Andy Warhol

MAIN

Recommend (0)

•

Comments (0)

BIRTHDAY

August 06, 1928

Pittsburgh, PA

DIED

February 22, 1987

RECENT CREDITS

The Feature (FILM) Mar. 18, 2009

Andy Warhol: Made in China (FILM) Jan. 1, 1992

The Driver's Seat (FILM) Aug. 16, 1974

Blood for Dracula (FILM) Mar. 17, 1974

Heat (FILM) Jan. 1, 1972

View all Andy Warhol Credits

BIOGRAPHY

Expand Full Bio

American pop artist Andy Warhol became a pop icon himself, symbolizing the wild decadence of the "beautiful people" of the 1970s. Born Andrew Warhola in Pennsylvania, he studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before designing advertisements for women's shoes. After gaining notoriety for his pop-art renditions of things such as Campbell's Soup cans and silk screens of Marilyn Monroe, Warhol began making experimental films during the early '60s. Most of his early works were little more than passive chronicles of the ordinary. For example, in the film Sleep, he simple recorded a man sleeping for several hours. Such endeavors were heralded as groundbreaking by other experimental filmmakers, but the public and most critics generally regarded them as wastes of film, and their time. Still, Warhol continued making these plotless films until he eventually began adding crude soundtracks and sketchy scripts. Many of these films are filled with his "players": the beautiful people, "freaks," and wealthy dilettantes that constantly surrounded the artist and his "Factory," an art studio he founded in 1962. His films became a form of cinéma vérité, a voyeur's delight of strange people doing equally strange things. Some of the players Warhol turned into underground celebrities included Candy Darling, Viva, Holly Woodlawn, and Ingrid Superstar. Simply playing versions of themselves, they left the viewer to decide if they were, in fact, real people or simply fantastical figures. Many of Warhol's films were centered on sex and death, and the sex in his films was often explicit and transcended traditional gender boundaries. In 1968, Warhol was wounded by a disgruntled Factory reject, an incident which inspired the 1996 movie I Shot Andy Warhol. While healing, he began to withdraw from filmmaking, closed the Factory, and turned the reins of his operation over to filmmakers such as Paul Morrissey, who helped make subsequent movies more commercially accessible. Morrissey was behind Warhol's best known films Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, both of which were shot while in Rome in 1973. Although Warhol never fully recovered from the attempt on his life and had stopped making films, he did continue his voyeurism of the strange lives of his illustrious friends via the Polaroid camera he carried with him until he died in 1987 from complications following surgery.

~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Collapse Full Bio

Headlines

Edie Sedgwick's Brother Enters Bob Dylan/'Factory Girl' Feud

Jan. 3, 2007

The brother of tragic Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick has stepped into the feud over a new film of her life, which Bob Dylan is reportedly attempting to stop.

Read Story

Bob Dylan Seeks 'Factory Girl' Injunction

Posted: Dec. 14, 2006

Tom Cruise Persuades Katie Holmes to Reject Addict Role

Posted: Jun. 3, 2005

Warhol's house on sale for $50 million

Posted: Jul. 8, 2001

View all Andy Warhol Headlines