Artist: Andy Warhol

p Artist : Andy Warhol

Artist : Andy Warhol

Perhaps no artist in American history has embraced ambiguity more willingly than Andy Warhol . To this day , scholarly interpretations of his multi-faceted creative output struggle to define Warhol 's essential aesthetic , and also to resolve the central debate relative to his artistic career , which centers around crucial definitions of "pop art and "avant garde " expression . Warhol , regarded by many as an apologist for twentieth century American culture , receives an equal portion of accolade for being twentieth century American culture 's most accomplished satirist

and critic . As an artist with "roots in commercial design , who , by 1965 , was already a celebrity commanding large commissions and shows in major galleries " Warhol occupied a unique aesthetic position which allowed him to forward a number of ground-breaking artistic works which disturb "the image of Pop as a crass , commercial cousin to the more genuinely radical movements of the period " while remaining a successful capitalist and popular celebrity-artist (Rifkin 647

Warhol remains a "leading exponent of the pop art movement " which is viewed by art historians and critics as an important movement in the mid-twentieth century . Warhol 's use of "commonplace objects such as dollar bills , soup cans , soft-drink bottles , and soap-pad boxes " is his paintings , collages , and other works emphasized what was then considered a bold new voice in experimental art . paradoxically , the "experimental " attributes of this new art drew their origin from common , everyday cultural objects , with which Warhol seemed to be attempting to "ridicule and to celebrate American middle-class values by erasing the distinction between popular and high culture " while simultaneously attempting to blur or erase the line between popular expression and experimental techniques "Warhol Andy

In addition to blurring the lines between pop-art and avant garde experimentalism , Warhol also blurred the lines between the personal and impersonal in his art . His idiom incorporated elements of modern society , particularly repetitiveness and "emptiness " which played equally visceral roles in the impact of his works . In doing so , Warhol admitted into his art , a personal element which often made us of erotic and sexual themes , but which were expressed by way of an intermediary medium or set of contemporary images which seemed to be rife with symbolic association but which might just as easily comprise merely a clever pastiche or surface-level recapitulation of social mores and icons . Warhol produced "multi-image , mass-produced silk-screen paintings : for many of these , such as the portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy , he employed news photographs " which allowed for an impersonal medium and yet which produced indelible , iconic visual statements "Warhol , Andy

Warhol 's idiom developed from his lived-experience . Rather than utilize his personal life for theme and subject matter , he incorporated his biographical experiences : those of a Bohemian , East-coast avant-gard artist into his techniques and in to his supporting cast of assistants In the 1960 's Warhol "and his assistants worked out of a large New York studio dubbed the "Factory " In the mid-1960s Warhol began making films suppressing the personal element...