the famous and their everyday lives. It may have been organized better and condensed a bit, but none-the-less it was still interesting and kept me reading.