" I am a deeply superficial person"

Andy Warhol was obsessed with beauty and glamour. He only surrounded himself with beautiful people. Everything about his lifestyle was glittered and gold.

He was once even quoted as having said: 

"I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood.

They're beautiful.

Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."

Clearly he was not afraid of admitting that he believed that what was on the outside was far more important that anything on the inside.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Andy Warhols love affair with glamour is that he, himself, was a very unattractive person.

He grew up in a very poor part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was plagued by illness as a child that left him with terrible pock-like scars on his face. During his childhood and teenage years he was quite an outcast to others his age.

Once he became famous however, he became extremely fixated on fixing his looks.

He would spend hours getting ready before he went out. He applied harsh bleaching creams to his face to make himself appear paler, he covered his skin in layers of cakey makeup, he dyed his eye brows black, and dyed his hair a silver-y white.

Andy Warhol was trying to become everything he admired in the people he surrounded himself by.

In a way, this is extremely sad to me. He was a man who was clearly talented, but so full of self-hatred. He also did nothing to help his situation because he had such high standards of beauty for the company that he kept.

He struggle for self-acceptance and quest for perfection is something that I think the majority of mainstream culture can relate to today. It seems as though these days there are ads all over the place for plastic surgery, magic creams, weight loss miracles, and all sorts of make-up!

Unfortunately, Warhol's face was not the only part of his physical self that he was disgusted with. At the height of his fame an deranged woman snuck into Andy Warhol's Factory and stabbed him several times in the stomach. The woman was later caught and arrested and Warhol nearly died. The ordeal left him even further scarred physically and also emotionally.

He soon became so preoccupied with his dissatisfaction of his appearance that he rarely left his house.

Fame and the quest for glamour and perfection were ultimately what made the last years of Andy Warhol's life filled with misery and solitude.

In relation to the celebrities of today; it seems that many other stars are on the same path of self-destruction in their pursuit of perfection and notariaty.

"An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have"

Because this blog is supposed to reflect some area of pop culture, I thought that discussing Andy Warhols minipulation and use of pop culture to change the art world.
The original pop art movement started in England in the mid 1950's and consisted of recreations of everyday items.
During the 1950's and 1960's in America, consumerism was on the rise. It seemed appropriate to capture in a painting what the general population was already consuming.
Andy Warhol began painting pictures of Coca-Cola bottles, Campbell's soup cans, money,

His first art show consisted of 32 canvases, each with a different flavored soup can on it. The collection sold for over 1000 dollars, which was unheard of at the time.

Warhols creation of "pop art" causes me to wonder that if there had been no such fascination with "pop culture" would his art ever have meant anything?

His paintings soon became in such great demand that simply painting on canvas became too time consuming and was a hinderance to meeting the demands for his product.

In 1962 Andy Warhol created the process silk screening which involves a stencil that recreates an image multiple times. This technique allowed him to create one painting and multiply it many times with little effort.

In a way, the whole idea of silk-screening taints my view of Andy Warhol. I feel that a true artist would place more value on the quality of his work rather on the quantity of it.

Or perhaps this was the genuis of Andy Warhol. Maybe the joke is on us as consumers?

As a society our infatuation with pop culture has led to a general decline of the value of things in which we regard as quality. Can anyone really blame Andy Warhol for realizing the stupidity of Americans and cashing in on it? Concepts that are so simple and objects that are so common have been turned into some of the greatest works of art in the 1960's.

Whether or not what he created was "true art", the fact of the matter is that we bought it, we loved it, and we continue to love it today.

Andy Warhol himself has even been quoted as saying: "Art is what you can get away with". And obviously he got away with it.

Andy Warhol and the Factory Generation

Andy Warhol was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker was responsible for the visual art revolution known as "Pop Art". Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a student at the School of Fine Arts at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he started his career as a commercial artist. It was in the early 60's when he captured the attention of Americans with his silk screened productions of iconic of classic American objects such as the dollar bill, the Coca Cola can, and the Cambell's soup can. He relied on the growing movement towards capitalism and began mass producing art images that reflected the motivations of the decade.
The underground film industry was also something that Warhol branched out into. He attracted young girls hoping to become famous that were dying to star in his movies. He also attracted social outcasts like drag queens and transvestites. Very few Warhol films ever made it to the mainstream. They were often unsuitable for audiences because they usually EXTREMELY vulgar and sexual in content. However, the Andy Warhol Screen Tests were often a right of passage for up and coming Hollywood stars.
Andy Warhol became a Pop Culture icon not only for his art, but the way he lived his life and the company he kept. He kept residence at a loft in Midtown Manhattan that was known as The Factory. Warhol was fascinated with beauty and glamour and hung out with stars like Bob Dylan, Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick, and Truman Capote.
Some of the people that were propelled to stardom by Warhol went on to have their own cult followings. Andy Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick was the "It Girl" of the 1960's. She was considered to be the muse of the Factory. She was known for her fashion and her peculiar beauty. She also dated Bob Dylan. Even today she still has recognition in American culture. In 2006 the movie biopic Factory Girl was released in theaters starring Sienna Miller.
Jean Michel Basquiat was an artist that Andy Warhol took particular interest in. Basquiat was a graffiti artist and neo-expressionist. His style of art and the especially ambiguous messages that it often contained spark interest in the disenfranchised of the country. Jean Michel Basquiat is a leader in urban graffiti art.

In general, the American addiction to power, capitalism, and beauty were all reasons why Andy Warhol was and is still so popular. The public was fascinated by the persona that Warhol had created for himself and today his image and his art remains highly valuble and influential.