Warhol is an American artist who is famous for his works from the 1960s till 1987. He invented new ways of image-making, vastly expanding what was considered fine art. Becoming a cultivator Of the pop art movement and arguably becoming one of the most recognisable artists globally. Becoming an icon himself through the notoriety of his creative process. This led him to be around a star-studded crowd where he would most famously be sighted at studio 54.
Most well-known for his creative experimentation with screen printing Working off the idea of modern American Society and iconic images within that. Warhol moved to New York City at age 21 hoping to succeed as a commercial designer. Warhol created each work with a different variety, hand-painted to mimic the uniformity of mass production. He described the canvases as “portraits”—this is an idea he explored within his work for the next 35 years.
Photography was a fundamental part of the way Warhol was able to produce his work. Photo-silk-screening is the technique where Warhol invented his signature style–a grainy black image printed repeatedly–in series, grids, rows, or pairs–on painted canvas It was an artistic breakthrough for Warhol as he had been able to legitimise the commercial method for use in fine art. Through the controversial imagery, Andy Warhol’s stemmed his creative practice around the 1960s he magnified the mass media’s worship and fascination with human suffering. As he told ARTnews in 1963, “When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it really doesn’t have any effect.”
In 1986, he painted more than 100 works related to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, which some have read as a complex reckoning of his homosexuality, Catholicism, and mortality in response to witnessing AIDS devastated the gay community. Catholic imagery was interesting for Warhol to use as he had been brought up Catholic, being conditioned from childhood to think about God from a Catholic perspective.
Research into Andy Warhol’s screenprint processing has given me the want to learn and experiment with the process myself. I’ve already started to play around with the religious imagery making a satirical image of Jesus holding a spray can using vibrant colours such as Warhol did within his creative process. I’ve also done this using stencils to create a contemporary street art with a static to the work as Warhol has also influenced street art via his notoriety within pop art.