Andy Warhol: The Complete Story
Andy Warhol was the American artist who turned consumer products and celebrity into fine art, and turned himself into the most famous brand of all. He led Pop art, ran a studio called the Factory, and made fame itself his real medium.
Most people picture the soup cans and the silver wig. The bigger story is a sickly immigrant kid from Pittsburgh who became the highest paid commercial illustrator in New York, then walked into the art world and rewrote its rules.
Born: Pittsburgh, 1928, to working class Slovak immigrants
Known for: Pop art, silkscreen portraits, the Factory, Interview magazine
Died: New York, 1987, after routine surgery
The boy who collected fame before he made it
Andrew Warhola grew up poor and often sick. Bedridden as a child with a nervous system illness, he filled the time with movie magazines, comic books and pictures of stars. That bedroom of cut out celebrities is basically his whole later career in miniature.
He studied design, moved to New York in 1949, and became a star of advertising. He drew shoes for magazines and won awards. He was rich from commercial art before a single gallery took him seriously.
Soup cans, and the idea behind them
In 1962 he showed thirty two canvases of Campbell's soup cans, one for each variety. Critics laughed. The point was the provocation. Warhol said he painted soup because he ate it every day, and that he wanted art to look like the supermarket, not the cathedral.
Then he switched to silkscreen, a commercial printing process, so he could repeat an image like a factory line. Marilyn, Elvis, the dollar sign, the electric chair. Same method, high and low subjects treated exactly alike.
The Factory and the shooting
His studio, the Factory, was wrapped in silver foil and open to a crowd of artists, drag queens, musicians and hangers on. The Velvet Underground played there. Films, parties and screen tests ran nonstop.
In 1968 a writer named Valerie Solanas walked in and shot him. He nearly died and wore a surgical corset for the rest of his life. He grew more guarded and more business minded after that.
Fame as the product
Warhol turned celebrity into a business. He founded Interview magazine, took commissions to silkscreen the rich and famous, managed bands, and made television. He said the line everyone still quotes, that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.
He also kept what he called Time Capsules, hundreds of cardboard boxes into which he dumped his daily life, receipts, letters, junk. There are more than six hundred of them. He was archiving his own fame in real time.
Warhol, the questions that follow him
What is Andy Warhol famous for?
Leading Pop art and making silkscreen portraits of consumer products and celebrities, from Campbell's soup cans to Marilyn Monroe.
How did Andy Warhol die?
He died in 1987 after gallbladder surgery. More in how did Andy Warhol die.
Who shot Andy Warhol?
Valerie Solanas, in 1968. The full story is in who shot Andy Warhol.
Was Andy Warhol gay?
Yes, openly so for his era. See was Andy Warhol gay.
The currency he understood first
Warhol saw that in a media age, attention is the real currency, and he built a body of work out of that single idea. Every brand collaboration and celebrity selfie today runs on logic he made visible in 1962.
Start with Pop art, then read why he turned his own face into a product in what is a self portrait.
One last number. When his estate was settled, his collections helped fund the Andy Warhol Foundation, which has since given away hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to other artists.