5 Moments to meet … Andy Warhol

By Sybaris Collection

Andy Warhol is one of the best known artists internationally. What are the most emblematic moments to meet him? We highlight 5 points to get closer to one of the references in art history.

1) Andy Warhol combined his artistic interests with his personal life. He was one of the first men to convert his daily activities as part of his work. He started his career as a publicist. He also worked as a magazine illustrator. Among his inclinations was to make album cover designs. Perhaps the most famous was the banana he produced for Velvet Underground in the late 1960s. The image became one of the icons not only of music but of the pop culture of that time.

2) One of Andy Warhol’s best known images is one that includes his Campbells soup cans. After Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtentein took as their starting point advertising motives for their works, Warhol decided to follow the same path he had started as a magazine illustrator. Although many of his detractors accuse Warhol of not being the initiator of pop-art, but a simple follower, it is undeniable that the artist born in 1928 was his most popular figure and that, probably, pushed the aesthetic possibilities of this movement.

3) As an avant-garde, Warhol’s influence in the cinema left a permanent mark. With one foot in the cinema and another in contemporary art, Warhol reflected on concepts such as story time and story time, creating documentary atmospheres shortly before seen. Empire, which lasts 8 hours, is recognized as its most important piece. He also directed Batman Dracula, Kiss, Eat and Sleep. Director Jonas Mekas mentioned that Warhol was one of his great influences. A true artist of moving images.

4) If portraits are involved, Warhol created the most emblematic of the time. Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Maradonna, Michael Jackson, Mao Zedong, Franz Beckenbauer … the paintings of these figures not only produced a pop effect to their faces but also created a strident and striking atmosphere. If in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries being portrayed was a reason for distinction, in the seventies it meant something else: the possibility of having become a work of art. In addition to everything, millionaire.

5) Cynical. Egotistical. Just great. Warhol openly stated that the reason he had become an artist was money. The world of art and culture in general works thanks to exchange values ​​where meanings are not only motivated by politics, aesthetics or society, but also by the economy. At the end of the eighties he declared: «I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re so beautiful. Everything is plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic. »