WARHOL ANDY
Real name: Andrzej Warhola
(born 1928 – died 1987)
Famous American artist, sculptor, designer, director, producer, writer. One of the creators of pop art, the face of American culture of the second half of the 20th century.
One of the most striking and controversial figures of American pop culture of the second half of the 20th century, an extraordinary personality and creator of the pop art movement, Andy Warhol, called his activities “production” and “fiction,” and himself a “machine” and dreamed that everyone people thought alike, and at the same time wanted everyone on the planet to become famous “at least for 15 minutes.” He elevated mass culture to the rank of art and himself became a part of it, because the public perceived him not as an individual, but rather as a part of his own works. Warhol had a tremendous influence on world culture in the second half of the 20th century. His life and work became confirmation of his famous phrase: “Art does not change anything, it changes itself, inevitably moving towards the end.” He turned art into a business and became fabulously rich.
Unfortunately, there is no exact information regarding the date of birth of Andrzej Warhola. Sources give not only different dates: August 6 and September 28, but also different years - 1927, 1928 and 1930. Andrzej was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, into a family of poor immigrants from Czechoslovakia. His father died when Andrzej was 13 years old. The boy grew up withdrawn and shy; the worst test for him was school, where everyone laughed at the skinny, blond Andrzej. The boy spent all the time free from his hated stay at school at home, and his mother, who feared for her weak youngest son, was afraid to let him go far from her. Andrzej developed a hobby quite early on - he made collages from color pictures of old magazines and comics - he cut them out, glued them together, and completed the drawings.
After graduating from school, Andrzej studied design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and later, by some miracle, he managed to enroll at the California Technical University in the design department. It was a prestigious educational institution, and our hero looked rather pathetic there compared to children from rich families. He hardly communicated with anyone and cultivated his complexes, although at the university they did not laugh at him, as at school, here they rather pitied him. It soon became clear to the teachers that Warhola was very talented, and they began to help him: his fellow students did assignments in English (Andrzej himself at that time could not put together two words on paper), the professors fought to prevent him from being expelled from the university when instead of classical models, he painted beggars or children picking their noses.
After graduating from university, Andrzej Warhola went to New York, the center of American cultural life and fashionable art galleries. He changed his name to a more harmonious one for the USA - Andy Warhol, rented a cheap studio and began knocking on the doors of advertising agencies and editorial offices of popular publications. Already his first works in advertising began to enjoy great success, they were bright and memorable - Warhol perfectly captured the trends of the times.
In New York, another talent of Warhol was revealed. Previously always reserved and unsociable, he began to attract people to him like a magnet. As if to compensate for the lack of communication and entertainment in his youth, he became an active partygoer, did not miss a single presentation, exhibition or party, and constantly disappeared into nightclubs, which did not prevent him from working during the day, since Andy suffered from insomnia since childhood. Warhol later admitted to his pathological craving for parties: “If there was a grand opening of a toilet in New York, I would be there first.” This love of appearing in public places turned out to be to his advantage: it was difficult to imagine better advertising for an artist. By this time, his image had already been completely formed - constant dark glasses, a gray wig (Warhol went bald very early) and an expensive suit, stained with paint. During the daytime, he rarely left his studio - his thin, light skin instantly burned, and if he went out into the sun, it was only with an umbrella and dark glasses.
Quite quickly, Andy Warhol became the highest paid advertiser in New York. However, this state of affairs did not entirely suit him, because Warhol believed that working in advertising, where only your colleagues know you, would not achieve world fame. At this time, a new direction was emerging in America - pop art, it blurred the lines between “high” and “mass” art; anything could become a pictorial object - advertising, newspaper clippings, cartoon characters. All this reminded Warhol of his childhood experiments with collages, with which the boy once entertained his family and the entire street. And as an adult, Andy again began to experiment in search of a new method that would help him achieve his goal - to become famous. In 1956, Warhol went on a trip: he visited India, Egypt, France, Italy, Great Britain and many other countries, where he studied local culture and art. The impression he voiced from this trip is considered an example of outrageousness: “The most beautiful thing in Rome is McDonald’s.” The most beautiful thing in Paris is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in London is McDonald's." From the point of view of mass art, this is indeed true. Palaces, temples and monuments of the Old World are elitist art, presented in single copies, and McDonald's is a single concept, the pinnacle of mass production and standardization.
During his world travel, Warhol finally became convinced that modern art should be mass and commercial, and upon returning to America he again took up canvas.
After lengthy attempts and experiments with writing techniques, a successful idea, as it turned out later, was unexpectedly given to him by a friend who said: “What do you love most? Money. So draw a dollar. The point is to take something simple and known to everyone - the same dollar or a can of soup.” The monumental paintings with a can of Campbell's tomato soup, created by the artist in 1962, became Andy Warhol's calling card for many years and made him truly famous. Newspapers and critics were choked with delight, prices for his works skyrocketed, and the artist himself was surprised at how naive this world was, how simple everything turned out to be. Art critic Robert Hughes very accurately described the success of paintings with Campbell's soup: “Painting a tin can in itself does not mean engaging in real art. But the real thing about Warhol is that he raised the level of soup in a can to the level of painting, giving them the character of mass production - consumer art imitates the process, as well as the appearance of consumer culture." Another consumer product immortalized in Warhol’s paintings was Coca-Cola. The artist explained his choice by the fact that everyone drinks it - the president of the country, Liz Taylor, and the beggar who knows that his Coca-Cola is no worse than the president’s. Once, at an exhibition where, among other works, canvases of Campbell's soup were presented, a New York critic sarcastically told Andy: “If you can draw a soup ad, why not draw a beer ad?” Warhol agreed with him quite seriously, and the very next day a “portrait” of a beer can was on display. By the way, Warhol also depicted the dollar that his friend, who suggested the idea for the soup, was talking about...
A huge number of people were now constantly spinning around Warhol, and soon the artist opened a large studio, dubbing it the “Factory,” which later became a symbol of the new art. The rooms of the “Factory” were crowded with young artists, actors and just people who dreamed of becoming famous. They were attracted by Warhol's unusual aura, they worshiped him, sang his praises and were ready to fulfill his every whim, and this meant only one thing - Andy Warhol became a living pop culture idol. Andy drew his inspiration from conversations with people who visited the Factory or lived there. Because of this, he made himself a huge number of enemies, often using other people's ideas or including in his films recordings with frank stories of people to whom he promised not to show this to anyone. It was the “Factory” and its visitors that largely helped to make art mass, as Warhol wanted, works appeared in the thousands, in a sense, it was a real factory. The artist proudly declared: “In our “Factory” a film, a painting, a sculpture, a lot of drawings, a lot of photographs are created per day.”
For five years, from 1963 to 1968, Warhol was actively involved in, in his own words, “filmmaking.” During this period, he created several hundred films, starting with a mass of three-minute tests and portraits and ending with 150 full-length films. Andy Warhol's works did not fit into the existing cinematic framework; they were an explosive mixture of avant-garde, Hollywood and underground cinema, and included elements of pornography, theater, minimalism and portraiture. The length of these films ranged from three minutes to twenty-five hours. Only a few of Warhol's hundreds of films were understood and accepted by audiences. Often there was only one actor on screen for several hours. “I started making my films with one actor. For several hours he smoked, sat, ate, slept. I did this because I realized that audiences go to the cinema mainly to see their favorite actor. So I gave them this opportunity,” said Warhol. In the 1964 film Empire, the camera captures the image of the famous New York skyscraper, the Empire State Building, for eight hours. We can say that Andy Warhol’s films are the opposite of commercial feature films; in a sense, they are “anti-films” that have no analogues in the history of world cinema.
By 1968, Warhol had become a recognized master of pop art, with his exhibitions taking place all over the world. In America he was the most popular artist, his paintings were sold at incredible prices. Andy also became famous for his scandalous interviews, in one of which, to everyone’s surprise, he stated: “I have never been touched by my own work. I make cheap writing...” In Los Angeles in the spring of that year, at the opening of a large retrospective of his work, Warhol was greeted by a crowd chanting: “We love Andy Warhol!” The success of the exhibition was enormous. And at the same time, the artist’s exhibitions themselves could not be called purely artistic; the interior, light, and all kinds of installations played a role here. He could show at an exhibition piles of cardboard boxes randomly thrown in the corners of rooms - and nothing more, and the exhibition was still a huge success.
All in the same 1968, the radical feminist, the only member of the “Society for the Destruction of Men,” Valerie Solanas, brought Warhol a script for the film. The artist considered the script too “dirty” and refused to make a film based on it. When the girl appeared at the Factory several times demanding the return of the manuscript, Andy brushed her off each time and asked her to come back later. One day, the unbalanced Valerie's patience ran out. A couple of days after Warhol returned from Los Angeles, she reappeared at the Factory, approached Warhol, took a revolver from a paper bag and fired three shots at the artist, and wounded another person from Andy’s entourage. After which Solanas calmly called the elevator and left. On the street, she turned to the first policeman she met with the words: “I shot Andy Warhol.” Later, these words will be used to describe a film about her and this dark story.
At the hospital, doctors confirmed the artist’s clinical death. Few people thought that the physically weak Warhol could survive three bullet wounds, but he survived. It took a whole year to recover, and the artist was forced to wear a corset for the rest of his life due to the fact that doctors unsuccessfully sewed his abdominal muscles. Richard Avedon's photograph of Andy Warhol's naked torso with his stomach disfigured by terrible scars made the rounds in magazines all over the world.
After the assassination attempt, Andy, who had almost gotten rid of his complexes, again began to be afraid of people. He began to constantly wear a bulletproof vest, tightened face control at the entrance to the Factory and did not go out after eight in the evening. “After the shot, I felt like I was in a dream. I don't understand anything. I don’t understand whether I’m alive or dead,” Warhol often repeated. Now the artist was very reluctant to give interviews; he could only answer “yes” or “no” to all questions; sometimes asked reporters what they would like to hear from him, and gave permission to publish their answer as his own. Warhol did not like to talk about himself at all; he often answered such questions: “If you want to know everything about Andy, watch my films, my paintings. This is all I am. There is nothing more." Warhol began to avoid appearing in public; he often sent a person similar in appearance to him to give lectures on his behalf.
Andy Warhol did not hide his gay orientation, but he also did not shout about it at all street corners. He did not have high-profile and scandalous novels, like other stars; he preferred to be an observer rather than a participant: “Love fantasies are much better than carnal love. It’s a very exciting thing to never do.”
Andy Warhol's literary activity was also unique. In 1968, his first book entitled “A” was published, which consisted of recordings of telephone conversations at the “Factory”. The next book appeared a few years later, it was called “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. From A to B and vice versa." Its main theme was the argument that art is a process of making money. Since 1969, under the leadership of Warhol, the famous Interview magazine in the United States was published, in which stars interviewed other stars.
In 1970, the most successful period in the work of Andy Warhol began - he began using silk-screen printing to create portraits of celebrities. His images of Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minnelli, Jimmy Carter, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and Mao Zedong went around the world. One critic called Warhol's portrait of Marilyn Monroe the Mona Lisa of the 20th century. Now it was possible to talk not only about the American, but also about the world fame of the artist. Warhol's favorite method was silk-screen printing - a circulation technique; it made the creation of paintings not a long painstaking process, as was always believed, but a truly mass "production". Warhol used only bright, pure colors, without any halftones, shadows or nuances, he deprived his works of realism and life, they do not breathe, they are just prints, images, even more lifeless than on advertising posters, and their creator explains with satisfaction: "I love everything artificial." He eliminated the difference between the original and the copy, since silk-screen printing implied the creation of an almost unlimited number of prints. The artist believed that this kind of art - banal and replicated - was needed in the modern world, and, judging by its crazy popularity, he was right in many respects. In addition, the further, the more the public became interested in Warhol’s personality, and not in his works; Andy’s name became more of a trademark than the name of an artist.
In the 80s of the 20th century, Warhol again worked a lot in advertising. In 1980, he developed and implemented the project of his own cable television channel and became its director. The same year, the artist’s next book, Popism: Warhol in the 60s, was published. During this period, he finished working with images of stars and began to work on the painting masterpieces of the past - his series “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper” were published.
Since the second half of the 80s of the 20th century, Andy Warhol's health has noticeably deteriorated; this circumstance was aggravated by the fact that the artist was terribly afraid of doctors and refused to be treated. In the winter of 1987, his gallbladder inflammation worsened, and Warhol was forced to go to the hospital for a simple operation. The surgery was successful, but the next day the nurse found the artist dead in bed. He died in his sleep from a heart attack. This happened on February 22, 1987. Warhol was buried in his native Pittsburgh. About two thousand people attended the memorial service held on April 1 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
When, after the artist’s death, his friends and lawyers opened Warhol’s apartment, where he had not allowed anyone during his lifetime, they found there a huge amount of a wide variety of things that were in terrible disorder. Among them were many unpacked packages with purchases, numerous bottles of perfume and Indian incense, jewelry, masterpieces of world painting in the originals, mixed with outright rubbish from junk shops. Andy Warhol spent millions of dollars on purchases, but did not show his acquisitions to anyone. He also kept money in his apartment in cookie boxes, not trusting banks. Warhol's motley collection was sold at the famous Sotheby's auction for more than $25 million. This money, according to Andy's will, was transferred to the fund he created to help artistic organizations.
A few years after the death of the famous artist, the Andy Warhol Museum was opened in his native Pittsburgh, which contains many of his works.
It is still unclear how this quiet and strange man, who always hid his true appearance under a wig and huge dark glasses, could become the face of his time and so successfully combine art and business. An obituary published in the New York Times gave perhaps the most accurate and succinct definition of the Andy Warhol phenomenon: “Warhol’s best work is Warhol himself.” Indeed, it is impossible to appreciate his works without knowing anything about their creator; the image of this strange and shy man is inseparable from his works, and vice versa. Another, very accurate definition of Andy Warhol’s work belongs to rock musician Mick Jagger, leader of the Rolling Stones, who, at the height of his popularity, also appeared on the canvas of the famous artist: “If you want to know what was most popular in a given period, look what Warhol was painting at that time.” And it is true. Andy very sensitively felt the trends of the times and instantly reflected the preferences of the broad masses in his works - be it Campbell's tomato soup or Marilyn Monroe, Coca-Cola or Elizabeth Taylor.
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A man who ridiculed the assembly line with the same assembly line. A man who has been dissatisfied with the shape of his nose for almost thirty years. The man who became the king of pop art. All this - Andy Warhole.
In 1928, no one could have imagined that Andrew Warhola, born into a Slovak immigrant family (this is the artist’s real name), was destined to become the de facto creator of pop art. He himself spoke best about his activities:
“Do I want to become a great artist? No. I'd rather be famous."
Warhol, unlike the great masters, initially sought fame and wealth. And he achieved his goal.
Andrew Warhole's parents had nothing to do with art: his father was a laborer, and his mother was a window cleaner. They didn't even know English well. Raising four children was a difficult task for the family, and their main support was Christianity and belief in the American dream. Little Andrew Warhola trusted his parents and grew up as a very devout child.
The future celebrity had poor health since childhood. At the age of eight, due to a disease of the central nervous system, he was prescribed a long period of bed rest, which would subsequently be repeated year after year.
During illnesses, the mother, in order to somehow cheer up her son, bought him coloring books, comics, albums and photos of famous actors. These images were stored in little Andrew’s head and, having matured a little, he began to embody them on paper. His parents, noting his ability to draw, began saving money to pay for their son’s higher education in a few years.
In his final years at university, having already changed his last name to Warhol, Andy studied at the Faculty of Drawing and Design. He chose a pseudo-naive, semi-cartoon style, which he began to use after training, becoming a successful commercial designer. These were the first steps towards the creation of his famous style, when the paintings seem to be devoid of the creator and pieces of his soul, which every artist usually puts into his work. Later, such art would be called “machineized.”
In those years, Andy Warhol could already earn enough, but his name was known only in narrow circles, and several attempts to exhibit in galleries failed. This displeased the artist. Even his friends, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who also started out as illustrations, have already become real stars. Andy was jealous. And in many ways, it was envy that helped him become what we know him to be.
To become famous, you had to meet the demands of the crowd. Warhol noticed that people's interests began to shift from expressionism to everyday objects and details from pop culture. In the late fifties, Andy presented to the public a series of works performed in compliance with all the necessary criteria in order to attract the audience of that time.
These were simple images of everyday things: vacuum cleaners, canned food, bottles, televisions and much more. So Warhol practically found his niche, by the early sixties he began to use in his works the now unchangeable cans of Campbell's soup, Coca-Cola, the dollar sign and Marilyn Monroe.
Andy was not afraid of the mechanical principle of creating works; on the contrary, he only emphasized it, giving his new studio in Manhattan the name “Factory”. Various underground artists, writers and musicians constantly hung out there, following the famous Warhol like an entourage.
At the Factory, Andy determined that his favorite technique was silk-screen printing. And due to the use of printing presses, Warhol’s works began to be put on stream, without authorship or original. Depicting dozens of identical cans of soup and bottles of cola in his paintings and exposing the soulless assembly line of modern production, Andy himself created works in exactly the same way, for which many had complaints against him. His paintings were like icons of the consumer society that began to flourish in those years.
Although we cannot say that he wanted to expose something. Perhaps he didn’t care what he drew at all, the main thing was that the crowd liked it. And the more paintings, the more profit. The machines were the best solution in his case.
Andy Warhol spent most of his time working in his studio, doing more than just painting. (PHOTO - Warhol with a camera). He made prints, Polaroids, shot documentaries and feature films, and also recorded a huge number of conversations on a tape recorder, which he never parted with. Filming greatly influenced his destiny.
In 1968, Valerie Solanas, a staunch feminist who sometimes starred in Warhol's films, came to the Factory. She suddenly pulled out a gun, walked up to the artist and shot him in the stomach three times in a row, saying that he had stolen her script. Solanas was in no hurry to flee the crime scene - she waited for the police and admitted that she shot Andy Warhol.
The artist survived both clinical death and a multi-hour operation, but did not testify against Valerie. All of his internal organs were damaged, causing Andy to experience constant pain. From that moment on, he became very withdrawn into himself, almost stopped letting anyone into the “Factory” and began to pay attention in his works to the themes of death and the meaninglessness of life.
“I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living”- Andy Warhol said then.
In recent years, he spent a lot of money and time helping talented emerging artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel, who later became a director who made a film about Basquiat and Warhol.
Many of Andy's contemporaries did not appreciate his work and did not understand the messages of such works. How can a shipping box be a sculpture? How can portraits of Marilyn Monroe be a painting, much less a diptych, as Warhol called it?
The artist himself responded in one of his interviews that it’s easier this way. And this helps him pass the time at his leisure.
Despite all the oddities and ambiguous attitude from society, Andy Warhol still made a revolution in culture, making art objects that were as far removed from art as possible. He destroyed the line that had long separated culture from everyday life, mixing the ideal with the material. But wasn’t it in vain that he did it?
Today marks the 86th anniversary of the birth of Andy Warhol, the famous American artist, designer, sculptor, producer, director, writer, magazine publisher, founder of the “homouniversale” ideology and author of works that have already become synonymous with the concept of commercial pop art. Andy Warhol made art accessible to the masses so that people learned to see the beauty of everyday things and understand that everything that surrounds them is beautiful in its essence. On the occasion of the birthday of the genius provocateur, we remembered 10 of his most famous works.
1. Marilyn Diptych
Marilyn diptych, 1962
The canvas was painted immediately after the death of Marilyn Monroe. Andy Warhol combined two paintings: fifty roughly colored, replicated portraits of the actress and exactly the same, but in black and white. On the second canvas, most of the portraits are poorly visible or blurred. Thus, the artist managed to show the image of death that haunted Marilyn and emphasize the contrast with her life. The painting is now in London, at the Tate Gallery.
2. A can of Campbell's soup
Campbell Soup Can, 1962
This painting, according to the artist, was his best work. It all started with one picture, then a whole series was born. It expresses Warhol's desire to reveal the superficial essence of things and enable everyone to understand that an iron or a vacuum cleaner is as beautiful as green hills or a meadow with flowers. Warhol explained his passion for painting the everyday very simply: “I work with what I like.” And he really loved Campbell soups; he ate them straight from the can. This painting was sold for $24 million after Warhol's death. The author himself at one time, without suspecting anything, sold similar ones for 100 bucks.
3. Pistol
Pistol, 1981-1982
On June 3, 1968, Andy Warhol survived an attempt on his life - he received three bullet wounds in the stomach. A close encounter with death inspired the pop art innovator to create several paintings, including the famous “Pistol” - a copy of the revolver with which he was almost shot. On a red background there is a stenciled image of a revolver in black and white color schemes. Today this work is estimated at 6-7 million dollars.
4. Banana
Banana, 1967
Warhol was a producer for the Velvet Underground. His main contribution was the creation of the cover of the debut album of The Velvet Underground and Nico. It was on it that the famous bright yellow banana, the artist’s signature and the inscription “Peel slowly and see” were first depicted. And the first editions of the album were equipped with a yellow banana glued to the envelopes, tearing it off revealed another fruit - this time pink and peeled.
5. 200 one dollar bills
200 one dollar bills, 1962
Warhol said: “I asked several of my friends to suggest themes for my work. Finally, one friend asked the right question: “Listen, what do you love most?” That’s how I started drawing money!” Andy Warhol, as a promoter of everything that has a mass character, could not ignore such a familiar thing for Americans as a one-dollar bill. It was in this picture that he maximally revealed the theme of spiritual and material values. There is nothing in the picture but money. However, this work is among the most expensive: it was sold for 43.8 million dollars. Thus, Warhol proved his main idea: “art is profit if it sells well.”
6. Eight Elvises
Eight Elvises, 1963
The palm among Warhol's most expensive works belongs to the canvas “Eight Elvises,” which the artist was inspired by the untimely deceased king of rock and roll. These few Presleys are worth $108.1 million. The artist wanted not only to remember Elvis, but also to reflect his favorite theme in art - the theme of the frailty of fame, the monotonous repetition of identical images and the fear of death. Warhol painted the painting in his favorite color – silver.
7. Green Coca-Cola bottles
Green Coca-Cola bottles, 1962
What could be simpler - just depict a well-known bottle? But this was the whole secret of Andy Warhol’s art - it should be understandable to everyone, and everyone drinks Coca-Cola: from the president to the ordinary worker. The artist made a bet not on elitism, but on mass appeal, and he was right. “The amazing thing about this country is that it has given rise to a new tradition of consumption - the rich buy exactly the same products as the poor. The President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke and, just think, you drink Coke too,” he said.
8. Red Lenin
Red Lenin, 1987
From celebrities, whom Andy Warhol painted very often, the artist moved on to politicians. One of his later works was the painting “Red Lenin,” which until recently belonged to Boris Berezovsky. Even before his death, the oligarch sold the work of art and “Red Lenin” went under the hammer for almost 202 thousand dollars to a private collector. Initially, the silk-screened reproduction of Warhol was estimated at 45-75 thousand dollars.
9. Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II, 1985
The 100 x 80 centimeter images of Elizabeth II were based on a 1975 photograph of the queen by photographer Peter Grujon and were included in Warhol's Reigning Queens collection. It also included his portraits of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Margrethe II of Denmark and Ntombi Twala of Swaziland. The British Queen is depicted in the artist’s works wearing the Vladimir Tiara, which once belonged to representatives of the Russian imperial house of Romanov. Recently, Elizabeth II bought four portraits of herself by Andy Warhol for the Royal Collection.
10. Che Guevara
Che Guevara, 1968
Few people know that the famous version of Che Guevara's "Heroic Guerrilla" poster did not belong to Andy Warhol. The fact is that his companion Gerard Malanga created this work in the style of Warhol, passing off the work as a drawing by the latter for profit. But Gerard’s scam was revealed and prison awaited him. Then Warhol saved the situation - he agreed to recognize the fake as his work on the condition that all the proceeds from the sale would go to him.
Andy Warhol is a legendary man, an artist who turned the world of modern art upside down. His works are sold for millions of dollars, and his artistic heritage is highly appreciated by critics and ordinary art connoisseurs around the world.Currently, the name of this outstanding master has become a true symbol of an entire movement, which is usually designated by the term “pop art.” But what allowed this outstanding American to achieve such impressive recognition? You can understand this only by looking into the past of the great artist.
Andy Warhol's Early Years, Childhood and Family
Our today's hero was born in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and became the fourth child in a large family of immigrants from Eastern Europe. According to the most reliable data, his family’s homeland was Slovakia, but in some sources one can also find references to the artist’s Ukrainian roots.The parents of the future artist moved to the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century. Andy's father worked in a coal mine, and his mother was a housewife.
Our Andy's love for drawing and fine arts came to him in early childhood. In the third grade, the future famous artist fell ill with Sydenham's chorea and remained bedridden for about a year. This syndrome affects the muscles and leads to uncontrolled movements of the limbs. During this period, he began to “kill time” by painting all kinds of portraits, landscapes, and also making collages from old newspaper clippings.
It is quite remarkable that already in those days Warhol began to paint the most ordinary objects of the surrounding world - lit lamps, cigarette packs, key chains and much more. Subsequently, the artist admits that it was during this period that the formation of his signature style began, which remained with him until the end of his days and brought him enormous success and fame.
After graduating from high school, Andy attended Carnegie Mellon Institute of Technology, where he began studying graphics and the basics of commercial illustration. According to some authoritative sources, during his college years Andy was one of the most talented students in his group. However, academic success was accompanied by an obvious inability to find contact with peers and teachers.
Biography of Andy Warhol
After receiving his diploma (specialty - graphic design), our young Andy moved to New York, where he got a job as a window designer. During this period, he painted advertising posters, holiday cards, and also did general decoration of stands. Some time later, he began to fruitfully collaborate with the famous glossy publications Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. Here he worked as an illustrator.
Artist Andy Warhol's career
The first success came to the young artist already in 1950, when he profitably used artistic blots to create an advertisement for I. Shoes. Miller." After that, he often began to receive lucrative contracts. His fees grew steadily. 
In 1952, Andy held his first full-scale exhibition, which instantly brought him huge success. In 1956, Warhol was successfully accepted into the “Art Editors Club”, and some time later he began creating his first paintings using the screen printing method.
By this time, the talented artist was earning about one hundred thousand dollars a year, remaining by this indicator one of the most successful authors of his time.
In the second half of the fifties, he first began to get involved in photography, but fine art still remained above all else for him.
In 1960, Andy Warhol created a design for cans of the Coca-Cola drink, which brought him several more large checks. During this period, our today's hero began to create a series of paintings about products of mass culture, which very soon became his “calling card”.
Episode about Andy Warhol from the film “What Men Talk About”
Between 1960 and 1962, the artist presented to the public a series of works depicting cans of Campbell soup. This was followed by a series of works “Green Bottles of Coca-Cola”.
Works from the early sixties were exhibited at the Stabl art gallery and instantly became very popular. During this period, some called the artist’s paintings a reflection of the culture of mass consumption, while others simply spoke about the artist’s extraordinary ability to find aesthetics in ordinary things.
In 1963, Andy Warhol bought an old abandoned building in New York and organized something like his own workshop here. This place was called “Factory” and very soon became a springboard for the creation and presentation of the works of the famous author. Having hired a team of young artists, the recognized master instructed them to recreate their own works, thus making art a product of mass consumption.
In the mid-sixties, Warhol began to get involved in alternative forms of art. He creates his works from cardboard, old cans, and powder packets. In addition, during this period, the talented author began making his first films.
However, it was not always possible to attribute these works to the field of cinema. Nowadays, the artist’s short cinematic studies are more often considered to be part of the same alternative art, since many of the master’s films did not even have a clear plot.
The assassination attempt and the last years of Andy Warhol's life
On June 3, 1968, feminist and former Warhol model Valerie Solanas entered the artist's Factory and shot him several times in the stomach. The artist suffered clinical death and a long operation, which nevertheless helped save his life. Having recovered from his injuries, he refused to testify against his former model, and therefore Valerie received only three years in prison. 
After the assassination attempt, Andy Warhol changed a lot. He often painted works related in one way or another to death. He was greatly influenced by the death of Marilyn Monroe, which resulted in the painting of his most famous painting dedicated to the actress. Subsequently, the works of this period will be identified by art connoisseurs as a separate stage of the author’s work.
Serving art in the life of the artist continued until the end of his days. In 1987, the great and incomprehensible Andy Warhol died in his sleep from cardiac arrest. At that time he was fifty-eight years old.
Personal life of Andy Warhol
For a long time, rumors attributed the great artist to an affair with his friend and muse Edie Sedgwick. They were halves of one whole - they dressed the same, dyed their hair the same color, and appeared everywhere together. 
Andy and his muse met in 1965, when Edie first came to the artist’s “Factory”. She starred in several of his films, and although they were often not available to a wide range of viewers, they began to write more often about the model in the press.
"I Seduced Andy Warhol" (film trailer)
However, this relationship ended one day for an unknown reason, presumably due to Eddie’s excessive drug use.
Andy Warhol always kept his personal life secret. Although most researchers agree that the great artist was gay, this is not known for certain.
Andy Warhol, real name - Andrew Warhola (Rusyn. Andriy Vargola). Born August 6, 1928 - died February 22, 1987. American artist, producer, designer, writer, collector, magazine publisher and film director, a cult figure in the history of the pop art movement and modern art in general. The founder of the “homo universale” ideology, the creator of works that are synonymous with the concept of “commercial pop art”.
In the 1960s, he managed and produced the first alternative rock band, The Velvet Underground. Several feature films and documentaries have been made about Warhol's life.
Andrew Warhola was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA) as the fourth child in a working-class family of Ruthenian immigrants from the village of Mikova near Stropkova in the northeast of modern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The first child, daughter Justina, born in Slovakia, died before moving to the USA. Warhol's father Andrei immigrated to the United States in search of work in 1914, and his mother Julia (nee Zavatskaya) joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhol's grandparents. Members of a deeply religious family were parishioners of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine, his mother, who did not speak English, worked part-time by washing windows and cleaning, and also made and sold flowers from tin cans and corrugated paper. By 1934, the Warhols had moved from the slums to a more comfortable area. The family lived at 55 Belen Street and then at 3252 Dawson Street in Oakland, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Andy had two older brothers, Paul (Paul), born in 1923, and John, born in 1925. Paul's son, James Warhol, became an illustrator of children's books.
In the third grade, Warhol contracted Sydenham's chorea, also called St. Witta", which was a consequence of a previous scarlet fever, after which he was bedridden most of the time. He becomes an outcast in class. Suspiciousness appeared, and a fear of doctors and hospitals developed (which would not let him go until he died). While he is bedridden, he begins to enjoy drawing, collecting photographs of movie stars and making collages from newspaper clippings. Warhol himself later mentioned this period as very important in the development of his personality, developing skills, artistic taste and preferences.
When Andy was 13 years old, his father died in a mining accident. Warhol graduated from Schenley High School in 1945.
He planned to get an art education at the University of Pittsburgh and then teach drawing. But then plans changed, and he entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology, hoping to make a career as a commercial illustrator. In 1949, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in graphic design. He did well in his studies, but often did not find a common language with teachers and fellow students.
After graduating in 1949, he moved to New York, where he began working as a store window designer, drawing postcards and advertising posters. Later, he was hired as an illustrator for the magazines Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and several other less popular publications. During this period, he Americanized his last name, starting to write it without the last letter a - “Warhol”.
Already by 1950, success came after the successful design of advertising for the shoe company “I. Miller." Advertising posters featured eccentrically drawn shoes with ink and specially made blots. In the mid-1950s, Warhol illustrated Margarita Madrigal's Spanish language self-instruction book, which marked the beginning of her series of best-selling self-instruction books, which were reprinted many times.
In 1962, Warhol held his first major exhibition, which brought him popularity. By this time, Warhol was able to buy his own house in Manhattan, on East 33rd Street. His income rose to the level of 100 thousand dollars a year, and this gave him the opportunity to become more interested in what he loved - drawing, and to dream of “high art”.
In 1956 he received an honorary prize from the Art Editors Club.
Warhol was one of the first to use screen printing as a method for creating paintings. In his early silkscreens he used his own hand-drawn images. Later, using a projector, he transferred photographs onto the canvas and manually traced the image. The use of the silkscreen method was one of the stages in Warhol's desire for mass reproduction and circulation of works of art, despite all criticism, who wrote about the loss of aura and value of a work in the age of its technical reproducibility.
Warhol's method was as follows: a nylon mesh was stretched over the frame. The image itself on the grid was created by contact illumination. A transparency was placed on a grid impregnated with photographic emulsion. Everything was illuminated, as if printed in photographs. In the illuminated areas of the grid, the photoemulsion polymerized and became an insoluble film. The excess was washed off with water. This is how the matrix, that is, the printing form, was created. It was placed on paper or fabric and paint was applied. The paint penetrated through the transparent areas of the mesh and created an image. Thus, applying black paint with a special rubber roller on a wooden handle, Warhol executed the main outline of his most famous works: repeated works by Elizabeth Taylor and others. Multicolor printing required a number of matrices equal to the number of colors. One set of matrices was enough for a large number of images. The introduction of innovative technologies into the process of creating images put art on a commercial basis.
In the 1960s, the artist used photographs published in the media for his work. Beginning in the 1980s, he took photographs himself with a Polaroid camera.
In 1960, Warhol created designs for Coca-Cola cans, which brought him fame as an artist with an extraordinary vision of art. In the early sixties, Warhol became increasingly involved in graphics, creating mainly only works depicting dollar bills.
Already in 1952, Warhol's works were presented at an exhibition in New York, and in 1956 he received an honorary prize from the Art Editors Club. By this time, the artist was earning about one hundred thousand dollars a year, but did not stop dreaming of “high art.”
In 1960, Warhol painted his first piece from the Coca-Cola series. In 1960-1962, a series of works depicting Campbell’s Soup Cans appeared. Initially, posters with cans of soup were made using the painting technique: “Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato Rice), 1961, and since 1962 - using the silk-screen printing technique (“Thirty-two cans of Campbell's soup,” “ One Hundred Cans of Campbell's Soup", "Two Hundred Cans of Campbell's Soup" - all 1962). Also, in 1962, a turning point for himself, Warhol created the series "Green Bottles of Coca-Cola". Drawings of cans in bright colors became Warhol's "calling card". The display of works at an exhibition in the gallery "Stabl" caused a great resonance among the public. Although, according to critics, these paintings reflected the facelessness and vulgarity of mass consumer culture, the mentality of Western civilization. After this exhibition, Warhol was ranked among the representatives of pop art and conceptual art, such like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein.
Starting from this period, Warhol, as a photographer and artist, worked with images of pop and film stars: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger and, as well as with images of politicians, for example, Mao Zedong, Richard Nixon, John Kennedy and (“Red Lenin”, "Black Lenin") After Monroe passed away, he created his famous “Marilyn Diptych,” which became an allegory of the life and death of the actress. As of 2011, the Marilyn Diptych is on display at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool. On December 2, 2004, The Guardian newspaper published a list of the 500 most outstanding works of contemporary art, where this work by Warhol takes an honorable third place. Warhol had a distinctive, ever-changing approach to painting. One of the innovations was the use of acid-colored paints.
In 1963, Warhol bought a building in Manhattan, the building was named “Factory”, and here Andy started creating works of contemporary art. In 1964, the first exhibition of Warhol's art objects that did not fit into the framework of the concept of painting took place. The exposition consisted of displaying about a hundred copies of cardboard packaging containers, boxes of Heinz ketchup and Brillo washing powder. On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, Warhol gave a presentation of his new unusual studio, “Factory”, the walls of which were painted silver. There was a permissive atmosphere in the studio, and parties were held. This room violated the idea of the artist’s studio as a secluded place. The “factory” and its owner began to often appear in gossip column reports, and they began to be written about in magazines and the media. Warhol also created his own project - the Interview magazine, where celebrities interviewed celebrities.
The "factory" was an organized production that produced up to 80 printed works per day, that is, several thousand prints per year. A team of workers was hired to mass produce mass-produced reproductions of celebrity portraits. Warhol photographed the heroes of his replicated works in his studio, taking a series of Polaroid snapshots. The best one was selected from many frames, enlarged, and transferred to canvas using silk-screen printing. The surface of the canvas was covered with paint either before reproduction, or Warhol applied oil paint over the already reproduced print. Usually several versions of one work were made. In this way, Warhol turned art into “business art,” directing performers who technically reproduced his own work.
Warhol was of the opinion that celebrities in portraits had to look perfect and without flaws: the painting "Before and After" from the series "Advertising" (1960), gave the announcement of a "new face from Warhol", supposedly "an improved version of yourself." He retouched wrinkles and facial skin defects, removed excess chins, painted on eyes and lips brighter, giving faces idealized features. Among Warhol's clients are the entire family of the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot and many other celebrities.
In parallel with the creation of pop art objects, Warhol began making films, but as a director he achieved success only in narrow circles. Between 1963 and 1968, Warhol made several hundred films, including 472 four-minute black-and-white portrait screen tests (Screen Tests), dozens of short films and more than 150 feature films, only 60 of which were released.
Most of his films made during this period had no plot. The storylines were based on pseudo-documentary footage, for example: “a man tries on underpants.” The main point of Warhol's films was to reveal the essence of the sexual revolution. In the mid-1960s, Warhol switched from shooting black-and-white silent films to color films with scripts (most often of erotic content). In an effort to push the boundaries of traditional cinema, Warhol began shooting “still films.” The most significant of them were “Sleep” (1963) and “Empire” (1964). The first was a black and white 5-hour filming of a sleeping man - American poet John Giorno, not accompanied by any sounds. The film premiered on January 17, 1964 at The Film-Makers Cooperative with the participation of director Jonas Mekas, the “godfather” of the New York avant-garde cinema. A total of nine spectators were present, two of them left the screening within the first hour. Initially, Warhol replaced Giorno I wanted to film Brigitte Bardot's dream.
The plot of the second film consisted of an 8-hour show of the New York Empire State Building shot in slow motion from the evening of July 25 to the morning of July 26, 1964. With his tests and performances in cinema, Warhol wanted to open new directions in cinema and interest and surprise the jaded viewer with them.
Andy Warhol never came out, but lived the life of an openly gay man. The artist's homosexuality was actively manifested in his work. Examples include the graphic series “Sex Parts” and “Torso”, the films “Sleep”, “Blow Job”, “My Hustler” and “Lonesome Cowboys”. That is, Andy Warhol, among other things, can be counted among the pioneers and founders of queer art. The artist's boyfriends at various times were Billy Name, John Giorno, Jed Johnson and John Gould.
On June 3, 1968, radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who had previously starred in Warhol films, walked into the Factory and shot Andy three times in the stomach. Then she went outside, approached the policeman and said: “I shot Andy Warhol.” The victim suffered a state of clinical death and a 5-hour operation that ended successfully. After the assassination attempt, the artist had to wear a support corset for more than a year, since almost all of his internal organs were damaged. Warhol refused to give an incriminating statement to the police, as a result of which Solanas received only three years in prison and compulsory treatment in a psychiatric hospital. Themes related to violent death begin to dominate in his works. However, this topic occupied Warhol even before the assassination attempt; disasters excited him with their attractiveness. Warhol expressed his fear of death and mutilation through images of electric chairs, suicides, accidents, funerals, nuclear explosions, the mourning of Jacqueline Kennedy, posthumous portraits of Marilyn Monroe and the sick Elizabeth Taylor. One of Warhol's striking illustrations of this phobia is the 1963 painting "Tuna Disaster," which reproduces newspaper clippings and photographs of two women who were poisoned by A&P canned tuna, the can of which also appears in the image.
In 1979, he took up artistic painting of a racing car. In his opinion, a work of art moving in space is a new word, a new phenomenon in painting, the essence of beauty of which was revealed in the dynamics of movement. Warhol personally painted the car body. I applied paints with a variety of available materials, including my finger. His statement was preserved: “I tried to draw what speed looks like. When the car moves at high speed, all the lines and colors blur.”
Warhol died in his sleep from cardiac arrest at Cornwell Medical Center in Manhattan, where he underwent simple surgery to remove his gallbladder in 1987. He was buried in his native Pittsburgh. Yoko Ono attended the funeral.