Dr. Stephen M. Hart

University of Kentucky

 

Dorthy Parker   Robert Benchley   Robert Sherwood  George S Kaufman   Heywood Brown   Edna Ferber   F. Scott Fitzgerald  and Ernest Hemingway.

 

 

What the various authors, artists, activists, and innovators did during the 20th Century was to foucs on different side of the positive human condition.  What they had in common, though at times they were fervert adversaries, not counting the intellectual near cat - like public forum fights for public apporval of their ideas, the celebration of freedom.  Though some of them went hungry, and lived with rags on their backs, lonely, and cold, nonetheless.  This is  their " Pax Fidelis " and they essentailly, as most Americans still do not know, developed in their free and open expressionalisms, the formal basis of the American Nationalism.

 

You have to stand back and ask yourself what had impel them to do so.  Then, and if you can, abandon your own bias, and egocentricitiy, and take a closer look at their qualities of thinking, and how they approached both the subject of G- D and nature, freedom, love, their visions of the future, and beauty, and then you will see it.  Their courage to confront publically the major anxieties of their own times and era forced, self-impelled,  upon them by their own individual character of " Love " for human kind.  Though personalities like Ayn Randand her opposits,  would be trip up on the word love, in her since her own humility, but gave most brillantly nevertheless.

 

Roger M. Christian. December 17, 2005.

P.S. As for me - my defining moment came when I read Goodbye Mr. Chips, by James Hilton; that was me to the hilt, James, really peg'ed me good, and now you can start to understand the why of this now " teaching "WebSite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The JSTOR online archive of cirtical contemporary and historic works .

David Lehman writer.

 

Moreover, jacket magazine - which has WebSites of other publications should be also examined at your leisure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is where art, discovery, writing, and film making were all experimented with, and gave birth to the Avant Garde of the Mid 1960s.  In the very air, the scent of destiny was everywhere, and here too was the captivating exposure of those who pioneered to discover.  Any Warhol emerge from here as the leader in art history as a result.

 

MLA Citation

"The Life of Andy Warhol". Anti Essays. 4 Jun. 2007
< http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/94.html  >

 

Never before have I encountered more intriguing works of art than those
done by Andy Warhol. I have been curious about his life ever since I saw
his work in Milwaukee. I saw his famous work of the Campbell's Soup Can.
By viewing this, one can tell he is not your average artist. I'm sure his
life is full of interesting events that shaped him into who he was. As an
artist myself, I would like to get to know the background of his life. I
may then be able to appreciate his styles and understand why and how his
works were created. His life is as interesting as his artistic
masterpieces.
Andrew Warhola (his original name) was born one of three sons of Czech
immigrants, somewhere in Pennsylvania on either August 6, 1928 or on
September 28, 1930 (the date on his birth certificate). His father died
when Andy was at a very young age. Thus, it forced Andy into a deep
depression containing lack of self confidence. Much of his young life has
been kept secret. However, he did report being very shy and depressed
because he never felt comfortable with his homosexuality. His childhood
life may have been full of the torture that children threw at him for
being the different person he was. He was able to attend college. After
graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in pictorial design from
Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949, he went to New York City with
Philip Pearlstein, who was a fellow student that later became a well-known
realist painter. In 1960, Warhol finally began to paint in earnest and to
view art seriously as a career. He began his career with commercial
drawings of women's shoes. In 1961, an early manifestation was his Dick
Tracy, an enlarged version of the comic strip that was placed in the
window of Lord & Taylor's department store. He followed in his own
footsteps to keep going in the ever-so-famous "pop art" track. Warhol's
use of images are so close to the images themselves, thanks to the
photographic silkscreen technique, which is a process of applying the same
image over and over again without changing the original. In 1963, he began
turning film into his next aesthetic. He was the recorder of the world
around him. Warhol saw this world as populated by hustlers of various
sorts, motivated largely by money and the goods it would buy. Later that
next year, he started to experiment in underground film. In the late 70's
he began to use sex and nudity to gain attention in his films. Whether
this was moral or not; it did, however, work. The rest of his short life
was spent visiting with celebrities and keeping up with the world's times.
He tried to understand how the rest of the world saw things, but just
never got there. Sadly, Warhol died of a heart failure on March 9, 1987,
still wearing his famous blond hair wig.
Andy's diaries are not actual written records of his day to day accounts,
but they are audio recordings of his phone conversations to Pat Hackett
every Monday through Friday (from Wednesday, November 24, 1976 to Tuesday,
February 17, 1987, just weeks before his death). Warhol originally
intended these daily records to be documentation of his minor "business"
expenses. He was just audited and felt the need to be extra careful. "In a
word it was a diary. But whatever its broader objective, its narrow one,
to satisfy tax auditors, was always on my mind" (Warhol xvi). Later on, he
felt the diaries were a great way to explain his everyday occurrences for
more than a decade of his life. This view of his life from his eyes is
probably the most balanced view ever given. He may have changed since the
60's, but it is still the truest representation of Andy, himself. He never
expressed the key happenings of his life; it's as if we, the readers,
already knew them. He just usually mentions the quick everyday type things
such as a cab ride to uptown New York.
The first major influence on Andy Warhol's life was the stepping stone of
his artistic career, his enrollment in and completion of Carnegie
Institute of Technology with a bachelor degree in pictorial design. After
graduating he moved out to New York City, where his life blossomed. He
lived for a couple of years with Philip Pearlstein, who he had met at
school. Warhol, with his education centered around design, set out to
begin his career on the right foot. He started doing drawings for
advertisements in a women's shoe catalog. It may not have been much to
brag about, but it was at least something he could learn and gain from the
experience given to him. Andy may have acquired his use of media exploited
images through his beginning attempts at commercialism. He knew what sold
to society, whether he agreed with it or not. He continued on with
simplified pop art and he made it famous. He is the person most people
think about when pop art is mentioned. Through his advertising projects,
he was conditioned to think only in glorification of people, products, and
style. One of his popular works, the silkscreen of the Campbell's Soup
Can, is an example of this. It is an image that everyone is familiar with,
and it is so common that sometimes it is overlooked. Many times, Andy took
something simple and glorified it. This is how he made his designing
skills useful in promotion. "One would compare Warhol to the pictorial
hyper-realism of Norman Rockwell, and to the surrealism of Marcel Duchamp,
and the radicalism of Jasper Johns" (Sagan 1).
A second major influence in Andy Warhol's life is his participation in the
underground film scene. It started in 1963, when he called himself "the
recorder of society around him" (Moritz 590). He would find people for his
movies in a club-type warehouse called Max's Kansas City. Every night,
celebrities of art, fashion, music, and underground film-making crowds
gathered in the back corners of Max's to try their chance at working with
Warhol. In 1968, he was nearly killed by a woman who was in one of his
short films. She shot him on the side of his chest, but fortunately he was
not killed. He still continued to make films; such famous ones are "Eat,"
"Haircut," "Sleep," "Kiss," and "Empire." He would make them boring on
purpose to possibly prove a point. Again it was glorifying something
thought of as being extremely pointless. In the late 70's he began to use
sex and nudity, featuring films concerning sexual bondage. He may have
been simply looking for a shock value content. Many artists work off shock
value, it takes only the true to admit it and still continue with it.
The last and most important influence on Warhol was his mother, Julia
Warhola. When Andy first arrived in New York, he would share apartments
with friends and acquaintances. Eventually he could afford a place of his
own. Then his mother suddenly arrived in town and moved in with him. Her
reason was to look after him. She would constantly keep an eye out for a
wife for Andy. Little did she know he was interested in the opposite sex
for marriage. Andy appreciated his mother, and never wanted to explain how
she had an impact on him. Maybe it was the fact that she meant well, and
tried her hardest to take care of him. She lived with him on 89th Street
and Lexington Avenue until 1971. By then, suffering from senility, she
required constant care and Andy sent her back to Pittsburgh to be cared
for by his two brothers, John and Paul. After suffering a stroke, she died
in her nursing home in 1972. Andy did not except the fact too kindly. He
would even go as far to say his mother was doing fine, when people would
ask about her, even though she had already passed away. Andy stayed quiet
and tried to hide himself from the rest of society. He would avoid
emotional interaction as much as he could. He did this so he could "shrink
away from human touch" (Moritz 591). A man who started his life shy and
uncomfortable, blossomed into an outspoken artist, now finished his life
with feelings even worse than the beginning of his life.
After extensive research I found that Andy had much more to his life than
I had originally expected. He was involved in the classic rock band The
Velvet Underground, with famous singer Lou Reed. He actually even designed
a few of the album covers. Most people remember the self-entitled album
with the picture of a banana on it. Directly to the left of the banana
read the words "peel me." If one would peel it, it would reveal the pink
insides of a banana. Truly a work of Andy, I must say. Another thing I
found was that Andy was not only homosexual, but he was "omnisexual." It
was rumored he had no problem with sex with anyone or anything. Men,
women, animals, you name it, it was probably thought of. And last of all I
found he was unusually kind and appreciative to others, especially the
ones who worked for him. Pat Hackett, his editor, once said that she has
never met a person who says "thank you" as much as Andy does.
Not once have I been more informed on a person's life. In the beginning I
thought I knew a lot about. This research on Andy Warhol definitely
reinforced my positive view of him. It may have possibly enhanced my
appreciation for him as well. I enjoyed the honesty of the entire diary.
Nothing was hidden from the reader and I felt as informed as a good friend
of his would feel. His life is an interesting one and I believe more
people should try to investigate other lives of the unusual. It expands
your own viewpoints to accept those of others.
Many critics have different viewpoints on Warhol's autobiography. He was
still appreciated by those who understood his ideas. "But he had to have
had some sense of history, or he wouldn't have left the diaries behind to
try to explain everything to future generations" (Plagens 1732). Some
realize that the diaries are rather boring, but seem to see the true Andy
come through in the entries. "Despite their virtuoso triviality, their
naive snobbery and their incredible length, the diaries are not without a
certain charm" (Amis 1732). Others saw the diaries as a simplistic record
of events. "His diaries are more or less just records of who went where
and did what with whom, that anybody else who'd been along could have
kept" (Plagens 1732). It's too bad he didn't start the diaries earlier in
his life, such as the 60's, "when it would have been more interesting to
know what he did and whom he was with, instead of waiting until 1976 to
begin" (Plagens 1732). Some even complained of the editing job done by Pat
Hackett. "One problem with the diaries is their postmodern polish, such as
the casual proofreading and editing" (Trebay 1732). The reason the editor
didn't fit up to par was the mere fact she wanted it to sound how Andy
explained the day. "...still the book is great social history with its
lip-smacking tales of loveless, sexless marriages, its gimlet-eyed view of
other people's success, and its rampant unclosetings" (Trebay 1732). I,
myself, found the book very entertaining and a great nonchalant look at
the famous and their everyday lives. It may have been organized better and
condensed a bit, but none-the-less it was still interesting and kept me
reading.
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