Pop Art: Andy Warhol : 2threads - A social network with style - fashion events, photos, interviews, shopping, community

Pop Art: Andy Warhol

Can you name the artist who did this print of Marilyn Monroe?

His name is Andy Warhol, famous American artist and a central figure in the American pop culture movement.

After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and public figure who associated with bohemian street people, intellectuals, Hollywood celebs and wealthy aristocrats.

Warhol coined the phrase 15 minutes of fame, which refers to the fleeting condition of celebrity that attaches to an object of media attention, then passes to some new object as soon as the public's attention span is exhausted.

In the flick Factory Girl he was a bully to Sienna Miller's, Edie Sedgwick, potrayed as brutal and on-and-off with acquaintances. Of course, this was only rumoured to be true.

Mixed reviews pour in of his work. Some adore the mass production factor, some over-look it and admire the beauty in his work and others despise it (monet would have never mass-produced). Personally, I think there's something beautiful in his work. His Campbell's Soup Can is effortless in it's simplicity.

Warhol said: What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

– The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1975

Warhol died in February 1987.

Celebrate his work with Andy Warhol Portraits