As I walked passed all the portraits of people, I looked into the next room and saw a familiar face peering back at me. It immediately drew me towards it and as I walked closer and closer, I could make the face out to be that of John Wayne. I was not expecting this at all. John Wayne is one of the great Western cowboys I grew up watching, since my grandfather practically owns all his movies. I looked at the artist name and it said Andy Warhol. I became interested and could tell that he was not your average artist. My curiosity only increased as I saw other portraits of familiar people, such as Annie Oakley, General Custer, Geronimo, and Theodore Roosevelt. Andy Warhol was starting to get to me and then, when I finally saw the great silkscreen of Mickey Mouse, I immediately went to look at it because I am a Disney fanatic and my favorite is Mickey Mouse. I knew that this was the artist I had to write my Art History paper on.
Born in August of 1928 to Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania, Warhol showed an interest in drawing and painting at an early age. His actual date of birth is still a mystery today and only adds to the .
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enchantment of his work. After high school, he became a commercial artist, but would soon make a name for himself as a "pop artist". Andy concentrated on and drew his inspiration from popular culture. However, he heightened the colors and changed the scale to make the images larger than life. In doing so he redefined pictorial realism and extended its concept (Nicholson 8-10). .
Warhol's ideas were put into more than 35,000 artworks, including films and some sculptures. These ideas included exploring mass production, such as silk screening, celebrity fame, and other aspects of American culture in the late 20th century. In his lifetime, he was known for his artwork, which turned everyday images, such as soup cans and soapboxes, into fine art. Among his most-identifiable works were brightly colored prints that put an iconic spin on famous figures such as Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Mick Jagger, the one in the Cochran Collection (Fogde).
