Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, who was born in Pittsburgh in 1928 into a Slovak family (the original surname was Warhola) and died in New York in 1987, is the father of Pop Art, the artist who intuited that in the present consumer world art too could become a mass product. Reproducibility, seriality, succinctness: these are the typical features of industrial products which he applied to his artistic works, mostly silk-screen prints of famous figures and commercial products.
Contemporary myths replicated and distributed like consumer goods. So here are the hundreds of Marilyns, whose silk-screen image in different colors has become more iconic than the actress’s original figure. Here is Mao, emptied of political content to become a pop figure. And here are the Campbell Soups and the Brillo Soap Pad boxes, widespread brands in the supermarkets which were now elevated to the status of art products.
This maximum Pop artist, who for years now has overtaken Picasso in the ‘most popular artist’ rankings on the Artfacts.net site, is also one of the most expensive artists in the world. His Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) of 1963 was sold in 2013 by Sotheby’s for 105.4 million dollars. It is the dramatic serial image of a car accident, because in today’s world even accidents become iconic events, catalysts of media attention.
