Andy Warhol works. Andy Warhol is one of the most expensive artists of the twentieth century

And the American artist, producer, designer, writer, collector, magazine publisher and filmmaker, a notable person in the history of the pop art movement and contemporary art in general. The founder of the ideology "homo universale", the creator of works that are synonymous with the concept of "commercial pop art".

In recent years, Andy Warhol has topped the list of best-selling artists. So, in 2013, the total cost of the artist's works sold at auctions amounted to 427.1 million dollars. The most highly valued large-format canvases of 1962-1964, prices for which can go up to $ 100 million. In November 2013, a record was set - $ 105.4 million for “ Silver car crash (double) "(1963). Between 1985 and 2010, average auction prices for Warhol's work rose 3,400%, roughly double the average rise in prices for contemporary art over the same period.

To artina Andy Warhol

D iptych Marilyn

The famous silk-screened canvas of the artist, made in the style of pop art. Warhol's work on the painting began a week after the death of Marilyn Monroe, in August 1962. Locally, the museum is the Tate Gallery.

To amouflage Self-portrait - Self-Portrait

Andy Warhol took a self-portrait a few months before his death, which was in February 1986. There is a contrast between the impersonality of camouflage, which hints at danger, and the personality of the book tradition, where there is direct contact with the viewer, albeit in this case with a protective illusory cover. Ambiguous use of camouflage - grabs attention and gives the picture a trendy look. The painting is in New York, Metropolitan.

E tel Skull 36 Times - Ethel Scull 36 Times

The painting consists of four rows and nine equal columns, featuring the skull of Ethel Redner, a renowned collector of contemporary art. 1963 year.

Beethoven

B ittles

Black Lenin

D evushka Chelsea

"Now that everything is changing so quickly, there is hardly a chance to keep the images of your fantasies intact until the moment when you are ready to meet them."

© Andy Warhol

If you put your whole life on satisfying an obsession, what will come of it? The American Dream has so much to do with paranoia. Artist and Founder of Pop Art Andy Warhol in his quest for fame, he tried all available means of self-expression: we know his screen printing, art-house films, the magazine Interview he founded. And even Marilyn Monroe is known to many in the context of his work. Without a doubt, this is a person who turned the idea of ​​art in an entire country upside down.

When the life of poor immigrant neighborhoods looms behind us, vanity ceases to be such a strong vice. Warhol's whole life was devoted to promoting his name as a brand, and even when he became a world famous advertiser, it was not enough. The most colorful advertising posters are anonymous, but Warhol was looking for something that would elevate his name to a superlative degree.

It was then that the soup can appeared, bringing the world to its knees. This was not the first work of Warhol as an artist, but, definitely, it was she who publicly announced the beginning of the era of pop art. Thirty-two identical images of canned Campbell soup, hanging in a row and mimicking a display case, ended up in the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles and, surprisingly, were bought almost immediately. Thus, for the first time, a disposable object placed in the white walls of a museum became an art exhibit itself.

Suddenly, the world readily agreed to worship trademarks as it once did the Bible. You can call it the denunciation of the century: Warhol involuntarily forced America to look at itself. But no one came to the horror of what he saw. Someone treated the extravagant form of creativity as a harmless prank, someone simply did not distinguish between boundaries.

Society of the 60s readily accepted the desire of art not to be burdensome and serious. Reproduced images of Coca-Cola cans as a symbol of not only the era, but also freedom? With ease. A cereal box in a place of honor above the dining table? Why not? Now many allow themselves to smile indulgently: "But this is the sixties, then they needed it." However, even a glimpse of our decade is enough to make sure that fashion and design still successfully integrate Warhol's principle into the masses.

The principle of this is phenomenally simple: take any consumer product and present it as an object to be chanted through multiple reproduction. Warhol even set up his own "Factory", a bohemian club, where close followers were engaged in the production of endless copies by stencil. For a year, "Factory" gave America and the world thousands (!) Of absolutely identical images of cans of "Coca-Cola", "Campbell" soup, dollar and other well-known objects. Portraits of famous personalities were also put on the "stream": Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy, even Mao and Lenin, traditionally painted in acid colors.

“When Picasso died, I read in a magazine that he had created four thousand masterpieces in his life, and I thought:“ Look, I can do so much in one day. ” You see, considering how I do them in my technique, I really thought that I could do four thousand paintings in a day. And they will all be masterpieces, because they will be the same picture. "- wrote Warhol in his autobiography "From A to B and Vice versa."

One silkscreen in a thousand, of course, was created by the hands of Andy Warhol himself, but that mattered so little: does it really matter who presses the start button in a cereal plant, say? The philosophy of the main ideologue of Pop Art implied that art, like any other commercial product, can be put on a conveyor belt. An artist can act not as a labor force, but as an entrepreneur. In the late 60s, an ardent feminist Valerie Solanas showed up at the Factory and shot Warhol three times in the stomach. He survived, but, forced to spend some time in the hospital, noted with satisfaction that he had created a kind of kinetic business. The workshop continued to work successfully without him.

It would be a big mistake to start looking for meaning in this kind of business: conveyor art is completely devoid of emotions. And this is by no means attacks: Andy himself in one of the interviews to the question "Do you put emotion in your work?" he shrugged his shoulders with a bored look: "No". "But how?"- the presenter was indignant. "What kind of emotion do you want to see in the Campbell Soup Can?" Edie Sedgwick, Warhol's muse, raised her eyebrows. The audience laughed. Everyone desperately liked to admit the emptiness and worthlessness of existence as much as the emptiness of cans.

Despite the apparent meaninglessness of Pop Art, a certain philosophy can still be traced. Previously, it could not even have occurred to a common man in the street that art could be something other than a single work, performed in the author's unique manner. Warhol made the cultured society ask the question: why shouldn't art be massive? Coming from an expatriate family, he was particularly partial to the central idea of ​​blessed America: equality.

“You watch TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the president drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think - you can also drink Coca-Cola! All of this is really in line with the American idea of ​​equality. " Warhol argued.

"Fabrika" set performance records not only in the artistic and visual field. Naturally, "an affair with the TV," as Warhol called it, grew into filmmaking. For five years, more than four hundred "Screen Tests" were created - three-minute films in which the artist's friends, acquaintances, casual guests and celebrities sat silently in front of the camera. "What should I do?"- the question was often asked. "Nothing. Just be yourself".

In the bright contrasting light and under close attention, some looked around, others puffed on their cigarettes. Someone with a bored look was kissing a glass bottle of Coca-Cola, someone was chewing gum. Jane Holzer brushed her teeth. James Rosenquist spun in the chair. Filmed at the standard cinematic speed, at Warhol's request, the films were projected twice as slow: sixteen frames per second, giving the image somewhat magnetic properties. In the absence of sound, script and ideas, the nature of the characters was mercilessly exposed and demonstrated in isolation from the images created or imposed by journalists.

The full-length films were also completely Warhol's. An eight-hour film showing the top of the Empire State Building, a five-hour dream of the poet John Giorno, a three-hour story of the adventures of New York prostitutes, a half-hour film with the provocative title Blow Job, showing nothing but a close-up of a man standing against a wall and lighting a cigarette a cigarette at the twenty-fifth minute. The films have not gained much popularity, but they cannot be denied a significant contribution to the emergence of underground cinema.

Whatever Warhol was passionate about in his search for new ways to attract attention and expand the framework of the generally accepted, special emphasis was always placed on seriality, repetition, and accumulation. Literally everything that surrounded the artist fell under the sight of a 16 mm camera. Thousands of snapshots were taken with his Polaroid.

It is impossible to measure the length of the tapes containing the records of all conversations and personal reflections. Life itself has become a meticulous collectible. When one day an acquaintance who did not get a role in a new experimental film returned home, took the LCD and threw himself out of the window, Warhol was indignant: “Why didn't he tell me anything? We could film him falling. "... Photo, video or audio documentation was subjected to everything that happened without exception.

In the eighties, after the death of Warhol, journalists, like vultures, began to gut his personal life, which had previously been carefully hidden. If anyone could be described as “weird,” Warhol was the perfect candidate. Now everyone was eager to get an explanation for his eccentric appearance, radical creativity and eccentric deeds. The sudden discovery of six hundred and ten boxes with "Andy's junk", as the assistants called him, when they did not yet know their value, became a real mockery of those who made it their duty to tell a little more about Warhol. Andy himself mentioned these "Time Capsules" in his diaries, but no one could even imagine what a colossal volume of his daily existence he sealed in ordinary cardboard boxes.

“Imagine that you are studying his biography, trying to reveal the essence of everyday life and time, and suddenly Warhol gives you 610 boxes of raw material to work with. This is so much, an absurd amount, everything has not been sorted out. And you find treasures there. A thin, rare silkscreen on canvas, one of the first that Andy Warhol did as an artist, was found in a box full of unopened mail, magazines, Velvet Underground records and a map explaining how to get to the place of some party. "- wrote New York-based independent curator Ingrid Schaffner.

"Time capsules" are a kind of collective memory of the 70s and 80s, but at the same time they prove that no life can be fully explained, just as no collection can be absolutely complete.

It is ironic that Warhol, who admired celebrities so much, did not notice when he himself became one of them. The renowned advertising illustrator, artist, filmmaker, collector, genius of pop art and underground cinema has become more famous than all his work. You can treat it in different ways: the question of what has the right to be called art today is more acute than ever.

“They say that time will change everything, but every time it turns out that you have to change everything yourself”

© Andy Warhol

If you have ever seen Andy Warhol's paintings, you will never forget them. Somewhere in the deep shelves of your subconscious memory, there will be memories of these unusual, very vivid pictures. But not everyone who has seen his canvases knows who Andy Warhol is.

So, let's try to plunge into the wonderful world of the Artist and even, if you don't figure out his personality, then at least feel the disturbing membranes of his soul.

It is banal to talk about where he was born, studied, lived. But at least brief information is needed. Three countries consider an extraordinary artist as their own - America, Slovakia, Ukraine. But, probably, one thing can be said for sure - the creative legacy of Andy Warhol belongs not to a particular country, but to the world.

Andy (Andrei Vargola) was born in Pistburg to a Rusyns family from the Carpathians. His mother Julia Vargola was then 36 years old. The father of the future artist worked in a construction company. Andy was the youngest child, the family still had two older sons. Between the ages of 4 and 8, Andy suffered a number of serious illnesses, among which the most severe was the St. Vitus Dance. Because of this, often in the summer, suffering from seizures, Andy was forced to spend his days in bed, playing with carved dolls and listening to the radio. Mother drew various pictures for Andy, which instilled in her son a taste for drawing. A little later, from her own earnings, Julia bought her son a small movie projector, with which he could watch stories in pictures right on the wall of his room.

That's how, as a child, Andy's creativity slowly began to develop. From the age of nine, the boy began to attend free art courses. After graduation, the young man entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology in the department of drawing and design. There, the student had an active life position - he attended parties, symphony orchestras, was interested in ballet.

The artist's work is postmodern, unrestrained, free.

The Naked King, Fashion and Film

What is the secret of Warhol's creativity? Why are these supposedly simple paintings still known all over the world? His work: bold, shocking, seizes the moment, contains layering, underground, three-dimensional, created in the style of film. There is such a theory: draw something crazy, incomprehensible and you will become famous. This is the principle of the "naked king", when no one understands the subtext, the "message" that is embedded in the work. And due to misunderstanding, it is considered high, incredible, masterpiece. This is typical of Malevich's Black Square. But this principle does not apply to Warhol's work.

Andy lived for fashion, pop culture and cinema. Even in his youth, the artist created sketches of futuristic, very bright shoes with heels. These were design ideas. The main highlight was the curved lines, by which connoisseurs actually recognized the "Warhol style" in design. Fashion was his passion. Perhaps the artist perceived the reality around him through the subconscious glasses of fashionable glasses. He was homosexual and did not hide it. Therefore, it was even easier to understand fashion trends. It was embedded in his chromosomes, in his soul.

Cinematography was also an important facet of its essence. Film has become a means of comprehending the world, understanding reality. Andy kept his finger on the pulse of life. This is evidenced by his paintings: "The Electric Chair", "Racist Riots", "Soup Kens" and many other paintings that reflected the current reality. He presented events in photographs with an unusual combination of colors, with blurred lines. Not the way everyone saw it. The artist, as it were, captures our attention, makes us think about the phenomena of everyday life, try to understand them in a different way. And it is possible to be horrified. The electric chair, racial intolerance, convenience foods - everything was characteristic of the then American society. And ordinary people did not pay much attention to this, they were worried about their own life, their own problems. Andy appealed to everyone's heart and it was easy to recognize his message. He created mass and elite art at the same time.

Honest and painted pop stars

Still, the most famous paintings by Andy are portraits of pop stars, made in his usual technique of "coloring photos". The most famous of this series are images of Merlin Monroe and Elvis Presley. The artist, as it were, looks into the soul of the people he depicts. And if you look closely, you can feel the whole tragedy of the personality of Merlin Monroe. Brightly painted, with a pink face, she looks miserable. The truth is hidden in the eyes. They look out from under their eyelashes, somehow embarrassed, confused. Perhaps Merlin never found the meaning of life. And this powder, excessive paint on the face is just a mask behind which the true essence of a star is hidden, which no one wanted to see. It's the same with the Elvis image. It is made in darker tones, in grays. Often the image is half erased. The singer pointed a pistol at the viewer, his face distorted. Perhaps Elvis wants to defend himself?

15 frames of a "live" portrait

It is not surprising that with such a perception of the world, the artist created films as well. And this movie also amazed the world! For example, portraits of people. Andy shot a motionless person for three minutes, and then edited in such a way that there were 15 frames per second. The image turned out to be slow-motion, somehow surreal. Thus, the person can be understood, these were "living" portraits. Or a monotonous frame for 8 hours. Everything was here: color, movement of clouds, space, even an airplane flew by. But the camera didn't move. We just watched a piece of the world, how the morning begins in this place, the day goes by, and twilight falls. It was a spell of reality. Not everyone managed to understand this movie, this is a real art house. But now, Andy is being compared to the Impressionists. When Monet also "played with color" when he painted the facade of the Rouen Cathedral. He painted the structure at different times of the day. And each time the picture came out different.

Andy Warhol is not just an artist, he is an art himself. He was not afraid of experiments, crazy plans, he was not afraid to show himself to the world. The artist is not just the embodiment of postmodernism, he did a lot to develop this direction. And let someone say that his work is abnormal, immoral, uninteresting. But those who are not afraid to break stereotypes, to lay a new foundation for art, usually remains in the memory of generations. Standard, stereotyped, correct is not art, it is just a surrogate that socialist realism imposed on us. human potential has no boundaries, because we all draw inspiration from the vast depths of space, with which we are actually connected. The "collective unconscious" is in each of us, but not everyone can fully hear this voice.

Andy Warhol is a legendary man, an artist who turned the world of contemporary art upside down. His work sells for millions of dollars, and his artistic legacy is highly regarded by critics and art connoisseurs around the world.

Currently, the name of this outstanding master has become a true symbol of the whole trend, which is usually denoted by the term "pop art". But what allowed this outstanding American to achieve such impressive recognition? You can understand this only by looking into the past of the great artist.

The early years, childhood and family of Andy Warhol

Our today's hero was born in the city of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and became the fourth child in a large family of immigrants from Eastern Europe. According to the most reliable data, the birthplace of his family was Slovakia, however, in some sources you can also find references to the artist's Ukrainian roots.

The parents of the future artist moved to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Andy's father worked in a coal mine, and his mother was a housewife.

Love for drawing and fine arts came to our Andy in early childhood. In the third grade, the future famous artist fell ill with Sydenham's chorea and remained bedridden for about a year. This syndrome affects the muscles and leads to uncontrolled movement of the limbs. During this period, he began to "kill time", painting all kinds of portraits, landscapes, and also composing collages from old newspaper clippings.

It is quite remarkable that already in those days, Warhol began to draw the most ordinary objects of the surrounding world - lighted lamps, cigarette packs, key chains and much more. Subsequently, the artist admits that it was during this period that the formation of his corporate style began, which remained with him until the end of his days and brought him great success and fame.

After graduating from high school, Andy entered the Carnegie Mellon Institute of Technology, where he began studying graphics and the basics of commercial illustration. According to some authoritative sources, during his college years, Andy was one of the most talented students in his group. However, academic success coexisted with an obvious inability to find contact with peers and teachers.

Biography of Andy Warhol

After receiving his diploma (specialty - graphic design), our young Andy moved to New York, where he got a job as a window designer. During this period, he painted advertising posters, holiday cards, and was also involved in general decoration of stands. Some time later, he began to fruitfully collaborate with the famous glossy magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, where he worked as an illustrator.

Career as an artist Andy Warhol

The first success came to the young artist already in 1950, when he profitably used artistic blots when creating an advertisement for shoes “I. Miller ". After that, he began to often receive lucrative contracts. His fees grew steadily.

In 1952, Andy held his first full-scale exhibition, which instantly brought him a huge success. In 1956, Warhol was successfully admitted to the Art Editors' Club, and some time later he began to create his first paintings based on the screen printing method.

By this time, the talented artist was earning about one hundred thousand dollars a year, remaining, according to this indicator, one of the most successful authors of his time.

In the second half of the fifties, he first began to take a great interest in photography, but the visual arts still remained above all for him.

In 1960, Andy Warhol designed the Coca-Cola cans, which earned him several more large checks. During this period, our today's hero began to create a series of paintings about the products of mass culture, which very soon became his "calling card".

An episode about Andy Warhol from the movie "What Men Talk About"

Between 1960 and 1962, the artist presented to the public a series of works depicting cans of Campbell soup. This was followed by a series of works "Green Bottles of Coca-Cola".

The works of the early sixties were exhibited at the Stabl art gallery and instantly became very popular. During this period, someone called the artist's paintings a reflection of the culture of mass consumption, and someone simply spoke about the artist's extraordinary ability to find aesthetics in ordinary things.

In 1963, Andy Warhol bought an old abandoned building in New York and organized something like his own workshop here. This place received the name "Factory" and very soon became a springboard for the creation and presentation of the works of the famous author. Having hired a team of young artists, the renowned master commissioned them to recreate their own works, thus making art a product of mass consumption.

In the mid-sixties, Warhol began to get involved in alternative art forms. He creates his works from cardboard, old cans, packs of powder. In addition, during this period, the talented author began to shoot his first films.

However, it was far from always possible to attribute these works to the field of cinematography. At present, the artist's short cinematic sketches are often referred to the sphere of the same alternative art, since many of the master's films did not even have a clear plot.

The assassination attempt and the last years of Andy Warhol's life

On June 3, 1968, feminist and former Warhol model Valerie Solanas entered the artist's Factory and shot him several times in the stomach. The artist suffered clinical death and a long operation, which nevertheless helped save his life. After recovering from his injuries, he refused to testify against his former model, and therefore Valerie received only three years in prison.

After the attempt on Andy's life, Warhol changed a lot. He often painted works related to death in one way or another. He was greatly influenced by the death of Marilyn Monroe, which resulted in the writing of his famous painting dedicated to the actress. Subsequently, the works of this period will be highlighted by art connoisseurs as a separate stage in the author's work.

Serving art in the artist's life continued until the end of his days. In 1987, the great and incomprehensible Andy Warhol died in his sleep from cardiac arrest. At that time he was fifty-eight years old.

Andy Warhol's personal life

For a long time, rumor attributed to the great artist an affair with his girlfriend and muse Edie Sedgwick. They were halves of one whole - they dressed the same way, dyed their hair the same color, appeared everywhere together.

Andy and his muse met in 1965, when Edie first came to the artist's "Factory". She starred in several of his films, and although they were often not available to a wide range of viewers, they began to write about the model more often in the press.

"I Seduced Andy Warhol" (Movie Trailer)

However, this relationship at one point broke off for an unexplained reason, presumably due to Eddie's excessive drug use.

Andy Warhol has always kept his personal life a secret. Although most researchers agree that the great artist was gay, this is not known for certain.

Andy (Andrew) Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, USA on August 6, 1928. The Warhol family (real name - Warhola) moved to the States from Slovakia, so Andy is a Rusyn by nationality. First, the father of the family, Andrei, moved to America in search of work, and in 1921 his wife Julia joined him.

Outrageous artist Andy Warhol

Andrew's older sister, Justina, was born and died in infancy, in her parents' homeland. In addition to Justina, the boy had two more older brothers and one younger brother. My father worked in a mine, my mother was a housewife and moonlighted, washing floors, windows and making artificial flowers from scrap materials.

After moving to Oakland (a suburb of Pittsburgh) Andy went to the most ordinary school. The boy grew up as a cheerful, tall boy (in adulthood, Warhol's height was 180 cm), until the disease knocked him down. In the third grade, Andrew fell ill with Sydenham's chorea, which was the result of scarlet fever. With this disease, a person is seized by muscle cramps, which he is unable to control.

From an ordinary naughty boy, Andy instantly turned into a little sufferer, bedridden. He could not go to school, moreover, his former comrades teased him. The boy began to panic fear of hospitals, doctors, injections and everything related to illness.

To entertain and cheer up her son, Julia begins to draw different pictures for him, buys magazines, newspapers. It was then that little Andrew became addicted to drawing: he drew light bulbs, pens, keys, trying to find something new in everyday things and creating his first works of art. The boy fell in love with making collages from newspaper clippings, and then watching stories in moving pictures using a projector.

Andy Warhol in his student years

At the age of 9, Andrew began attending free art courses and even planned to enroll in a local university to teach drawing later. The death of Andrei Warhol's father, who died in an accident in the mine, was a real tragedy for the whole family.

After graduating from high school, Warhol entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology, planning to work in the future as an illustrator in the field of advertising. In 1949, the future king of pop art received a bachelor's degree in graphic design and set out to conquer New York, changing his last name from Warhol to Warhol, and his name from Andrew to Andy.

Carier start

Andy was talented: already in his youth, at the dawn of his career, he managed to gain the attention of large corporations. And he began, like many advertising artists, with the design of shop windows. Also, at the dawn of his career, the young man drew postcards and posters, decorated stands. At this time, Warhol's collaboration with the fashion magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue took place.

Real success came to the artist after creating an original advertisement for shoes of the “I. Miller ". Andy drew the shoes with ink and blotted them. Glory brought the young man a decent income, famous brands began to sign contracts with him. However, the master himself considered his success only a stepping stone on the path to "high art", about which he had a very peculiar idea.

In 1952, the first exhibition of Warhol's works was held in New York, and four years later he was admitted to the Art Editors' Club. This period includes the artist's passion for the screen printing method, which he used to create and subsequently reproduce his works. Using matrices based on his own photographs and newspaper photographs, Andy created his most famous paintings, monochrome and color collages with the image, which later became the symbols of Pop Art.

Creation

In 1960, Andy began developing the design of Coca-Cola cans, then - to graphic works, drawing banknotes. Then the stage of "cans" began, which were depicted in a pictorial way and methods of stencil silk-screen printing. Urhall's artistic lens caught Campbell's soups and other utilitarian items.

In 1962, an exhibition of Warhol's best works was held, after which critics attributed Andy to the leading masters of pop art. His work aroused conflicting opinions: some argued that Warhol was a satirist who emphasized the consumer nature of American life, others believed that all his "masterpieces" were exclusively a commercial project, well-organized self-PR aimed at generating income.

Andy Warhol's paintings of the "cans" stage

The artist himself, being a genius master of shocking and self-irony, promoted art not as something extraordinary and deserving of worship, but as creativity aimed at the broad masses. Warhol is considered the most commercially popular artist of the last century. He was commissioned for portraits of Mick Jagger, the Iranian Shah's family and other celebrities, and his most expensive painting, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), was sold in 2013 for $ 1,054,000.

In 1963, Andy Warhol bought an abandoned building in Manhattan, where he opened a studio, calling it "The Factory". It was here that Andy's team of assistants multiplied his masterpieces using the silkscreen method, here he shot his films, which, however, few people watched. In the building of the "Factory", parties were constantly held, people of art and journalists, models and other representatives of bohemia gathered.

Andy Warhol's Factory Studio

In 1964, another exhibition of works by its owner was held in the "Factory", where installations from used containers and other utilitarian items were presented. Warhol received not only the title of King of Pop Art, but also the leading representative of modern conceptual art.

Assassination attempt

In June 1968, Andy Warhol was assassinated by the famous feminist and model, Valerie Solanas, who starred in one of his films. Having received three bullets in the stomach, Andy miraculously survived. He suffered clinical death and serious surgery, and the consequences of this incident haunted him for the rest of his life.

Warhol did not file a lawsuit against the girl, but Valeria had already received three and a half years in prison. As for Andy, he faced long-term treatment and wearing a corset, and his fear of doctors, illness and death only intensified. Also, in memory of Andy's assassination attempt and operation, there were terrible scars that the artist did not hesitate to show in front of the cameras.

Andy Warhol shows off his scars

In spite of everything, the artist will continue to create. In 1979, he took up painting a car, and in 1983, at the request of wildlife advocates, created a series of silk-screen prints called Endangered Species. This includes images of the Amur tiger, tree frog, black rhino, Grevy's zebra, giant panda and other endangered animals. These works will be exhibited at the Darwin Museum in Moscow in March 2017.

Personal life

Andy Warhol never advertised his personal life, but he also did not hide his connections, both friendly and loving. For a long time, Warhol was credited with an affair with his muse and girlfriend, model Edie Sedgwick. They were inseparable, dressed the same, dyed their hair, nails, wore similar hairstyles, Edie starred in Andy's films and posed for pictures.

When the couple broke up, rumors circulated about drug addiction of both representatives of pop culture, but there is no official confirmation that Warhol was a drug addict. It is unlikely that Andy and his muse were connected by something other than creativity, because the great artist of our time had many male lovers.

Death

What did Andy Warhol die of? This question worries many fans of his work. The artist died at the age of 58 in Manhattan Hospital after having surgery to remove his gallbladder. The official cause of death is cardiac arrest. It happened on February 22, 1987.

Andy Warhol's legacy

Warhol's philosophy was his close look at life, self-irony and the ability to see the world from a different angle. The artist transferred all this to canvases, sincerely believing that commercial painting has a right to exist, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Andy Warhol and his Endangered Species collection

The style of Andy's paintings can be described as naturalistic pop art, although he often used generalizing pictorial means. So, portraits of celebrities have idealized features and resemble a scant sketch, a squeeze from the personality of a particular character. Bright colors convey the mood of the artist, and the neon tones used by him at the end of his life are downright screaming about unspoken thoughts and feelings.

The description of the master's paintings is a thankless task. It is better to see his canvases once and feel the information message that Andy wanted to convey to the public, rather than study encyclopedias dedicated to his work.

• "America";
• The Andy Warhol Diaries;
• "Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and vice versa)".

Andy's ideas and talent continue to inspire artists, advertisers, creative people and business people. Thus, a sketch of glasses found in Warhol's archival papers prompted the Retrosuperfuture brand to create a collection of sun-protection accessories. Many fashion brands use various works of the master to create prints for collections of clothes, wallpapers, bags and other designer items.

1. Several films have been made about Andy's work, in others he appears in a cameo role. Films about him - "I shot Andy Warhol", "I seduced Andy Warhol."
2. In the tape "Basquiat", dedicated to the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the role of Warhol was played by the legendary.
3. The most famous film in our country that mentions Warhol is "What Men Talk About."
4. The famous magazine Interview, in which celebrities interviewed other stars, Andy Warhol created to attend movie premieres.