More on Warhol

Throughout Warhol’s life he was influenced by many things, one of the biggest influences was his life ambition which was fame and money. He wanted to be able to walk down the street and as he walked by someone would recognise him for the richest man in the world!!! This gave a massive impact on his work as he looked at famous celebrities that people idolised. Warhol’s Main pieces being Marylyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, which were produced in 1963.

In 1968 Andy Warhol was shot, but fortunately he survived but suffered pain from the wounds for a long time. This caused him a lot of pain and grief as all the time it was on his mind and he felt as if he had just experienced the closest thing to death! From then onwards his work was inspired by death and things related to death.  This lead to some of his work being duplicates of the Marylyn Monroe prints but instead of Mrs. Monroe it was Skull. More of his work was influenced by death such as the car with the 5 teenagers underneath, and the tyre with the foot being crushed showing pain at a glance. These images where very powerful because on the car crash one all the eyes on the young boys where open and looked as if they were alive but the painting was a pure silhouette black with a red wash over to give the effect of looking through blood filled eyes.


He took the ideas from the media into his own work and they saw him as a Light and Breezy guy but on the other hand others saw him as a very Dark person because he was so simple yet so powerful and had a lot of thought behind his work.