That pale bewigged phantom spoke in brilliant deadpan-he could be extraordinarily droll-and became the high priest of celebrity culture.
Like Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Beuys, he mattered mainly as a cultural performer: “Andy” is easily Warhol’s single greatest creation. But his images rarely possessed the visual power found in the work of the great artists of the century, such as Picasso, Matisse, or Mondrian.Įarly on, of course, people recognized that Warhol represented more than the sum of his pictures. Warhol was an important Pop Artist who made edgy films and, in his silk-screens, found a fresh way to describe the shifting face of celebrity culture. The actual art that Warhol produced-the paintings, silk-screens and films-cannot explain the obsessive attention. If the history of art is any guide, he should be settling into the past, his influence spent or transformed. Warhol (1928–1987) made his most original work 40 years ago.
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(Three weeks ago, this magazine ran the cover headline WARHOL’S CHILDREN on a story about three ultrahip downtown art stars.) And Factory Girl-a movie about Edie Sedgwick, the rich young thing who hung out at the Factory and OD’d at 28-opened last week. A trendy downtown club on Chrystie Street is dolling itself up to look like the Factory, the name of Warhol’s tinfoil-wrapped studio. Phaidon just published a giant book called Andy Warhol: “Giant” Size. A show of his late work was one of the most discussed exhibitions last year. The filmmaker Ric Burns recently made a two-part documentary about him. The press loves him, young artists discuss him reverently, foreigners consider him essential. Photo: Robert Mapplethorpe/ Andy Warhol, 1986 © the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation/Art and CommerceĪndy’s more alive than ever.