Andy Warhol once said, “An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.” Warhol gave the world his art, and he wanted to show the reality of how things were within the world. Andy Warhol was an eccentric man who had a compelling sense of himself. He enjoyed his great popularity amongst the public. Warhol believed in displaying the world for the people, and not showing them a generic, superficial image upon his canvases. Warhol was able to show concise and straightforward works, as he celebrated the ordinary. His name is synonymous with Pop Art; Warhol created some of the most memorable images of the American Pop Art movement. Andy Warhol’s …show more content…
Warhol’s art was already admired by some without knowing. In the 1950s he worked as a chief illustrator, drawing advertisements for the shoe store I. Miller. (Eisenman 4227) Some of Warhol’s early works were seen for the first time when he had shown his paintings to a friend. His friend told him, “the first should be destroyed but the second was ‘beautiful and naked’.” (Glaves-Smith 34) With this criticism in mind, Warhol began illustrating numerous comic strips and what would become the start of his legacy of repetitive images. In his first solo show, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962, Warhol displayed thirty-two Campbell’s soup can paintings. There were thirty-two paintings, due to Campbell’s having thirty-two different flavored soups. When asked why, Warhol replied with, “It’s the food I have eaten for lunch everyday for twenty years.” (Landi 141) These soup cans were just the beginning of his repetitive legacy. “Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?” Warhol believed that life was one big, repetitive moment. In 1962, Warhol created 210 Coca-Cola Bottles and the Gold Marilyn Monroe, both possessing obvious imperfections to show the mechanical nature of the process. (Landi 141) Warhol repetitively depicted his artwork, because he wanted the viewer to see the true meaning without an underlying purpose. He didn’t want the viewer to over-interpret any of his works. He put the true meaning of his artwork on the surface within his paint