Andy Warhol Research Paper

On August 6, 1928, Andy Warhol was born as Andrew Warhola to Andrej and Julia Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were a working class family that stuck close to the roots and traditions of their Eastern European heritage. In 1934 Andy began attending the local Holmes School and took free art classes at Carnegie Institute (now the Carnegie Museum of Art). Andy had an amazing gift for drawing even from a very young age. In addition to drawing, Andy was fascinated by Hollywood cinema and spent much of his time at the local cinema. He also enjoyed taking pictures that he developed by himself in his basement. Through out the years Andy continued to pursue his artistic abilities and became astoundingly famous for them. More than twenty years
After graduation Warhol moved to New York city and began to work for Glamour magazine as a commercial artist. He won numerous awards for his work and became one of the most successful illustrators of the 50's. Towards the end of the 50's he began to devote more of his time to painting. His painting style was derived from his childhood love for comic books. This style quickly became known as “Pop Art.” 1962 marked the beginning of Warhol's celebrity status as he released his famous Campbells Soup Can series, which completely changed the direction of the art world. Warhol's Pop Art became the craze of the 60's, people couldn't get enough of it. He began to use this style to do a large sequence of movie stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor. Warhol painted his masterpieces in a silver-painted and foil-draped studio named The Factory, located at 231 East 47th
By doing this he brought a whole other source of attention to himself from the art critics. The films and videos he created were very different from the Hollywood cinema that he grew up on. They were said to be dark and “underground.” Warhol made near 600 films and near 2500 videos. Included in this are over 500, 4-minute films that feature friends, associates and visitors to The Factory, all considered to Warhol as possessing “star-quality.” In 1968, Andy suffered a nearly fatal gun-shot wound from aspiring playwright and free radical feminist author, Valeria Solanas. He was attacked in front of The Factory and it changed his persona forever. Some say this event pushed Andy further towards being a reclusive individual that caused his behavior to become very peculiar. He became obsessive about documenting his life to an extreme degree. He dictated every activity possible. He even hired interns to transcribe the content of what would amount to over 3,000 audio tapes. Portions of these accounts were published posthumously in 1987 as The Warhol