Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol, 1967
All right people, today is the day! Today is the day Andy Warhol is finally given the glorious light he deserves. I am BIG Warhol fan but, not for the traditional reasons. Sure, his art is pretty cool, different, unlike his time, the whole bit- BUT, the reason I love him perhaps comes from my brief encounter with being a Psychology major. Warhol is insane, seriously insane- but THAT my friends is the beauty of good 'ol Andy, and THAT is just why I love him!
There are so many Andy works to choose from, but Marilyn conveys my point the best. Let me explain. Andy was literally OBSESSED with celebrities, but the whole idea of his silkscreen stuff was to reproduce the same image over and over until it seems as if he is mocking it. If you see something once, it has meaning, but if you see it like 500 times, not so cool and meaningful anymore (the only exception to this would be Disneyland of course). Andy didn't just like the whole Hollywood scene, he was so insanely fanatical about it that it consumed his every thought. If you look at all his images, I would say like 70% of time it has SOMETHING to do with being famous, money, Hollywood, or status- Andy was just uncontrollably into that.
On top of all that, he was pretty weird guy. Some facts: he had really bad scaring on his face, some say because of acne and some say because he had a disease as a child that caused skin blotchiness- either way he had been preoccupied with appearance ever since he was really young. He wore like an intense amount of face makeup, wigs, and always had sunglasses on. He actually looks a little bit haunting/creepy if you ask me, but I still love him! There’s a book, The Andy Warhol Diaries, that is just this insanely huge collection of entries (seriously, this is a THICK book) with the majority talking about his fixation with Hollywood.
I guess the main point I am trying to make is Andy Warhol was this guy who was so obsessed with celebrities, money, and fame yet in most of his work he basically mocks the whole idea of it. I will definitely have more entries on Warhol because there is some much more I want to say about him, but for now I will leave you with this…
Andy Warhol was just plain ironic.
