Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was a key figure in Pop Art, an art movement that emerged in America and elsewhere in the 1950s to become prominent over the next two decades.

Andy Warhol

• He was the most successful and highly paid COMMERCIAL ILLUSTRATOR in New York his screen-printed images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans, and sensational newspaper stories, quickly became synonymous with Pop art.

In the 1960s, Andy Warhol created several “mass-produced” images from photographs of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Jackie Onassis.

A Man of Many Talents
Andy Warhol was a fashion illustrator, painter, printmaker, sculptor, magazine publisher, filmmaker, photographer, and archivist of his times. His early paintings drew on his experiences as a commercial illustrator, and appropriated motifs from advertising and comics.

Campbell's Soup Cans. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, Each canvas 20 x 16" (50.8 x 40.6 cm)

CAMPBELL'S SOUP

• Campbell’s Soup Cans resembles the MASS-PRODUCED, printed advertisements
• it is hand-painted fleur de lys pattern ringing each can’s bottom edge is hand-stamped
• The fleur de lys pattern ringing each can’s bottom edge is hand-stamped

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• he mimicked the repetition and uniformity of advertising by carefully reproducing the same image
• He varied only the label on the front of each can, distinguishing them by their variety.

Green Bottles

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• which impression it give to you?

It gave an
assembly-line effect

Shortly after he completed Campbell’s Soup Cans, Warhol turned to the photo-silkscreen process.

The screenprinting process

• In August 1962, Andy Warhol began to produce paintings using the screenprinting process
• With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. you get the same image, slightly different each time

On the occasion of Marilyn Monroe’s suicide in August 1962, Warhol used this image for his screenprinting. It was a publicity shot by Gene Korman for the film Niagara, made in 1953.

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• why did he repeat Monro's image- and that of other celebrities- over and over again ?

By repeating Monroe’s image (and that of other celebrities) over and over again, Warhol acknowledged his own fascination with a society in which personas could be manufactured, commodified, and consumed like products.