08/12/2023, 15:20 Andy Warhol | Biography, Pop Art, Campbell Soup, Artwork, & Facts | Britannica

Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture Money Videos
Home keyboard_arrow_right Visual Arts keyboard_arrow_right Painting keyboard_arrow_right Painters

Arts & Culture

Andy Warhol more_vert Actions
American artist
Also known as: Andrew Warhola
Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Nov 9, 2023 • Article History

toc Table of Contents

zoom_in

Andy Warhol
See all media
Category: Arts & Culture
Original name: Andrew Warhola
Born: August 6, 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died: February 22, 1987, New York, New York (aged 58)
Notable Works: “Blue Movie” • “Chelsea Girls” • “Lupe” • “My Hustler” • “Poor Little Rich Girl”
Movement / Style: Pop art • ready-made
See all related content →

Recent News
Nov. 9, 2023, 1:55 AM ET (The Guardian)
Picasso masterpiece kicks off auction season forecast to sell $2.5bn in art
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andy-Warhol 1/7
08/12/2023, 15:20 Andy Warhol | Biography, Pop Art, Campbell Soup, Artwork, & Facts | Britannica

Andy Warhol, (born August 6, 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died February 22, 1987, New York, New York),
American artist and filmmaker, an initiator and leading exponent of the Pop art movement of the 1960s whose mass-
produced art apotheosized the supposed banality of the commercial culture of the United States. An adroit self-
publicist, he projected a concept of the artist as an impersonal, even vacuous, figure who is nevertheless a successful
celebrity, businessman, and social climber.

The son of Ruthenian (Rusyn) immigrants from what is now eastern Slovakia, Warhol graduated in 1949 from the
Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), Pittsburgh, with a degree in pictorial design. He
then went to New York City, where he worked as a commercial illustrator for about a decade.

Britannica Quiz
Ultimate Art Quiz

zoom_in

Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Cans

Campbell's Soup Cans, polymer paint on canvas by Andy Warhol, 1962; a selection of five on display in the Museumsquartier, Vienna. ...(more)

Warhol began painting in the late 1950s and received sudden notoriety in 1962, when he exhibited paintings of
Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, and wooden replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes. By 1963 he was mass-producing
these purposely banal images of consumer goods by means of photographic silkscreen prints, and he then began
printing endless variations of portraits of celebrities in garish colours. The silkscreen technique was ideally suited to
Warhol, for the repeated image was reduced to an insipid and dehumanized cultural icon that reflected both the
supposed emptiness of American material culture, awash in consumerism and brand marketing, and the artist’s
emotional noninvolvement with the practice of his art. Warhol’s work placed him in the forefront of the emerging Pop
art movement in America.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andy-Warhol 2/7
08/12/2023, 15:20 Andy Warhol | Biography, Pop Art, Campbell Soup, Artwork, & Facts | Britannica

zoom_in

Flesh
Joe Dallesandro (centre) in Flesh (1968), directed by Paul Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol. ...(more)

As the 1960s progressed, Warhol devoted more of his energy to filmmaking. Usually classed as underground films, such
motion pictures of his as Chelsea Girls (1966), Eat (1963), My Hustler (1965), and Blue Movie (1969) are known for
their inventive eroticism, plotless boredom, and inordinate length (up to 25 hours). Other movies include Poor Little
Rich Girl (1965) and Lupe (1966), both of which featured Edie Sedgwick.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andy-Warhol 3/7
08/12/2023, 15:20 Andy Warhol | Biography, Pop Art, Campbell Soup, Artwork, & Facts | Britannica

zoom_in

keyboard_arrow_right

Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, 1987.

In 1968 Warhol was shot and nearly killed by Valerie Solanas, one of an assemblage of underground film and rock
music stars, assorted hangers-on, and social curiosities who frequented his studio, known as the Factory. (The incident
is depicted in the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol.) Warhol had by this time become a well-known fixture on the fashion
and avant-garde art scene and was an influential celebrity in his own right. Throughout the 1970s and until his death,
he continued to produce prints depicting political and Hollywood celebrities, notably Marilyn Monroe. He also involved
himself in a wide range of advertising illustrations and other commercial art projects. His The Philosophy of Andy
Warhol (1975) was followed by Portraits of the Seventies and Andy Warhol’s Exposures (both 1979).

Warhol’s work is featured in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. In his will, the artist dictated that his entire
estate be used to create a foundation for “the advancement of the visual arts.” The Andy Warhol Foundation for the
Visual Arts was established in 1987.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andy-Warhol 4/7
08/12/2023, 15:20 Andy Warhol | Biography, Pop Art, Campbell Soup, Artwork, & Facts | Britannica
Subscribe Now
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.

Home keyboard_arrow_right Entertainment & Pop Culture keyboard_arrow_right Music, Contemporary Genres keyboard_arrow_right Rock Music

Arts & Culture

the Velvet Underground more_vert Actions
American rock group
Written by David Fricke
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Oct 17, 2023 • Article History

toc Table of Contents

zoom_in

the Velvet Underground

See all media
Category: Arts & Culture
Awards And Honors: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum (1996)
Related People: Lou Reed • Sterling Morrison • John Cale • Tom Wilson

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andy-Warhol 5/7
08/12/2023, 15:20 Andy Warhol | Biography, Pop Art, Campbell Soup, Artwork, & Facts | Britannica

See all related content →

The Velvet Underground, American band of the 1960s whose primal guitar sound and urban noir lyrics, influenced
by avant-garde art and modern literature, inspired the punk and alternative rock movements of the 1970s and ’80s. The
principal members were Lou Reed (original name Lewis Allan Reed; b. March 2, 1942, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—d.
October 27, 2013, Southampton, New York), John Cale (b. March 9, 1942, Garnant, Wales), Sterling Morrison (in full
Holmes Sterling Morrison; b. August 29, 1942, Westbury, New York—d. August 30, 1995, Poughkeepsie, New York),
Maureen (“Moe”) Tucker (b. August 26, 1944, Levittown, Long Island, New York), Nico (original name Christa Päffgen;
b. October 16, 1938, Cologne, Germany—d. July 18, 1988, Ibiza, Spain), Angus MacLise, and Doug Yule.

Reed, who was the son of an accountant, made his first recording as a teenager (as a member of the Shades) and studied
literature at Syracuse (New York) University, where he came under the influence of poet Delmore Schwartz. Trained as
a classical musician in London, Welshman Cale came to the United States in 1963 on a Leonard Bernstein scholarship
to study composition but soon joined the Dream Syndicate, a pioneering minimalist ensemble founded in New York
City by La Monte Young. In 1965, while working as Brill Building-style staff songwriter for Pickwick Music, Reed
formed a group, the Primitives (including Cale), for live performances of a single he had recorded called “The Ostrich.”
He also had written songs, such as “Heroin” and “Venus in Furs,” that reflected his interest in the graphic, narrative
realism of novelists Raymond Chandler and Hubert Selby, Jr. With guitarist Morrison (a Syracuse classmate of Reed’s)
and percussionist MacLise, Reed on guitar and vocals and Cale on piano, viola, and bass formed a more permanent
band to play these songs, ultimately settling on the name the Velvet Underground, taken from the title of a paperback
book about deviant sex.

The band performed live soundtracks for experimental films before making their formal debut, with new drummer
Tucker, at a high-school dance in December 1965. After seeing the group play in a Greenwich Village club, pop artist
Andy Warhol became the Velvet Underground’s manager and patron—introducing them to the exotic German actress,
model, and chanteuse Nico; putting the group on tour with his performance art discotheque, the Exploding Plastic
Inevitable; and financing and producing the Velvets’ first album. Recorded in 1966 but not released until the following
year, The Velvet Underground and Nico was one of rock’s most important debuts, a pioneering work that applied the
disruptive aesthetics of avant-garde music and free jazz (drones, distortion, atonal feedback) to rock guitar. It also
presented frank examinations of drug use, sadomasochism, and numbing despair. At a time when the San Francisco
scene represented the euphoric apex of 1960s counterculture, the Velvets’ harsh dose of New York City-framed reality
was scorned by the music industry and ignored by mainstream audiences.

The Velvet Underground’s career was plagued by personal upheaval and financial struggle. Nico embarked on a solo
career in 1967. Her unique style of ravishing melancholy was best captured on Chelsea Girls (1968), featuring
contributions by Reed, Cale, and Morrison, and The Marble Index (1969), produced by Cale. Also in 1967, Reed
dismissed Warhol as the group’s manager. Cale was replaced by Doug Yule in 1968, after the release of White
Light/White Heat, an album of extraordinary proto-punk ferocity. The 1950s rhythm-and-blues balladry and pop
classicism that subtly flavoured Reed’s songwriting blossomed on The Velvet Underground (1969) and Loaded (1970).
But the strain of commercial failure led Reed to quit in August 1970. A version of the band led by Yule limped into the
early 1970s.

As solo artists, Reed and Cale introduced the Velvet Underground’s vision and legacy to a wider audience. Reed had an
overdue hit in 1972 with the album Transformer; coproduced by Velvets admirer David Bowie, it featured “Walk on the
Wild Side,” which reached number 16 on the American pop chart. He then established himself as a punk-godfather
figure with releases such as the lavish song suite Berlin (1973), the feedback oratorio Metal Machine Music (1975), and
the concept album New York (1989). In addition to his own pop and rock solo recordings, Cale produced and
collaborated with Velvet Underground-influenced artists such as Iggy and the Stooges, Jonathan Richman, Brian Eno,
and Patti Smith; Cale also composed and released numerous orchestral works and movie scores. In 1989 Reed and Cale
reunited to write and record Songs for Drella, an eloquent requiem for their mentor Warhol.

Morrison and Tucker left the Reed-less Velvet Underground in 1971. Morrison studied medieval literature, then
worked as a tugboat captain. Tucker, whose African-heartbeat style of drumming made her an underground-rock icon,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andy-Warhol 6/7
08/12/2023, 15:20 Andy Warhol | Biography, Pop Art, Campbell Soup, Artwork, & Facts | Britannica

raised a family and made occasional solo records. On June 15, 1990, at a celebration of Warhol’s art and life in France,
Reed, Cale, Morrison, and Tucker performed together for the first time since 1968; they toured Europe in 1993 and
recorded a concert album before breaking up again. In 1996 the Velvet Underground was inducted into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame. The band was later the subject of an eponymously named documentary (2021), which was written
and directed by Todd Haynes.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.

Subscribe Now
David Fricke
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Load Next Page keyboard_arrow_down

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andy-Warhol 7/7