Pop! Goes the Influencer

Understanding Andy Warhol

Some people are born too soon.

Was I aware that Andy Warhol showed his Pop paintings in New York as part of a display at the Bonwit Teller department store in 1961?

NO. I was ten years old at the time.

Did I see Warhol featured in Time magazine alongside Roy Lichtenstein, in the first mass-media article on American Pop in 1962, despite never having shown his Pop work in a gallery?

NO. I was eleven years old at the time. The article mentioned that he was working on a series of “portraits” of Campbell’s Soup cans.

Stay tuned.

The Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles displayed his 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans paintings in 1962. The Los Angeles Times wrote: “This young ‘artist’ is either a soft-headed fool or a hard-headed charlatan.”

ARTforum was more positive: “Based on formal arrangements, intellectual and emotional response, one finds favorites. Mine is Onion.” (source)

In 1963 ARTnews interviewed Warhol. Andy’s ability to make penetrating yet impervious statements, which would become his public persona rattles the brain: “I think everybody should be a machine. I think everybody should like everybody.” (source)

My first connection to Warhol did not happen through his art or movies, but through music. His iconic cover art for the 1967 Velvet Underground and Nico album caught my attention shortly after I arrived in Canada in March of 1968.

A few months later on June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol in the chest and nearly killed him. The incident made headlines. The Daily News splashed: ACTRESS SHOOTS ANDY WARHOL. Cries ‘he controlled my life’.

Life magazine listed Warhol as one of the ‘Winners of ’68' for surviving the shooting, “after a kooky feminist tried to zap him with her .32”

Suddenly, Warhol seemed to be everywhere: Drowning in a can of soup on the cover of Squire, on an ad campaign for Braniff Airlines, on the cover of Time, and even parodied in Mad magazine.

I started to pay closer attention.

At the beginning of 1974, Warhol’s Mao series was exhibited in Paris at the Musée Galliera. A review in the London Times, responding to the initial Mao drawings at the Mayor Gallery, stated that Warhol “is the most serious artist to have emerged anywhere since the war, and the most important American artist.” (source)

It would take me 34 years to see the magnificence of Andy’s Mao series in real life. I had to go to the Met in New York City to admire it. It was worth the wait.

Warhol seeped into my life slowly. It took repeated face-to-face encounters with his work before I started to understand the significance of such an impressive body of work.

In my years as a Fine Art photographer, I came in contact with many original Warhol pieces, and as you may have heard, you know when it’s real. It was through those experiences that I began searching out more of his work.

Ironically, Andy survived a bullet yet died unexpectedly at 5:30 am on Sunday, February 22, 1987, in a New York Hospital — after having his gallbladder removed.

Two years after his death MoMA opened a full-scale Warhol retrospective. Art critic Sanford Schwartz wrote: “[Warhol’s] place in American art and culture is so enormous and fuzzy — there are so many claims for what he did, or failed to do, or symbolized — that he’s like a din in your head.” (source)

It is perhaps that loud continuous inharmonious noise that attracted me to Andy. He is not only a gigantic figure in the Fine Art world but also in popular culture. His iconic works remain as ubiquitous and relevant as ever.

Tom Armstrong the director of the Whitney Museum makes a a good point: “It is difficult to know what will survive our times. However, my money is on Andy Warhol. He disgusts some, elates others, but is ignored by very few.” (source)

The critical skepticism that Andy was subjected to throughout his life has evaporated since his death. Warhol changed the perception of what art was and what being an artist meant. He took things, really banal, humble objects, and made them seem valuable — while also defining himself and his process as pieces of art in their own right.

So what has Andy taught me? His most influential lesson boils down to this:

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”