American Legends: The Life of Andy Warhol

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Description

*Includes pictures.
*Includes Warhol’s own quotes about his life and career.
*Includes a bibliography for further reading.

“Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.” – Andy Warhol

“At some point, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” – Andy Warhol

A large number of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, whilst learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

Few artists of the 20th century were as enigmatic as Andy Warhol, who once remarked, “If you wish to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” This commentary is hardly out of character for the famous artist, who remains famous for his cagey answers to interviews and his refusal to speak from the heart. It is no accident that Warhol wore a wig; satirically enough, he required the company of others but refused to allow himself to become emotionally intimate with anyone. If anything, Warhol’s public persona gave the impression to be structured around an apparent lack of personality, and yet he later noted, “At the times in my life when I used to be feeling the most gregarious and looking for bosom friendships, I couldn’t find any takers so that exactly when I used to be alone was when I felt the most like not being alone. The moment I decided I’d rather be alone and not have anyone telling me their problems, everybody I’d never even seen before in my life started running after me to tell me things I’d just decided I didn’t think it was a good idea to hear about. As soon as I became a loner in my own mind, that’s when I got what you might call a ‘following.’ As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I’ve found that to be absolutely axiomatic.”

Of course, Andy Warhol was more than just an apathetic figure; after all, he is the most famous member of the artistic movement known as Pop, a title that was coined by critics but which Warhol epitomized like no other. The core themes of Pop art are well-known: an ironic appropriation of mass culture; the utilization of found objects (especially those with regards to mass culture); and an early postmodern tone of irony and even pastiche. The works of Warhol and his cohorts in the Pop movement not only stand as iconic works of post-war American art but also fundamentally redefined what qualified as art in the first place. Arriving on the heels of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Warhol’s art marked a dramatic turn away from abstraction and toward the banal, but his works continue to enchant the public, exceeding even the grand-scale Abstract Expressionist compositions of Jackson Pollock. Warhol’s virtuosity is bolstered by the fact that he was able to thrive whilst working in different media; his paintings and silkscreens have received by far the greatest focus from art historians, but Warhol also created famous sculptures, films, and drawings. More than just a great painter, he was a great artist.

Just as memorably, Warhol was someone whose art was intertwined with his personal life, so The Factory is nearly as big a pop culture icon as Warhol himself. Warhol’s eclectic group of companions included artists, musicians, vamps, Bohemians, and everyone in between. Like them, Warhol is an almost impossible figure to pin down entirely, but American Legends: The Life of Andy Warhol explores the many dimensions of his life and career. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you are going to learn about Andy Warhol like never before, in no time at all.

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