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Andy Warhol (1928-1987), one of the most celebrated artists of the last
third of the twentieth century, owes his unique place in the history of
visual culture not to the mastery of a single medium but to the
exercise of multiple media and roles. A legendary art world figure, he
worked as an artist, filmmaker, photographer, collector, author, and
designer. Beginning in the 1950s as a commercial artist, he went on to
produce work for exhibition in galleries and museums. The range of his
efforts soon expanded to the making of films, photography, video, and
books. Warhol first came to public notice in the 1960s through works
that drew on advertising, brand names, and newspaper stories and
headlines. Many of his best-known images, both single and in series,
were produced within the context of pop art. Warhol was a major figure
in the bridging of the gap between high and low art, and his mode of
production in the famous studio known as "The Factory" involved the
recognition of art making as one form of enterprise among others. The
radical nature of that enterprise has ensured the iconic status of his
art and person. Andy Warhol contains illustrated essays by Benjamin H.
D. Buchloh, Thomas Crow, Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Annette
Michelson, and Nan Rosenthal, plus a previously unpublished interview
with Warhol by Buchloh. The essays address Warhol’s relation to and
effect on mass culture and the recurrence of disaster and death in his
art. |