Andy Warhol

17 Sep Andy Warhol's Top x Paintings

Posted at 06:29h in Andy Warhol, Artists

Fondly referred to as the 'Pope of pop art', Andy Warhol was responsible for many of the most famous works in art history. Coming to prominence in the 1960s, he focused on distinctly American objects, advertisements and celebrities, producing piece of work in mediums including silk-screening, photography, film and sculpture. Some of his creations are amid the virtually expensive artwork ever sold, and in this slice, nosotros'll be looking at Andy Warhol'south peak 10 paintings.

1. Marilyn Diptych (1962)

Widely considered one of his best paintings, Warhol created the 1962 Marilyn Diptych in tribute to the late Marilyn Monroe who died later on overdosing on barbiturates that same year. Comprising 50 different takes on the actress's publicity photograph for her motion-picture show Niagara , the left side of the painting is in colour, while the correct is in an intentionally blurry black and white.

Marilyn Diptych fuses ii of Warhol's most consistent themes: death, and the cult of celebrity. The repetition of the image of Monroe represents her ubiquitous media presence, with the contrast of vivid colours with black and white evocative of her mortality. The painting has been praised for encapsulating Monroe's legacy, and was ranked as the third most influential piece of modern art past The Guardian . Warhol concluded up creating a number of individual versions of the same image, and nosotros offer many Warhol Marilyn prints for sale hither at ArtLife.

2. Campbell'south Soup Cans (1962)

Warhol frequently appropriated familiar images from consumer culture in his work, and his Campbell'due south Soup Cans painting is peradventure the most famous example of this. The original series was made up of 32 canvases, with each depicting a different diversity of soup offered past the visitor at the time. When Warhol kickoff exhibited the slice in 1962, the canvases were displayed together on shelves like products in a grocery alley. Each 1 is paw-painted, with a hand-stamped fleur-de-lys pattern on the bottom border of the cans.

The Campbell's Soup Cans series resembles the mass-produced printed advertisements of the era, and Warhol chose this particular product due to his passion for painting ordinary things, and his fondness of the soup itself. The painting was later on sold to the Museum of Modern Art for upwards of $15 million afterward Warhol's death. Warhol went on to produce a huge diversity of works depicting Campbell'southward soup cans during his life, many of which are available from us.

iii. Cow Series (1966)

While Warhol himself wasn't initially interested in cows, he decided to incorporate them into his work when fine art dealer Ivan Karp said to him: "Why don't y'all paint some cows, they're so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts." And so it transpired, with Warhol finishing the initial Cow Wallpaper in 1966, adding more to the series throughout the 70s.

Each Cows screenprint consists of vividly colored cows confronting a background of contrasting colors, with the image used chosen by Warhol's in-house printer Gerard Malanga. The series had 4 color schemes: Pink Cow on Yellow Background (1966) , Brown Cow with Blue Background (1971) , Yellow Cow on Bluish Background (1971 ) and finally Pink Moo-cow on Purple Background (1976) .

4. Mao (1973)

Warhol created his Mao paintings in 1973 in response to Us president Richard Nixon's coming together with the Chinese leader the yr earlier. This event concluded decades of diplomatic tension between the two countries and captured the artist'southward imagination, prompting him to design hundreds of canvases of Mao — some as large as 15 ft x ten ft.

However, this painting certainly isn't a celebration of Mao, with the graffiti-similar splashes of colour and blue eyeshadow really defacing his image. Indeed, many critics believe this reflects the freedom of self-expression available to artists in the Due west, in stark contrast to the communist propaganda the original image represented.

v. Dollar Sign (1981)

Arguably, no painting reflects mass identity, opulence and affluence like Warhol'south almighty Dollar Sign . Intrigued throughout his life by glitz and glamour, the painting represents the intersection between wealth and art, with both considered luxury commodities in their own right. The painting was fabricated using acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, and repeats the American dollar sign in bright neon colors. Warhol drew the source image for the series by hand himself, as he couldn't detect one elsewhere which he considered dramatic-looking plenty.

vi. The Flower Series (1964)

A pregnant departure from Warhol's usual themes of celebrity and consumerism, the Flowers series was inspired by photographs taken by Patricia Caulfield, published in 1964. Warhol experimented with different colors for the flowers, from vibrant pink and orangish in one print to all white in another. In some prints , he departs from the original template entirely, producing shadows of multiple flowers. Caulfield actually went on to file a lawsuit confronting Warhol for the unauthorized use of her image, which is almost comical when you consider how many years he spent replicating copyrighted product labels. The case was eventually settled out of courtroom.

seven. Cover-up Series (1986)

Warhol's Cover-up series was released a few months before his death in 1987, making it his last ever print portfolio. The inspiration was provided by his studio assistant Jay Shriver, who was experimenting with pushing paint through military textile. Camouflage may have appealed to Warhol's obsession with brands and logos, while the representational design also spoke to his interest in Abstruse Expressionist art.

Warhol merged this imagery with psychedelic colors to fundamentally modify the concept of camouflage as a disguise, and its commonsensical and military connotations. In its intended form, Camouflage was only exhibited one time, at a group evidence in New York in 1986, and is now on brandish in the Artist ROOMS at National Galleries of Scotland, a touring programme in collaboration with Tate.

8. Banana (1967)

As well equally being the manager of stone ring The Velvet Underground, Warhol also painted the comprehend of their debut album, The Velvet Hush-hush & Nico . The banana that featured on early editions was accompanied by the words "Peel Slowly and See" and covered by a banana skin sticker that viewers could pull back to reveal a flesh-colored fruit underneath — an intentionally phallic paradigm. The album cover became 1 of the well-nigh iconic of all time, and those early versions (with the sticker intact) are now rare collector's items. Speaking almost the legacy of the prototype, the band'due south lead singer Lou Reed has said: "Members of the public, especially those who listen to stone music, immediately recognize the banana design as the symbol of The Velvet Secret."

9. Gun (1982)

Death became a prominent theme in Warhol's fine art throughout the 1960s, and his fears intensified from 1968 when he was shot and almost killed by feminist writer Valerie Solanas at his studio, the Factory. Though he survived, he was forced to wear a surgical corset for the residuum of his life afterwards bullets tore through his breadbasket, liver, spleen, esophagus and both lungs.

Information technology is probable that the shooting inspired Warhol's Gun paintings, which were released almost 13 years after the attack. Depicting a weapon similar to the .22 snub-nosed pistol Solanas used in her assassination attempt, the absence of a subject only heightens the gun'due south status equally an ambivalent symbol, every bit exalted, reviled and sanitized in mass media and popular civilization.

ten. Green Coca-Cola Bottles (1962)

Portraying one hundred and twelve almost identical Coca-Cola bottles, Warhol believed the universal popularity of the soft drinkable carried a very positive message ."What'south grand virtually this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy substantially the same affair as the poorest…" he wrote in his 1975 book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol . "You can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and, just think, you can beverage Coke, also. A Coke is a Coke, and no corporeality of money can become you a meliorate Coke."

Created the same year in which Warhol began developing his pioneering silkscreen technique, the paradigm of a single Coca-Cola canteen is replicated in regular rows above the company logo. It is believed to resemble an advertizement poster, which evoked Warhol'south honey of consumerism.

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Source: https://www.artlife.com/andy-warhols-top-10-paintings/

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