orig. Andrew Warhola
born Aug. 6, 1928?, Pittsburgh?, Pa., U.S.
died Feb. 22, 1987, New York, N.Y.
U.S. artist and filmmaker.
The son of Czech immigrants, Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in 1949. He then went to New York City, where he worked as a commercial illustrator. Warhol began painting in the late 1950s and received sudden notoriety in 1962, when he exhibited paintings of Campbell's soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, and wooden replicas of Brillo soap-pad boxes. By 1963 he was mass-producing these purposely banal images of consumer goods by means of photographic silk screen prints; he then began printing endless variations of portraits of celebrities in garish colours. The silk screen technique was ideally suited to Warhol, for the repeated image was reduced to a dehumanized cultural icon that reflected both the supposed emptiness of American material culture and the artist's emotional distance from the practice of his art. Warhol's work placed him in the forefront of the emerging Pop art movement in the United States. As the 1960s progressed, Warhol devoted more of his energy to filmmaking. His "underground" films are known for their inventive eroticism, plotless boredom, and inordinate length (up to 25 hours). Throughout the 1970s and until his death he continued to produce prints depicting political and Hollywood celebrities, and he involved himself in a wide range of advertising illustrations and other commercial art projects. He was one of the most famous and important American cultural figures of the late 20th century, and the effects of his conceptions of art and celbrity continue to be felt.