Warhol

Inside perfect - outside ripped and dirty

Excellent quality book - images are beautiful quality.

Andy Warhol, 1928-87, is not one of my favourite artists, no doubt my fault. In 1963 he founded his Factory in New York, which still works for the Warhol Foundation, to emphasise his view that the artwork was a process-produced item, manufactured by a factory worker and deliberately left unsigned. In this book, published in 1990, Klaus Honnef considers the artist’s life, work and influence.This is done through chapters addressing ‘Andy Warhol: First Pop Star of the Art World’, ‘The Road to Fame: From Commercial Artist to Celebrated Pop Artist’, ‘A Technique Becomes a Trademark: Silkscreen Printing as an Art Form’, and ‘From Underground Film Maker to Affluent Collector’. The book ends with a Conclusion and an illustrated Chronology. The reproduction on the front cover is a silkscreen print of “Mick Jagger”, 1975.There are over 70 reproductions, mainly in colour and mostly full page plates. Honnef makes the point that Warhol’s production system was democratically attuned; there was not a master who provided his assistants with the necessities of life, rather a ‘first among equals’ who employed a large number of temporary workers. Nothing left the studio that had not been explicitly endorsed by the artist.As the author points out, Warhol blended a genius for self-promotion with a well-honed awareness of commerce, his market and his product/s, his silk screens, use of well-known images and subjects [such as Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and Liz Taylor], flexibility and his knowledge of the New York art world and his personal links with the key gurus of its style and fashion.Amongst the earliest works reproduced are two watercolours employing his ‘blotted line’ technique, “Hot Dog”, 1957-58, and “Piglet”, 1959, with child-like writing by his mother. In 1962, the artist painted his visually ‘harsh’ images of Campbell Soup cans, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Coca-Cola bottle tops and dollar bill paintings that established his reputation. Later he used mass-produced photographs and his own polaroid photographs in a similar manner.The artist’s influences include the painters of the Ash Can School who followed their leader, Robert Henri’s, opinion that ‘it was irrelevant whether the subject of a work is beautiful or ugly; rather, the beauty of a work of art lies in the artwork itself’, the 1920s-30s artists Charles Sheeler, Stuart Davis and, to a lesser degree, Ben Shahn. Warhol’s earlier experience as a window dresser and designer for a department store was also significant.“Do-It-Yourself (Flowers)”, 1962, marks the point where Warhol turned to the photographic silkscreen process, using because it was so easy. Amongst the most attractive of his silkscreens are “Flowers”, 1970. The artist’s six-hour film debut “Sleep”, 1963, was actually a repeating 20-minute loop of a sleeping man as the camera roams over his body. Using his polaroid camera, Warhol would take photographs of celebrities from the performing arts, politics and society, and along with cartoon characters and historical figures he would pass these to his Factory colleagues to create silkscreens.“Still Life”, 1976, shows the artist’s humour in the way that the hammer and sickle emblem of the superpower Soviet Union has been turned so that the hammer appears to be rather resignedly leaning against the sickle whilst, a decade later, his business acumen took advantage of the cleaning of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to paint a number of ‘substitutions’ of big canvasses using various silkscreen techniques.Honnef points out that in his final years, Warhol collected indiscriminately, sometimes without apparent aesthetic judgement. This might have been the supercharged activity of an artist at the peak of his powers or an indication that he had been corrupted by the ease of making money and the dizzying height of his success. The artist’s unexpected death, following routine surgery means that the question remains open. However, in the face of the author’s perceptive text and the choice of works I have edged more towards the former position.This is a strong contender as an introduction to the artist and his work in a field that is intensely competitive. However, this book has the advantage of being well-grounded in Modernist art scholarship yet, in this translation by Carol Fahy and I. Burns, is readily understandable.

Andy Warhol is known around the world as one of the most talented and well-known pop artists of his time. His unique techniques and subjects reflect on his own opinion of the world during the 60's. He creates different object such as soup cans and celebrity photographs, and putts them on canvas, in his own way. Andy's legacy of art and his approach on matter makes him one of the most solitary people of his era. If you were to look at this book, you would label it a coffee table book. It contains pictures and painting that Warhol created, not entirely text, like you would find in a novel. But I found, as I got into the book, my perspective of the coffee table book changed. The story of his life is not something you would leave on the table next to the coasters. As I read more and more of this book, it sucked me like a vacuum, pulling me in to read another paragraph. I enjoyed this book with such utterly devotion that it was very hard to put down. It is an extraordinary biography about an artist that shook the world of art, introducing pop art, and also surviving two assassination attempts. I would recommend this book to anyone who eulogizes the lives of famous artists and knows how to indulge the memoir of the artist and burn an everlasting inferno of interest in the arts and lives of its' maestro.

Amazing book!5/5