Andy Warhol earned his BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949. Early in his career, he was a successful commercial artist and illustrator, and his work was published in magazines and a variety of print media. In the 1960s, he helped launch the Pop movement with his silkscreened paintings of soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, celebrities, and comic strips, as well as his prints and sculptures of common objects and household products. His studio, known as the Factory, became a magnet for extreme personalities, and he began shooting films there ca. 1963. In 1965 he announced that he would give up painting for filmmaking, though he continued to produce paintings and prints. His films tested the notion of endurance, 'Sleep' and 'Empire' lasting 5 and 8 hours, respectively. His filmed portraits were often static images of a single subject prolonged over the length of a single reel of film. Warhol embraced media of all kinds, producing experimental books, video works, and multiples. In 1966 and 1967 together with the Velvet Underground he produced the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a series of multimedia events, as well as an album. He survived an assassination attempt in 1968. During the 1970s he focussed on commissioned portraits, and also founded the magazine 'Interview,' which continues to be published. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential artists of the late 20th century.
1984: He and Don Monroe directed music video "Hello Again" for The Cars. He also appeared in it, playing The Bartender.
Interred at St. John the Baptist Catholic Cemetery, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, USA.
In 1990, Lou Reed and John Cale made a CD album called "Songs for Drella" as a tribute to Warhol with 15 songs about Warhols life.
Pictured on a USA 37 commemorative postage stamp issued 9 August 2002.
Produced The Velvet Underground s first album. He essentially lent his name to their work and observed them in the recording studio, while Lou Reed and later Tom Wilson (who had worked earlier with Bob Dylan ) mostly called the shots. The cover of the bands first album (with Nico ) was Warhols design: a banana with a peel that was actually a peelable sticker.
Is credited with coining the term "superstar."
When guesting on "The Love Boat" , he was nervous about the experience and turned to his castmate (and muse for the particular episode) Marion Ross , who calmed him down and offered some advice on how to act.
Was a frequent guest at the infamous "Studio 54"
Avoided the subject of death, except in his paintings (the Disaster series). He did not attend the funerals of his superstars nor did he attend his mothers funeral when she died in November 1972. After she passed away he continued to give the impression that she was still alive to people who would ask about her. Warhol did not mention his mothers death to any of his close friends. As late as 1976, when friends asked about his mother, Andy said, Oh, shes great. But she doesnt get out of bed much."
His father, who traveled much on business trips, died when Warhol was 13.
Son of immigrants from the town Mikov, located in todays northeastern Slovakia. His original name was "Warhola".
Warhols "A: A Novel," published in 1968, is based on 24 hours of tape recordings (24 one-hour tapes) of Ondine speaking. His tape-recorded musings were transcribed and typed up and serve as the basis of the novel, which was disingenuously presented as one day in the life of Ondine. The book is one of the premier artifacts of the Pop art movement/Pop culture. Warhol followed Ondine around New York City with a tape recorder, recording their conversations. Ondine was addicted to amphetamines and was prone to wild verbal flights that covered many subjects. To type up the tapes, Warhol hired teenage girls, some of whom were barely literate and made many errors. Warhol "edited" the resulting manuscript during a series of concerts given by The Velvet Underground (Lou Reed is one of the "characters" in the novel), sitting in the rear of the theater in the dark, reading proof sheets with a flashlight. Like James Joyce when confronted with transcription errors made by the French printers/compositors of the first edition of "Ulysses" , Warhol loved the mistakes and decided to keep them in. He thought the mistakes improved the book as it made it worse, more of a Pop manifesto, and insisted that all the errata be left in the final draft, which he fancied as a Pop "Finnegans Wake." In his later book/memoir "Popism," Warhol explained, "I wanted to do a bad book just the way Id done bad movies and bad art, because when you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something." Warhol, the author, refused to filter out the "background noise" or "static," thus preventing the reader from following a coherent narrative thread. The book intentionally is boring, as are many of Warhols films. Of his films Warhold said that talking about them was more interesting than actually viewing them, and this likely was his intent with "A: A Novel" -- to create an artifact that made people talk about it -- and think.
Influenced the movement of The New Russian Classicism. Visited St. Petersburg, Russia and presented his tomato cans to Timur Novikov and Sergei Bugayev.
Was among the guests at Madonna s and Sean Penn s wedding.
Godfather of Bijou Phillips.
An astute businessman in the art world, he left an estate worth $500 million when he died.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 873-876. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1999.
David Bowie borrowed one of Warhols wigs from The Andy Warhol Museum to portray Warhol in Basquiat . Bowie had written the song "Andy Warhol" in tribute to him, which featured on his 1971 album "Hunky Dory".
His nephew, James Warhola, wrote and illustrated a childrens book titled "Uncle Andys." It is about James Warhols visits to his famous uncle in New York City.
His older brother, Paul, owned a junkyard in Pittsburgh, located near the future site of The Andy Warhol Museum. Periodically his brother would bring him odd scraps of junk, which Warhol would use in his art.
Was good friends with Charles Lisanby.
Gore Vidal once described Andy Warhol as "The only genius Ive ever known with an IQ of 60".
He was a devout Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic for his entire life, attending Mass ,though not taking communion, almost daily and even, according to his priest, making a few converts.
He was known for having a very big sweet tooth. He visited pastry shops daily, sometimes buying an entire birthday cake for himself. He often refused more substantive meals, one time explaining to Tom Wolfe, "Oh, I only eat candy.".
I would rather watch somebody buy their underwear than read a book they,wrote.
In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.
I am a deeply superficial person.
Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.
(revising his earlier quote, during the Disco era) In fifteen minutes,everyone will be famous.
Living in New York City gives people real incentives to want things that,nobody else wants.
I like the taste of the last chocolate in the box.
Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between,the sheets.
Everyone must have a Fantasy.
People should fall in love with their eyes closed.
Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.
Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Beauty is a sign of intelligence.
Art is what you can get away with.
I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do.
The mystery was gone but the amazement was just starting.
I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.
Everybody must have a fantasy.
The child-like, gum-chewing naïveté , the glamour rooted in despair, the self admiring carelessness, the perfected otherness, the wispiness, the shadowy, voyeuristic, vaguely sinister aura, the pale, soft-spoken magical presence, the skin and bones…,Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.
Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
After being alive, the next hardest work is having sex.
Business art is the step that comes after art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business. They’d say “money is bad” and “working is bad”. But making money is art, and working is art - and good business is the best art.
Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see…So the fantasy corners of America…you’ve pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books. And you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one.
Everybody winds up kissing the wrong person goodnight.
Kiss me with your eyes.
I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.
I always notice flowers.
You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.
I am a deeply superficial person.
Some day each of us will be famous for fifteen minutes.
Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.
We live in an age when the traditional great subjects - the human form, the landscape, even newer traditions such as abstract expressionism - are daily devalued by commercial art.
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 too quickly.
I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.
When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.
I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.
