Today we celebrate the 84th birthday of the one and only Andy Warhol!
Photograph of Andy Warhol by Richard Avedon
He added celebrities to canvas and appropriation to art, becoming a founder of the 1960′s pop art movement and an art icon in his own right.
Even after his untimely death in 1987, Warhol reverberated in the art world, influencing contemporary art successors like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.
Warhol’s factory-like production, commercialization, and references to consumer products made an everlasting impression on fine art.
Marilyn by Andy Warhol
When Warhol first introduced the Campbell’s soup can as a work of art in 1962, he prompted a series of fine art that embodied the everyday item and the ubiquity of consumer culture.
American artist Jeff Koons continues down the trail blazed by Warhol, creating reproductions of similarly banal objects.
Koons’ most famous works are sculptural stainless steel creations of balloon animals. Like Warhol, Koons adopts a factory-like system, employing 90 regular assistants at his New York City studio in Chelsea.
Balloon Dog by Jeff Koons (Photo: Librado Romero – The New York Times)
Within the Warhol Factory, silk-screening allowed for assistants to produce multitudes of “Warhol originals.”
For English artist Damien Hirst, his famous “spot paintings,” rows of randomly coloured circles, are created by assistants as well.
Spot painting by Damien Hirst
Warhol’s epic portraits of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor, certainly serve as a landmark of his career.
Greg Kirschenbaum, an artist with nAscent Art New York, publisher of The Bare Square, also shines with his celebrity artwork.
Through a combination of silk-screening and metal oxidization, Kirschenbaum creates portraits of celebrities like Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Audrey Hepburn by Greg Kirschenbaum
Yet Warhol’s artistic influence extended beyond fine art and into the world of music with his managerial position for the hit 1960′s band The Velvet Underground.
Enjoy The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” in honor of Andy Warhol’s 84th birthday!
- Ava Cotlowitz
