Art History 101
Andy Warhol, Pop Art, and a Brief History in Iconic Imagery
Pop art emerged from an America revitalized in the Post-War Era, embracing glamor and industry. Andy Warhol was the artist who put that art movement on the map.
Andy Warhol and the Power of Images
The sensory overload of the city burgeoned through the Post-War years, and Pop art was the art world’s direct response to the frenetic pace that modern life had adopted. Andy Warhol was the most direct proponent of this new type of art that centered on newly emerging forms of industry and media. His practice was defined by iconic products and easily reproduced images, printed using an efficient silkscreen process. Silk screen printing allowed Warhol to create at a prolific pace, mirroring the mass production that had come to define the distribution of goods in America.
Iconic Above All Else
Andy Warhol at the Jewish Museum. New York State, New York, United States, 1980. Bernard Gotfryd, Photographer.
A banana, a dollar sign, or a soup can, all of Andy Warhol’s most famous works had one thing in common: instant recognizability. In Warhol’s work, images are repeated in fixed rows, mimicking posters plastered on a city street. Their bright colors are changeable from one print to another. They suggest not a higher plan of a fine-tuned composition, but instead an artwork intended to dazzle its viewer through socially ubiquitous symbolism and technicolor projection.
One of Warhol’s most famous images is certainly that of Marilyn Monroe. In this era, Americans were becoming more connected than ever before. Radio and television enabled a unified cultural narrative that could not exist without these networks, capable of transmitting information. With that change came celebrity culture. Marilyn saw a meteoric rise in popularity and familiarity, her stardom burning perhaps more brightly than anyone’s. The fact that Warhol would reproduce her likeness so widely should come as no surprise, as it once again demonstrates his focus on the iconic and recognizable.
The point of these images was their simplicity. The directness with which the viewer could engage enabled a predictable dialogue that required little contemplation, unlike the esoteric work of artists like Picasso. Warhol’s work carried with it a certain glamorous vibrancy that echoed New York City, packaged in an unprecedentedly modern way.
Warhol Sets Himself Apart
While certainly the most famous member of the Pop Art movement, Warhol was not the only artist creating ubiquitous, simple images in a flashy style. However, Warhol’s artwork takes on a new wrinkle when you consider his famed portrait of Mao Zedong.
How are we to interpret the seemingly political statement of such a portrait from an artist like Warhol? Were the Mao portraits legitimizing or critical? Warhol’s work steeped itself in the systems of capitalism, which were antithetical to the political system Mao created in China. Perhaps the Mao portraits represented Warhol’s tacit repudiation of the capitalist machine. Or was Mao just another celebrity whose image would be easily recognizable? The questions that Warhol’s work elicits are complicated by his most emblematic works of Pop Art. But they also deepen his practice, setting him apart from his peers.
Pop Art History Becomes Legacy
Andy Warhol’s iconic style defined a new movement in a world finding itself again after the devastation of war. But his refusal to be boxed in by that style and the questions that his work still raises to this day make him one of the most significant artists in American history.
