Even though his works were few, by the help of our guide we got to know the most important traits of this artist. His first production we saw was the “Electric Chair”. He created it as silkscreen print.
This technique is very used and needs to be explained. It is a method of producing a stencil in which a design is imposed upon a screen of a fine fabric, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the cloth onto the printing surface [American Heritage Dictionary]. Andy Warhol was not the first who discovered it, but he was a good user: in this way he could make more pictures and earn more money. Andy Warhol on the other hand often produced his pictures without doing any work: he got his assistants.
Then, after seeing some other pictures, we came to “portrait section”. We saw Merilyn Monroe and Elvis Presely' portraits: Warhol took the image from a very well-known newspaper. Because of their media origin, Warhol could rely on the pictures being familiar; moreover the degraded quality of the pictures were an important factor conveying the fact that the source image was taken from media sources.
Concluding Andy Warhol's main characteristics I'd like to talk about his career about film. His first experiment was“Sleep”. This film lasted for about five minutes and the artist's intention was to make the audience watching the film but at the same time they were free do to other thing as cooking, cleaning and so on.
My personal opinion is that Andy Warhol and his art are great: the colour are bright and the picture are neat. Many people just think “I could write the word “Fool” on a canvas as well”: of course you could, but it wouldn't have the same meaning, aim.
By the way I also appreciate the artist's personality shown through art: for example “The Telephone”. From this picture we can know that Warhol was actually a shy person and he rather preferred chatting with friends and familiars on the phone!
This show was very interesting!