The Bold Boy of Graphic Design

During his second year of study at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, an exhibition jury rejected Andy Warhol’s painting titled, “The Broad Gave Me My Face But I Can Pick My Own Nose”. At the Student Show for his graduation,  he tactfully renamed his artwork, “Don’t Pick On Me” and gained his fair share of attention.

Andrew Warhola, popularly known as Andy Warhol, the leading figure in the Pop Art Movement was not just an artist. He was also a skilled social networker, a successful businessman, a controversy magnet as well as a high art demigod. The American artist’s name is among the few artists who successfully managed to merge commercial illustration into mainstream aesthetics in their works.

“Without his own dramatic and stylish presence, Andy Warhol’s work remains great art,a monument impossible to ignore. It has changed the reflections of other artists, the considerations of poets, and the deliberations of philosophers. The camouflage cannot conceal a celestially cool andcatholicart.”

– Kynaston McShine

Andy Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology with a degree in commercial art and moved to New York in 1949 to begin a career in illustration and advertising. Within a span of ten years, he had worked with Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York-er and other high profile clients. As a leading commercial artist, he established his own company, ‘Andy Warhol Enterprises, Inc’ in 1954.

“Art is anything you can get away with.”

However, by 1960 he was quite dissatisfied with his commercially driven art. This is when he started painting as an artist again. Most of his early works were based on comic strips and were similar to the works of other pop artists. He discovered and tried his hand at silk screen printing. This came out to be a huge turning point in his life. He is best known for his silk screen prints.

The 60’s was also the decade during which Warhol established ‘The Factory’, his personal studio. The Factory, well-known for its groundbreaking parties and absurd sexual activities was a perfect hangout for the artistic types and the Warhol Stars.

“Fantasy love is much better than reality love.”

Warhol was openly gay. However, he was never really associated with a particular significant other. He is said to have preferred voyeurism and exhibitionism. Most of his early works which were often rejected by galleries for being ‘too gay or too obscene’ were clearly drawn from the underground gay culture and the complexities of sexuality.

Andy Warhol was one of the most influential and unapologetic artists of the twentieth century. He was  prolific and audacious, and an excellent  businessman who is the creator of some of the most recognizable images ever made.

– Tanya Singh