Art andy warhol biography paintings

American artist, film director, and producer (1928–1987)

"Warhol" redirects here. For other uses, see Warhol (disambiguation) and Andy Warhol (disambiguation).

Andy Warhol (;^[1] born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one the most important artists of the second half of the 20th century.^[2][3][4] His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and filmmaking. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67), and the erotic filmBlue Movie (1969) that started the "Golden Age of Porn".^[5]

Born and raised in Pittsburgh in a family of Eastern European immigrants, Warhol initially pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator in the 1950s. After exhibiting his work in art galleries, he began to receive recognition as an influential and controversial artist in the 1960s. His New York studio, The Factory, became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.^[6][7][8] He directed and produced several underground films starring a collection of personalities known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with inspiring the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." Warhol managed and produced the experimental rock band the Velvet Underground. Warhol expressed his queer identity through many of his works at a time when homosexuality was actively suppressed in the United States.^[9][10]

After surviving an assassination attempt by radical feministValerie Solanas in June 1968, Warhol focused on transforming The Factory into a business enterprise.^[11] He founded Interview magazine and authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975) and Popism: The Warhol Sixties (1980). He also hosted the television series Fashion (1979–80), Andy Warhol's TV (1980–83), and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (1985–87). Warhol died of cardiac arrhythmia, aged 58, after gallbladder surgery in February 1987.

Warhol has been described as the "bellwether of the art market", with several of his works ranking among the most expensive paintings ever sold.^[12][13] In 2013, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) (1963) sold for $105 million, setting a record for the artist. In 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) sold for $195 million, which is the highest price paid at auction for a work by an American artist. Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospectiveexhibitions, books, and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.

Early life and education

Warhol was born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[14] He was the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola (Americanized as Andrew Warhola Sr.; 1889–1942)^[15] and Julia Warhola (née Zavacká, 1891–1972).^[17] His parents were working-class Rusyn emigrants from Mikó, Austria-Hungary (now called Miková, located in today's northeastern Slovakia).^[18][19]

Warhol's father emigrated to the United States in 1912 and worked in a coal mine.^[20] His wife joined him in Pittsburgh in 1921.^[21] The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.^[22] They were Ruthenian Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Warhol had two elder brothers—Paul (1922–2014) and John (1925–2010).^[23] Paul's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator. Warhol had an older sister, Maria, who died in infancy in Austria-Hungary.^[20]

In third grade, Warhol had Sydenham's chorea (also known as St. Vitus' Dance), the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever which causes skin pigmentation blotchiness.^[24] At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father died in an accident.^[25]

As a teenager, Warhol graduated from Schenley High School in 1945, and also won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award.^[26] After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, where he studied commercial art. During his time there, Warhol joined the campus Modern Dance Club and Beaux Arts Society.^[27][28] He also served as art director of the student art magazine, Cano, illustrating a cover in 1948 and a full-page interior illustration in 1949.^[29][30] These are believed to be his first two published artworks.^[30] Warhol earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in pictorial design in 1949.^[31] Later that year, he moved to New York City and began a career in magazine illustration and advertising.

Career

1950s

Warhol's early career was dedicated to commercial and advertising art, where his first commission had been to draw shoes for Glamour magazine in 1949.^[32][33]

In 1952, Alexander Iolas is credited as discovering Andy Warhol, and he organized first solo show at the Hugo Gallery in New York.^[34]

In 1955, Warhol began designing advertisements for shoe manufacturer Israel Miller.^[35][36] He developed his "blotted line" technique, applying ink to paper and then blotting the ink while still wet, which was akin to a printmaking process on the most rudimentary scale. His use of tracing paper and ink allowed him to repeat the basic image and also to create endless variations on the theme.^[33] American photographer John Coplans recalled that "nobody drew shoes the way Andy did. He somehow gave each shoe a temperament of its own, a sort of sly, Toulouse-Lautrec kind of sophistication, but the shape and the style came through accurately and the buckle was always in the right place. The kids in the apartment [which Andy shared in New York – note by Coplans] noticed that the vamps on Andy's shoe drawings kept getting longer and longer but [Israel] Miller didn't mind. Miller loved them."^{[citation needed]}

In 1956, Warhol was included in his first group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.^[37] That year, hel traveled around the world with his friend, production designer Charles Lisanby, studying art and culture in several countries.^[38]

In 1956, Warhol began to sketch ornate footwear as a hobby.^[39] He designed whimsical shoes that were embellished with gold leaf, and each represented a famous figure such as Truman Capote, Kate Smith, James Dean, Julie Andrews, Elvis Presley, and Zsa Zsa Gabor.^[40] They sold for $50 to $225 apiece when they were exhibited at the Bodley Gallery in New York in 1957.^[40]

Warhol habitually used the expedient of tracing photographs projected with an epidiascope.^[41] Using prints by Edward Wallowitch, his "first boyfriend",^[42] the photographs would undergo a subtle transformation during Warhol's often cursory tracing of contours and hatching of shadows. Warhol used Wallowitch's photograph Young Man Smoking a Cigarette (c. 1956)^[43] for a 1958 design for a book cover he submitted to Simon and Schuster for the Walter Ross pulp novel The Immortal, and later used others for his series of paintings.^[44][45]

With the rapid expansion of the record industry, RCA Records hired Warhol, along with another freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design album covers and promotional materials.^[46]

1960s

As a commercial artist, Warhol worked with high-end advertising clients such as Tiffany & Co.^[47]

In 1961 Warhol purchased a townhouse at 1342 Lexington Avenue in Carnegie Hill, which he also used as his art studio.^[48][49] In 1962, Warhol was taught silkscreen printmaking techniques by Max Arthur Cohn at his graphic arts business in Manhattan.^[50][51] In his book Popism: The Warhol Sixties, Warhol writes: "When you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something".^[52]

In May 1962, Warhol was featured in an article in Time with his painting Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable) (1962), which initiated his most sustained motif, the Campbell's soup can.^[53] That painting became Warhol's first to be shown in a museum when it was exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford in July 1962.^[54] On July 9, 1962, Warhol's exhibition opened at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles with Campbell's Soup Cans, marking his West Coast debut of pop art.^[55][56]

In November 1962, Warhol had an exhibition at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery in New York.^[57] The exhibit included the works Gold Marilyn, eight of the classic Marilyn series also named Flavor Marilyns, Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles, and 100 Dollar Bills. Gold Marilyn was bought by the architect Philip Johnson and donated to the Museum of Modern Art.

In December 1962, New York City's Museum of Modern Art hosted a symposium on pop art, during which artists such as Warhol were attacked for "capitulating" to consumerism. Critics were appalled by Warhol's open acceptance of market culture, which set the tone for his reception.^[58]

In 1963, Warhol formed The Druds, a short-lived avant-gardenoise band that included notable figures from the New York minimal art and proto-conceptual art scenes, including Larry Poons, La Monte Young, Walter De Maria, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenberg, and Lucas Samaras.^[59]

In January 1963, Warhol rented his first studio—an old firehouse at 159 East 87th Street—where he created his Elvis series, which included Eight Elvises (1963) and Triple Elvis (1963).^[60][61] These portraits, along with a series of Elizabeth Taylor portraits, were shown at his second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.^[62] Later that year, Warhol relocated his studio to East 47th Street, which would turn into The Factory.^[61] The Factory became a popular gathering spot for a wide range of artists, writers, musicians and underground celebrities.^[63]

Warhol had his second exhibition at the Stable Gallery in the spring of 1964, which featured sculptures of commercial boxes stacked and scattered throughout the space to resemble a warehouse.^[64][65] For the exhibition, Warhol custom ordered wooden boxes and silkscreened graphics onto them. The sculptures—Brillo Box, Del Monte Peach Box, Heinz Tomato Ketchup Box, Kellogg's Cornflakes Box, Campbell's Tomato Juice Box and Mott's Apple Juice Box—sold for $200 to $400 depending on the size of the box.^[66]

A pivotal event was The American Supermarket exhibition at Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery in late 1964.^[67] The show was presented as a typical small supermarket environment, except that everything in it—from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc.—was created by prominent pop artists of the time, among them sculptor Claes Oldenburg, Mary Inman and Bob Watts.^[67] Warhol designed a $12 paper shopping bag—plain white with a red Campbell's soup can.^[67] His painting of a can of a Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for three for $18, $6.50 each.^[67][68] The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the perennial question of what art is.^[69]

Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity and these collaborations would remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with the production of silkscreens, films, sculptures and other works at The Factory, Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street. Other members of Warhol's Factory crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary Woronov, Billy Name, and Brigid Berlin.^[70]

In November 1964, Warhol's first Flowers series exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. In May 1965, his second Flowers series, which had more sizes and color variation that the previous, was shown at Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris. During this trip Warhol announced that he was retiring from painting to focus on film.

From the 1960s to the 1970s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian and counterculture eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "superstars", including Edie Sedgwick, Nico, International Velvet, Viva, Ultra Violet, Joe Dallesandro, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis and Jane Forth. These people all participated in the Factory films, and some—like Berlin—remained friends with Warhol until his death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world, such as writer John Giorno and filmmaker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this time. Less well known was his support and collaboration with several teenagers during this era, who would achieve prominence later in life, including writer David Dalton,^[75] photographer Stephen Shore^[76] and artist Bibbe Hansen (mother of pop musician Beck).^[77]

The experimental rock group The Velvet Underground was taken on by Warhol around the end of 1965. In his capacity as their manager, he included them as a key component of his Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia performances in 1966 and 1967, and he funded their debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967).^[79][80]

Warhol made a conscious decision to oppose conventional painting, stating that he no longer believed in painting.^[81] In response to art dealer Ivan Karp's suggestion to paint cows, Warhol produced Cow Wallpaper, which covered the walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery during his April 1966 exhibition.

In 1967, Warhol established Factory Additions for his printmaking and publishing enterprise.^[83] In order to duplicate prints for a wide audience, Factory Additions published multiple portfolios of ten images each in editions of 250. These were then printed using professional screen printers.^[84]

Warhol intended to present the film Chelsea Girls (1966) at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, but it wasn't shown because "the festival authorities explained that the film was too long, there were technical problems."^[1]

In February 1968, Warhol's first solo museum exhibition was mounted at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.^[85]

1968 assassination attempt

Main article: Attempted assassination of Andy Warhol

On June 3, 1968, radical feminist writer Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and Mario Amaya, art critic and curator, at The Factory.^[86] Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene before the shooting. She authored the SCUM Manifesto,^[87] a separatist feminist tract that advocated the elimination of men; and appeared in the Warhol film I, a Man (1967).^[88] Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived and remained in the hospital for nearly two months.^[90][91] Solanas turned herself in to the police a few hours after the attack and said that Warhol "had too much control over my life."^[86][92] She was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and eventually sentenced to three years in prison.^[93]

One of the Factory's assistants, Jed Johnson, had witnessed the shooting.^[90] Johnson visited Warhol regularly during his hospitalization, and the two developed an intimate relationship.^[96] Johnson moved in with Warhol shortly after he was discharged from the hospital to assist him in recuperating and taking care of his mother, Julia Warhola.

The assassination attempt had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art.^[99][11] He had physical effects for the rest of his life, including being required to wear a surgical corset.^[24] The Factory became more regulated and Warhol focused on making it a business enterprise. He credited his collaborator Paul Morrissey with transforming the Factory into a "regular office."^[11]

In September 1968, Warhol hosted a party at the Factory for Nico's album The Marble Index.^[100] Warhol and his superstars Viva and Ultra Violet appeared on the cover of the November 10, 1968, issue of The New York Times Magazine.^[101]

In 1969, Warhol and his entourage traveled to Los Angeles to discuss a prospective movie deal with Columbia Pictures.^[102] Warhol, who has always had an interest in photography, used a Polaroid camera to document his recuperation after the shooting.^[103] In 1969, some of his photographs were published in Esquire magazine.^[104] He would become well known for always carrying his Polaroid camera to chronicle his encounters.^[105] Eventually, he used instant photography as the basis for his silkscreen portraits when he resumed painting in the 1970s.^[106]

In late 1969, Warhol and British journalist John Wilcock founded Interview magazine.^[107] The magazine was initially published as inter/VIEW: A Monthly Film Journal. It was revamped a few years later and came to represent Warhol's social life and fascination with celebrity.^[108]

1970s

Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the early 1970s were much quieter years, as he became more entrepreneurial. He was generally regarded as quiet, shy and a meticulous observer. Art critic Robert Hughes called him "the white mole of Union Square".^[109] His fashion evolved from what Warhol called his "leather look" to his "Brook Brothers look," which included a Brooks Brothers shirt and tie, DeNoyer blazer, and Levi jeans.^[110]

As Warhol continued to forge into filmmaking, he had established himself as "one of the most celebrated and well-known pop art figures to emerge from the sixties."^[112] The Pasadena Art Museum in Pasadena organized a major retrospective of his work in 1970, which traveled in the United States and abroad.^[113] In 1971, the exhibition was mounted at the Tate Gallery in London and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.^[114][115] The Whitney show distinctly featured Warhol's Cow Wallpaper (1966) as the backdrop for his paintings.^[115][116]

In May 1971, Warhol's first and only theater production, Andy Warhol's Pork, opened at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York.^[117] In August 1971, it was brought to the Roundhouse in London.^[118]

In late 1971, Warhol and his business partner Paul Morrissey purchased Eothen, an oceanfront estate in Montauk, New York on Long Island.^[119] They began renting the main house on the property in 1972.^[120]Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy, The Rolling Stones, Elizabeth Taylor, Truman Capote, and Halston were among the estate's notable guests.^[121]

Warhol is credited with both the cover concept and photography for The Rolling Stones' albums Sticky Fingers (1971).^[14] He received a Grammy nomination for Best Album Cover at the 14th Annual Grammy Awards in 1972.^[2]

Although Warhol was considered to be apolitical, he participated in an exhibition with the poster Vote McGovern (1972) in effort to raise funds for George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign.^[122][123]

In October 1972, Warhol's work was included in the inaugural show at the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, Texas.^[124]

After years of deteriorating health, Warhol's mother, Julia Warhola, died in Pittsburgh in November 1972.^[125] Although he covered the cost of her funeral, he chose not to attend or inform his friends of her death.^[125]

Warhol and his longtime partner Jed Johnson got a dachshund, Archie Warhol, for Christmas in 1972.^[13] Warhol doted on Archie and took him everywhere: to the studio, parties, restaurants, and on trips to Europe.^[18] He created portraits of Johnson, Archie, and Amos, a second dachshund they got a few years later.^[12]

Between 1972 and 1973, Warhol created a series of portraits of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong with funding from two New York galleries, Knoedler & Co. and the Leo Castelli Gallery, as well as art collector Peter Brant.^[128][3] In February 1974, some of the Mao portraits were installed at the Musée Galliera in Paris.

In the early 1970s, Warhol began traveling to Europe more frequently and developed a fondness for Paris. By 1973, Warhol had an apartment that he shared with his business manager Fred Hughes on the Left Bank of Paris on Rue du Cherche-Midi.^[130][132] In 1974, Warhol and Johnson moved from his home on Lexington Avenue to a townhouse at 57 East 66th Street in Manhattan's Lenox Hill neighborhood.^[133]

By the mid-1970s, Warhol's public presence had increased significantly due to his attendance at parties. In 1974, he said, "I try to go around so often so much and try to go to every party so that they'll be bored with me and stop writing about me."^[134]

In May 1975, Warhol attended President Gerald Ford's state dinner in honor of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, at the White House.

In 1975, Warhol published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again).^[136] In September 1975, he went on an eight-city U.S. book tour, followed by stops in Italy, France, and England.^[4]

In 1976, Warhol and painter Jamie Wyeth were commissioned to paint each other's portraits by the Coe Kerr Gallery in Manhattan.^[137] In January 1977, Warhol traveled to Kuwait for the opening of his exhibition at the Dhaiat Abdulla Al Salem Gallery.^[138] In June 1977, Warhol was invited to a special reception honoring the "Inaugural Artists" who had contributed prints to the Jimmy Carter presidential campaign.^[139] In 1977, Warhol was commissioned by art collector Richard Weisman to create Athletes, ten portraits consisting of the leading athletes of the day.^[140]

The opening of Studio 54 in 1977 ushered in a new era in New York City nightlife. Warhol would often socialize at Studio 54 and take note of the drug-fueled activities that his friends engaged in at parties.^[141] In 1977, Warhol began taking nude photographs of men in various poses and performing sexual acts—referred to as "landscapes"—for what became known as the Torsos and Sex Parts series.^[142] Most of the men were street hustlers and male prostitutes brought to the Factory by Halston's lover Victor Hugo. This caused tension in Warhol's relationship with Johnson who did not approve of his friendship with Hugo. "When Studio 54 opened things changed with Andy. That was New York when it was at the height of its most decadent period, and I didn't take part. I never liked that scene, I was never comfortable. ... Andy was just wasting his time, and it was really upsetting. ... He just spent his time with the most ridiculous people," said Johnson.

In 1979, Warhol formed a publishing company, Andy Warhol Books, and released the book Exposures, which contained his photographs of famous friends and acquaintances.^[149] In November 1979, he embarked on a three-week book tour in the US.

According to former Interview editor Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions—including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross and Brigitte Bardot.^[151][152] In November 1979, the Whitney Museum of American Art mounted the exhibition Andy Warhol: Portraits of the '70s to celebrate the "very commercial celebrity of the '70s, the decade of People magazine and designer jeans."^[153] Some critics disliked his exhibits of portraits of personalities and celebrities, calling them superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the significance of the subjects.^[154]

1980s

Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of 1980s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi. Warhol also earned street credibility and graffiti artist Fab Five Freddy paid homage to him by painting an entire train with Campbell soup cans.^[155]

His 1980 exhibition Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan was panned by critics. Warhol—who was uninterested in Judaism and Jews—had described in his diary as "They're going to sell."^[154]

The New York Academy of Art was founded in part by Warhol.^[156] First established in 1980, the institute's mission was to "revive traditional methods of training artists."^[157] According to Stuart Pivar, a fellow co-founder and art collector, "What happened was that Modernism got boring [for Warhol] ... But his overall game plan, what he really believed, was that the modern age was going away and that we were entering a neoclassical period."^[157]

In 1981, Warhol worked on a project with Peter Sellars and Lewis Allen that would create a traveling stage show called, A No Man Show, with a life-sized animatronic robot in the exact image of Warhol.^[158] The Andy Warhol Robot would then be able to read Warhol's diaries as a theatrical production.^[159][160] Warhol was quoted as saying, "I'd like to be a machine, wouldn't you?"^[161]

Warhol also had an appreciation for intense Hollywood glamour. He once said: "I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."^[162] Warhol occasionally walked the fashion runways and did product endorsements, represented by Zoli Agency and later Ford Models.^[163]

In 1983, Warhol created a series of endangered species silkscreen prints for his exhibition Warhol's Animals: Species at Risk at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.^[164] He donated 10 of the 150 sets he made to wildlife organizations "so they could sell them to raise money."^[164]

Before the 1984 SarajevoWinter Olympics, he teamed with 15 other artists, including David Hockney and Cy Twombly, and contributed a Speed Skater print to the Art and Sport collection. The Speed Skater was used for the official Sarajevo Winter Olympics poster.^[165]

In 1984, Vanity Fair commissioned Warhol to produce a portrait of Prince, to accompany an article that celebrated the success of Purple Rain and its accompanying movie.^[166] Referencing the many celebrity portraits produced by Warhol across his career, Orange Prince (1984) was created using a similar composition to the Marilyn "Flavors" series from 1962, among some of Warhol's first celebrity portraits.^[167] Prince is depicted in a pop color palette commonly used by Warhol, in bright orange with highlights of bright green and blue. The facial features and hair are screen-printed in black over the orange background.^{[168][169][170]}

In September 1985, Warhol's joint exhibition with Basquiat, Paintings, opened to negative reviews at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery.^[171] That month, despite apprehension from Warhol, his silkscreen series Reigning Queens was shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery.^[172] In the Andy Warhol Diaries, Warhol noted: "They were supposed to be only for Europe—nobody here cares about royalty and it'll be another bad review."

In January 1987, Warhol traveled to Milan for the opening of his last exhibition, Last Supper, at the Palazzo delle Stelline.^[174] The next month, Warhol modeled with jazz musician Miles Davis for Koshin Satoh's fashion show at the Tunnel in New York City on February 17, 1987.^[175][176]

Death

Warhol died at age 58 following gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital in Manhattan on February 22, 1987.^[177] Reportedly, he had been making a good recovery from the surgery before dying in his sleep at 6:32 a.m. from a sudden post-operative irregular heartbeat.^[178] Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors.^[179]

Warhol's brothers took his body back to Pittsburgh, where an open-casket wake was held at the Thomas P. Kunsak Funeral Home. The solid bronze casket had gold-plated rails and white upholstery. Warhol was dressed in a black cashmere suit, a paisley tie, a platinum wig, and sunglasses. He was laid out holding a small prayer book and a red rose. The funeral liturgy was held at the Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church on Pittsburgh's North Side on February 27, 1987. The eulogy was given by Monsignor Peter Tay. Yoko Ono and John Richardson were speakers. The casket was covered with white roses and asparagus ferns.

After the liturgy, the casket was driven to St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, a south suburb of Pittsburgh, where Warhol was buried near his parents.^[180] The priest said a brief prayer at the graveside and sprinkled holy water on the casket. Before the casket was lowered, Warhol's close friend and associate publisher of Interview, Paige Powell, dropped a copy of the magazine and a bottle of Beautiful Eau de Parfum by Estée Lauder into the grave.^[181][182]

A memorial service was held in Manhattan for Warhol at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on April 1, 1987.^[183] It was attended by over 2,000 people, including numerous celebrities and Warhol collaborators such as Raquel Welch, Debbie Harry, Liza Minnelli, Yoko Ono, Claus von Bülow, and Calvin Klein, among others.^[184][185]

Wrongful death lawsuit

In December 1991, Warhol's family sued the hospital in the New York Supreme Court for inadequate care, before judge Ira Gammerman, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication.^[186] The malpractice case was quickly settled out of court; Warhol's family received an undisclosed sum of money.^[187]

Prior to his surgery, doctors expected Warhol to survive, though a re-evaluation of the case about thirty years after his death showed many indications that Warhol's surgery was in fact riskier than originally thought.^[188] It was widely reported at the time that Warhol had died of a "routine" surgery, though when considering factors such as his age, a family history of gallbladder problems, his previous gunshot wound, and his medical state in the weeks leading up to the procedure, the potential risk of death following the surgery appeared to have been significant.^[188]

Art works

Paintings

By the beginning of the 1960s, pop art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists such as Willem de Kooning.

From these beginnings, he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the handmade from the artistic process. Warhol was an early adopter of the silkscreen printmaking process as a technique for making paintings. His later drawings were traced from slide projections. Warhol had several assistants through the years, including Gerard Malanga, Ronnie Cutrone, and George Condo, who produced his silkscreen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.^[189][190]

Warhol's first pop art paintings were displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department Store Bonwit Teller's window display. This was the same stage his Pop Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced.^[191] It was the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup cans and Warhol's dollar paintings. On November 23, 1961, Warhol wrote Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography, Pop, The Genius of Warhol, was payment for coming up with the idea of the soup cans as subject matter.^[192] For his first major exhibition, Warhol painted his famous cans of Campbell's soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his life.

It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American objects such as dollar bills, mushroom clouds, electric chairs, Campbell's soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as newspaper headlines or photographs of police dogs attacking African-American protesters during the Birmingham campaign in the civil rights movement. His work became popular and controversial. Warhol had this to say about Coca-Cola:

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.^[193]

In 1962, Warhol created his famous Marilyn series. The Flavor Marilyns were selected from a group of fourteen canvases in the sub-series, each measuring 20" x 16". Some of the canvases were named after various candy Life Savers flavors, including Cherry Marilyn, Lemon Marilyn and Licorice Marilyn. The others are identified by their background colors.^[194]

Warhol produced both comic and serious works; his subject could be a soup can or an electric chair. Warhol used the same techniques—silkscreens, reproduced serially, and often painted with bright colors—whether he painted celebrities, everyday objects, or images of suicide, car crashes and disasters, as in the 1962–63 Death and Disaster series.^[195]

In the 1970s, Warhol evolved into a commercial artist, painting mostly commissioned portraits of celebrities.^[196][153] In 1979, Warhol was commissioned to paint a BMW M1Group 4 racing version for the fourth installment of the BMW Art Car project.^[197] He was initially asked to paint a BMW 320i in 1978, but the car model was changed and it didn't qualify for the race that year.^[200] Warhol was the first artist to paint directly onto the automobile himself instead of letting technicians transfer a scale-model design to the car.^[197] Reportedly, it took him only 23 minutes to paint the entire car.^[201]Racecar drivers Hervé Poulain, Manfred Winkelhock and Marcel Mignot drove the car at the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans.^[197]

Some of Warhol's work, as well as his own personality, has been described as being Keatonesque. Warhol has been described as playing dumb to the media. He sometimes refused to explain his work. He has suggested that all one needs to know about his work is "already there 'on the surface'".^[202]

His Rorschach inkblots are intended as pop comments on art and what art could be. His cow wallpaper (literally, wallpaper with a cow motif) and his oxidation paintings (canvases prepared with copper paint that was then oxidized with urine) are also noteworthy in this context. Equally noteworthy is the way these works—and their means of production—mirrored the atmosphere at Andy's New York "Factory". Former Interview editor Bob Colacello provides some details on Andy's "piss paintings":

Victor ... was Andy's ghost pisser on the Oxidations. He would come to the Factory to urinate on canvases that had already been primed with copper-based paint by Andy or Ronnie Cutrone, a second ghost pisser much appreciated by Andy, who said that the vitamin B that Ronnie took made a prettier color when the acid in the urine turned the copper green. Did Andy ever use his own urine? My diary shows that when he first began the series, in December 1977, he did, and there were many others: boys who'd come to lunch and drink too much wine, and find it funny or even flattering to be asked to help Andy 'paint'. Andy always had a little extra bounce in his walk as he led them to his studio.^[203]