Andy Warhol, Annette Michelson, B. H. D.

Buchloh
MIT Press, 2001 - Art - 133 pages p108?
Andy Warhol (1928-1987), one of the most celebrated artists of the last third of
the twentieth century, owes his unique place in the history of visual culture n
ot to the mastery of a single medium but to the exercise of multiple media and r
oles. A legendary art world figure, he worked as an artist, filmmaker, photograp
her, collector, author, and designer. Beginning in the 1950s as a commercial art
ist, he went on to produce work for exhibition in galleries and museums. The ran
ge of his efforts soon expanded to the making of films, photography, video, and
books. Warhol first came to public notice in the 1960s through works that drew o
n advertising, brand names, and newspaper stories and headlines. Many of his bes
t-known images, both single and in series, were produced within the context of p
op art. Warhol was a major figure in the bridging of the gap between high and lo
w art, and his mode of production in the famous studio known as "The Factory" in
volved the recognition of art making as one form of enterprise among others. The
radical nature of that enterprise has ensured the iconic status of his art and
person.Andy Warhol contains illustrated essays by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Thomas
Crow, Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson, and Nan Rosenthal, plus a
previously unpublished interview with Warhol by Buchloh. The essays address War
hol's relation to and effect on mass culture and the recurrence of disaster and
death in his art.

Title Andy Warhol

Great Masters Series
Great masters collection
Author Eric Shanes
Edition illustrated
Publisher
Grange Books PLC, 2005
ISBN
1840137827, 9781840137828
Length 159 pages (p25)
"Andy wanted fame and to achieve that he required an imagery that would force th
e world to take him seriously as an artist. Finally the problem resolved itself
one evening in December 1961. Warhol got talking to an interior decorator and g
allery owner acquaintance, Muriel Latow, who supplied exactly what he needed, al
beit at a price, as a mutual friend Ted Carey later related.
...Andy said "I've got to do something that will really have a lot of impact...t
hat will be very personal that won't look like I'm doing exactly what they're do
ing. I don't know what to do so Muriel, youve got fabulous ideas. Can you give
me an idea? (money and soup paintings)
"Andy Warhol produced works that defied the popular notion of what art should be
. Warhol's works were meant to be taken at face value, for nothing more than wha
t they portrayed on the surface. While he stressed this superficial attitude abo
ut his art, his works were often the cause of debate and influenced public opini
on like no other cultural figure in North America ( Shanes 5 )."
"Warhol's selection of the soup can may be the most important part of the work h
e did with them. He wanted to display his view of America and to him eating Camp
bell's soup represented being American. Andy wanted to explore these common imag
es that are part of our everyday lives, which we accept without hesitation. In h
is painting 32 Soup Cans ( Shanes 53 )"

I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1ST edition (July 7, 2004)
Language: English (p. 85)
Often quoted but rarely reprinted in full, this interview is considered the most
important that A W gave in the 1960s. So important in fact that when the US Po
st Office issued its Warhol stamp in 2002, the quote on the stamp originated her
e. "If you want to know all about andy warhol just look at the surface of my pai
ntings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it."

Andy Warhol and the Can that Sold the World

Gary Indiana
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 2/9/2010
Pages: 175
Hardcover
Overview
In the summer of 1962, Andy Warhol unveiled 32 Soup Cans in his first solo exhib
ition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and sent the art world reeling. The resp
onses ran from incredulity to outrage; the poet Taylor Mead described the exhibi
tion as a brilliant slap in the face to America. The exhibition put Warhol on the
map and transformed American culture forever. Almost single-handedly, Warhol colla
psed the centuries-old distinction between high and low culture, and created a new a
nd radically modern aesthetic.
In Andy Warhol and the Can that Sold the World, the dazzlingly versatile critic
Gary Indiana tells the story of the genesis and impact of this iconic work of ar
t. With energy, wit, and tremendous perspicacity, Indiana recovers the exhilarat
ion and controversy of the Pop Art Revolution and the brilliant, tormented, and
profoundly narcissistic figure at its vanguard.
"satirical contempt for the banality of that culture and its norms. Valued for
its countercultural vibe. Later though, as Warhol's work gained mainstream acce
ptance, the artist became synonymous with the culture of celebrity-for-its-own-s
ake and financial success as the measure for any artistic activity's value." pre
face

Dead Celebrities, Living Icons: Tragedy and Fame in the Age of the Multimedia Su
perstar
John David Ebert
ABC-CLIO, 2010 - Social Science - 230 pages
Cult of Dead Celebrity
"After studying so many celebrities Warhol came to a point at which he said that
he wished to represent the anonymous deaths of unknown individuals. Thus, the c
ar crash and disaster paintings that he began yo work on are the counterpoint to
the celebrity paintings, for his car crashes and suicides are "anonymous fatali
ties". "It's just that people go by ad it doesn't really matter to them that so
meone unknown was killed, so I thought it would be nice for these unknown people
to be remembered by those who ordinarily wouldn't think of them."
Here Warhol is peering into the future of mediatic society in which absolutely a
nyone can become famous for any reason, no matter how banal. p.88

A Warhol Leads a Night of Soaring Prices at Christie's

Carol Vogel, November 13, 2014
New York Times - Art & Design
Christie s had put together a banquet
80 works total, 22 of them expected to sell
for more than $10 million and nine poised to bring more than $20 million each. I
t managed to pull it off.
WestSpiel, the government-controlled German casino company, was the seller of th
e two Warhols. The paintings had been hanging in its casino in Aachen since the
late 1970s. Both were bought by unidentified telephone bidders. Triple Elvis (Fer
us Type), taken from a publicity shot for his 1960 movie Flaming Star, showed Elvis
in three overlapping images and had been expected to sell for around $60 millio
n. Four Marlons, from 1966, based on a film still from the 1953 movie The Wild One,
sold for $69.6 million. That too had been expected to sell for around $60 millio
n. The image Brando in a leather jacket leaning forward on his motorcycle lookin
g the epitome of cool and seductive
is one of the actor s most famous. Still, neit
her Warhol beat the $104.5 million paid at Sotheby s a year ago for Silver Car Cras
h (Double Disaster), a two-panel Warhol from 1963.
While Elvis took home the evening s top price
selling for nearly $82 million
s just one big number in a night filled with soaring prices.

Andy Warhol (Icons of America)

Arthur C. Danto
Yale University Press, 2009 - Art (p.16)
Danto suggests that "what makes him an American icon is that his subject matter
is always something that the ordinary American understands: everything, or nearl

it wa

y everything he made art out of came straight out of the daily lives of very ord
inary Americans. . . . The tastes and values of ordinary persons all at once wer
e inseparable from advanced art."
Coke bottles, pristine vs expressionist.
"The coke bottle was of course an icon in its own right. If you want to paint i
t as an icon you paint it as it is. It does not need any frills. The way forwar
d was clear. It was a mandate and a breakthrough. The mandate was "paint what
we are." The breakthroguh was the insight into what we are. We are the kind of
people that are looking for the kind of happiness advertisements promise us tha
t we can have, easily and cheaply. Before and After is like an X ray of the Ame
rican soul. Warhol began to paint the advertisements in which our deficiencies
and hopes are portrayed."

Note:
Warhol's life and work simultaneously satirized and celebrated materiality and c
elebrity. On the one hand, his paintings of distorted brand images and celebrity
faces could be read as a critique of what he viewed as a culture obsessed with
money and celebrity. On the other hand, Warhol's focus on consumer goods and pop
-culture icons, as well as his own taste for money and fame, suggest a life in c
elebration of the very aspects of American culture that his work criticized. War
hol spoke to this apparent contradiction between his life and work in his book T
he Philosophy of Andy Warhol, writing that "making money is art and working is a
rt, and good business is the best art."
As Warhol himself put it, "Once you 'got' pop, you could never see a sign the sa
me way again. And once you thought pop, you could never see America the same way
again."