Pop Art 2: Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, (U.S. 1928-1987)Installation of 4 screen prints from the Skulls series, 1976 at the Warhol Museum.

Pop art was art of the everyday, and looked outwards to the advertising signs, posters, comics on the street and in magazines and movies. It deliberately created art out of stuff that wouldn’t normally be in a Gallery, but for sale on the street. It was also an art that tended to be associated with the young and groovy, so that was attractive. However it also could be dangerous or confronting, as youth was associated with the anti-war protests, rock music and the rising drug culture.

Andy Warhol (US, 1928-1987) Campbell’s Soup cans, oil on 32 canvases, each canvas 50 x 40cm. Originally exhibited with each separate canvas resting on a shelf. Warhol moved to silk screen printing in the early sixties. This acted to depersonalise the works.

Jackson Pollock creating one of his ‘action paintings’. The gesture of the Artist’s body and hand is expressed in the work.

Andy Warhol (US, 1928-1987) was probably the most famous Pop Artist.: ‘…the reason I’m painting this way is because I want to be a machine… …I think it would be terrific if everyone was alike…’ (Swanson, 1963) ‘…If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surfaces of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it…’ (Warhol, 1968)

Warhol, Untitled, from Marilyn Monroe series, Series of 10 screenprints, 91 x 91cm, 1967

Warhol was deliberately vulgar, and deliberately anti-original. He used assistants for his work, incorporating their mistakes etc. that occurred, as with the image here.Ironically, his talk about “not being original” and about “everyone being the same”, was a sensation in itself, a kind of scandal. A celebrity cult grew up around him and his work.

Marilyn diptych, 1962. Munro died in 1962. This is a homage to her, but also makes other comments about her celebrity.

Marilyn Munro (U.S. 1926-1962)

Warhol, Untitled, from Marilyn Monroe series, Series of 10 screenprints, 91 x 91cm, 1967

Brillo soap pads box, 1964, silkscreen ink and house paint on timber boxes, 43x43x36cm

Installation of boxes, Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

Warhol, Big Electric Chair, screenprint, one of series, 1967

Much of Warhol’s imagery was concerned with death. This image of an electric chair (which was used to execute prisoners in New York) was published in a newspaper after the execution of some famous criminals.