Andy Warhol

1928-1987

Please bring to the presentation with you:

• Warhol folder and CD • Elements of Art Board

• Book Andy Warhol by Dick Venezia • Copies of hand-out for students

(please make copies a day or two in advance) • The “squeegee tool” used in the silkscreening process

Please contact Anne Regan (255-9425 or aaregan@optonline.net) with any questions or comments. The website for the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is www.warhol.org I used it for this write up

and you may find it interesting. Have fun!

“In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” Andy Warhol

Introduce yourself and tell the children that you are in today for Art in the Classroom. Spend a minute or two reviewing the last artist that was presented. Before we talk about today’s artist, let’s remember to use the Elements of Art. Try to keep these elements in mind during our discussion. Elements of Art slide “color, light, line, shape, texture, space” Slide #1 Today’s artist is a very interesting and a very famous one! To give you an idea of the way he presented himself, I will show you one of his self-portraits. Before I do, can anyone tell me what a self-portrait is? A painting or photograph of the artist done by the artist.

Slide #2 Take a look at Andy Warhol’s self-portrait. How was it made? What about those colors? And why did he include four images of himself rather than one? He made some unusual choices. Let’s find out more about Andy Warhol’s life.

There is a wonderful book for you to read at this point. It is titled Andy Warhol, written and illustrated by Dick Venezia from the series “Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists”. Please read the book to the class, it is a synopsis of Warhol’s life and art, written on the level of our children.

After reading the book, ask the children to look at the self portrait again.

He created this self-portrait in 1986. He used 4 photographic images of himself – with his trademark shocked hair - and silk-screened them, off-kilter, onto a 6-foot square canvas. Is the effect unsettling or calming? How does the choice of colors add to the effect?

Slide #3 Here is another self-portrait of Warhol. Take a minute to look at it.

Slide #4 How is it different than the first one that we saw? Color; number of images; pattern on his face; one is “crooked”… How is it similar? Dark background, both are self-portraits, similar hair and expression, both silkscreened... Andy Warhol once said: "I'd prefer to remain a mystery. I never like to give my background and, anyway, I make it all up different every time I'm asked." Could he be hiding something about himself, or maybe he just wants people to think that he is hiding something?

Slide #5 Here is an actual photograph of Warhol with his shocking hair. A photograph like this could have been the starting point for the self-portraits that we just looked at.

Does anyone remember from the book that we just read what “pop art” means? Paintings about things that people in America see everyday, such as movie stars, food products, the newspaper – from the word popular. Warhol wanted to make art about things that we love to look at or have around and use everyday. Warhol used pictures of these things to make his art, then added his own color and lines to make it a little different from the original.

Slide #6 This is a famous work by Andy Warhol. Here is a story: As a kid, Warhol lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Legend has it that everyday when he came home from school he would be greeted by a bowl of Campbell’s soup. Later, he said that he ate Campbell’s soup everyday as an adult, too. Do you think that this story is true? Why or why not? What are your special foods? Are there foods that have a special place in your life, that make you remember a special event? What are some of the reasons that Warhol would have painted soup? Let’s look at the artwork: Have you seen this before? If so, where? Supermarket, home, poster What colors did Warhol use? Red, white, gold How did he use the space of the canvas? One large, centered item; bold; light background Do you see much texture? Flat, smooth Where is the light coming from? An overall flat, no real shadowing. Warhol made MANY, MANY different paintings of Campbell Soup cans.

Warhol often used a technique called silk screening. Warhol would choose a photograph and transfer it onto a screen, blocking out certain areas of the photograph. The screen would be put over the canvas and then paint would be applied to the screen. The canvas underneath would get color where the screen was not blocked out, just like a stencil. With silk screening, one could make many copies of the same version of an image with only slight variations. Warhol really like that idea. How is this different than the artists that we are used to seeing that use a brush, paint and canvas? * there is a squeegee tool that is used in the silkscreening process for you to use as a visual aid. You can show the children this tool – it used to spread the paint over the screen. Andy Warhol once said: Machines have less problems. I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that an interesting thing for an artist to say? Warhol made a series of paintings called “flowers”.

Slide #7 Do these flowers look like you could reach over and pick one? No, they are simplified, not realistic. Is there much shading? Where is the light source coming from? Just like the soup can, you can not tell, flat. Do the flowers seem to be a part of the background? They seem to hover, not attached to any stems or leaves. These paintings are an example of work that Warhol did in his “factory” – the large studio where Warhol created his work. “Friends came over to the Factory and do the work with me, sometimes there’ll be as many as fifteen people in the afternoon adding color and stretching the canvases.”

Slide #8 Here is an example of some of the paintings from this series (about 300 in all!) What is the same in these paintings? What is different? The paintings are all square. Warhol deliberately composed the picture so that the canvas would be a square. When asked which way to hang them, Warhol told people to hang it any way they wanted!

Warhol liked to paint portraits. What portraits do you see all the time? family members, famous movie stars, President of the United States Why do you think that artists have painted portraits through out the ages? record important events, catch a likeness How many times have you seen a portrait of Britney Spears? Why are there so many images of her in magazines and on tv? Warhol used many of his images from the media – he did not take the photograph himself but found it and used it. If you were going to use an image to make a portrait, where would you take the image from and why? Let’s look at some of the portraits that Warhol created.

Slide #9 Can anyone tell me who this is? Marilyn Monroe. She was very famous in the 1960’s when Warhol made this. Do you think that this was silkscreened or painted with a brush? Silkscreened How can you tell that it was silkscreened? Flat colors, crisp lines separating blocks of color, little texure. Do you think that Marilyn Monroe would have liked this portrait of her? Why or why not? Warhol soon started experimenting with repeating a single image many times in a painting.

Slide #10 Here is the same image repeated 10 times. Do you have different reaction to this portrait than to the portrait of just one Marilyn? If so, in what way?

Slide #11 Does anyone recognize this man? Elvis Presley This is a publicity photo from a movie that he made. What do you notice first when you looked at this painting? His stance, the worn clothes and distressed look of the painting, the gun in his hand Why do you think Warhol chose to use only black and white? Do you think that this would be as powerful if there were 20 images in the same painting instead of just 2? Keep in mind that the images would have to be smaller if the number of them increases.

Slide #12 Another movie star at the time was Troy Donahue. How is this different than the other portraits? Many more images in one work; color and black and white; oval shapes; not evenly spaced throughout Are all the images exactly the same? No, there are slight variances in the darkness of the colors

Slide #13 Here is another popular image from the 1960’s and it is still popular today as well!

Slide #14 What does this symbol stand for? What could Warhol be saying to us with this painting? In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, (where Warhol grew up) there is an entire museum dedicated to Warhol called The Andy Warhol Museum. They have many works of the artist which they display and loan out to other museums and exhibits.

Slide #15 Here is a view of their archive where they store some of Warhol’s art, letters and movies. What a big job it must be to make sure that all those artifacts are kept safe! Let’s try and remember some of the things we talked about today:

Andy Warhol Pop Art

Silk Screening Repeated images

Campbell’s Soup Cans