Portrait of a Leader - Andy Warhol - Research Paper Example

Portrait of a Leader: Andy Warhol Shawn Greable Dr. Edwards Greable Portrait of a Leader: Andy Warhol Few people have seen my films orpaintings, but perhaps those few will become more aware of living by being made to think about themselves. People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away all to quickly - Andy Warhol 1 It is an aspect of Andy Warhol that is not readily attributed to him, but Andy Warhol became a very powerful leader of a cultural movement that both satired and contributed to the explosion of the concept of popular culture in a way that made all classes equal and trivial at the same time. The art that Warhol created is some of the most recognized and familiar art of the twentieth century, most probably because he created iconic works of mundane brands that evoked a sense of familiarity and comfort. Using Brillo Pad boxes, Coke bottles, and Campbell’s Soup cans as subjects for his work, he touched the public in a way that few artists had as he connected to the general population. As a leader of a time that was typified by a collaboration of the bizarre with the mundane, Warhol has left a legacy that remains powerful and enigmatic. Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 to Slovak immigrants and was raised near the city of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania 2. As a child, he was ill with scarlet fever which had the consequence of leaving him with an affliction known as St Vitus’ Dance, which left him with an involuntary jerking reflex in his limbs and face. The long term affects appear to have been a general lightening of the skin, hair, and eyes, which gave him a unique and ethereal look that was attractive to the art community of the 1960’s, but left Greable 2 him being unusual as a child 3. His own commentary about his high school years suggests that he felt isolated and apart from his peers. There are varying stories about the way in which Warhol grew up, partly because of the variety of stories that he himself spread in order to ‘create’ himself. One myth says his father worked in the coal mines of West Virginia and was home very little. He was then mostly raised by his mother, Julie, along with his brother. His father died in 1942 after a prolonged illness from drinking poisoned water after which his family struggled in poverty. Warhol claims that he had three nervous breakdowns in three consecutive years during his childhood - one each at the age of eight, nine, and ten 4. However, one of his biographers, Bockris, states that while Warhol wanted to spread the myth that he had come from abject poverty, his father, Andrei Warhola, was actually a hard-working man who was employed laying roads and moving houses to new locations which was a common practice as entire neighborhoods would be dug up and replanted in order to make way for new construction. His father was known as an intelligent man who managed to save thousands of dollars despite earning a small wage of $15-$20 per week. The savings that his father built helped to stabilize the family through the depression era, giving them a better life than most, although still poor and meager5. The Warholas were a religious family who belonged to the Byzantine Catholic church which Andy belonged to throughout his life. As an adult, Warhol volunteered at Greable 3 homeless shelters and was charitably generous 6. While Warhol made many drawings and paintings as a child, he first made the connection between popular culture and artistic expression when he worked in a department store in the summers between school years. He began to understand the consumer culture and how it connected to culture in general. Because his mother had immigrated from Czechoslovakia and never quite mastered the English language, he began to see the connection of a ’dream life’ that was presented within consumerism that was in harsh contrast to the realities of life. At the age of eighteen, Warhol made his way to New York which represented the epitome of all of the desires he had developed in his time in the department store7. By the time Warhol was twenty-seven, he was the highest paid and most sought after fashion illustrator in New York. He was also represented by a high end art gallery. He was in love with Charles Lisanby, a set designer for The Gary Moore Show, however the feelings were not returned and they maintained a platonic relationship until they took a trip around the world together and jealousy on Andy’s part destroyed their relationship8. While a sense of an asexual being was created in the image of Andy Warhol, it is now understood and known that he was attracted to men. However, he lived a controlled life in which he did not drink, did no drugs, regularly exercised, and spent long periods of time in celibacy9. Greable 4 Warhol was surrounded by artists and celebrities during his time. One of his most important association was to Jean-Michel Basquiat, a Haitian graffiti artist who both created inspiration and envy with Warhol for his guttural interpretations. According to Danny Fields as quoted by MacAdams, Warhol was “a white hole sucking everything in, giving everybody something to do, something to be”10. Along with his art, he created an array of films with strange and insightful commentary on the burgeoning consumerist culture, amongst other topics. His films were so extreme in their sexuality that he was often shut down by the police for their pornographic obscenity. His studio, called, ‘The Factory’ in which he created and congregated with his people would, according to MacAdams , for its height in popularity, end in 1967 when Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist writer who wrote the Scum Manifesto which encouraged the eradication of all males11. The three bullets did not take his life, but he would never fully recover from the wounds and would continue to bleed from them years later. Warhol was shot over a script that Solanas had given Warhol, but which was never returned but was found after his death at the bottom of a trunk12. Andy Warhol died in 1987 from cardiac arrest due to complications from gall bladder surgery. He left his estate to a foundation that he had developed devoted to the advancement of visual arts13. He donated all of his artwork, both his own work and his Greable 5 collection of art form other artists, to the foundation putting it in the top 200 valuable foundations in the United States. Unfortunately, the purpose of the foundation was vague and those he left in charge have never found a clear vision for its future14. As an artist, Warhol created a world in which he was the center and was also somewhat removed from its whirlwind. There was much drug abuse and chaos among his close friends, but he did not participate. He was an observer among those who were most desirous of observation. For a time, he was at the center of celebrity, even coining the phrase and concept of ones “fifteen minutes of fame”15. He was a generous man, with both his artistic vision in which he often included his friends, and to those who were less fortunate. As an artist and a man, Andy Warhol was an enigma and he understood that in branding himself, he could be a lasting icon in American culture. Greable 6 List of References Bockris, Victor. 2003. Warhol: the biography. New York: Da Capo Press. Honnef, Klaus. 2000. Warhol. Köln: Taschen. MacAdams, Lewis. 2001. Birth of the cool: Beat, bebop, and the American avant garde. New York: Simon and Schuster. Morris, David B. 2000. Illness and culture in the postmodern age. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nielsen, Waldemar A. 1996. Inside American philanthropy: the dramas of donorship. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Warhol, Andy. 2004. Andy Warhol men. San Francisco, Calif: Chronicle. Read More