Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was an American artist and filmmaker, initiator and leading exponent of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, whose mass production culminated the alleged banality of American commercial culture. A handy self-promoter, he advocated a concept of the artist as an impersonal, even empty figure who is nevertheless a successful celebrity, businessman and social climber. Warhol began painting in the late 1950s and suddenly became famous in 1962 when he exhibited paintings of Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles and wooden replicas of Brillo soap boxes. In the mid-sixties Warhol concentrated on making films. Chelsea Girls (1966), Eat (1963), My Hustler (1965) and Blue Movie (1969) are known for their striking eroticism, plotless boredom and excessive length.
“Andy Warhol is taking cinema back to its origins, to the days of Lumière, for a rejuvenation and a cleansing. In his work, he has abandoned all the ‘cinematic’ form and subject adornments that cinema had gathered around itself until now.
