Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was one of the most celebrated artists in the 20th century, born in Pennsylvania USA between 1928 and 1931. He was obsessed with celebrities and when he first started he was mainly using Hollywood stars in his pieces. He was also fascinated by advertisement and other commercial work.

Subjects, themes and issues.
-Campbell's Soup Cans, which is sometimes referred to as 32 Campbell's Soup Cans, is a work of art produced in 1962 by Andy Warhol. It is made of thirty-two canvases, each measuring 20 inches in height and 16 inches in width.
-Campbell's Soup Cans' reliance on themes from popular culture helped to usher in pop art as a major art movement in the USA.
-Warhol is secondly most known for his prints of Marilyn Monroe he did after she died, Warhol painted Marilyn Monroe's paintings with green, blue, lemon yellow turquoise. In the paintings, she was either by herself, in a grid or doubled. He had always admired Marilyn Monroe and with his new fame and recognition he aspired to do this picture of her.


Movements and Styles.
-Andy Warhol was one of the most important artists of pop art, which became extremely popular in the second half of the twentieth century.
-He created hundreds of other works including commercial advertisements and films.
-By the beginning of the 1960s, Warhol had become a very successful commercial illustrator.
-Pop art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style.

Context of work.
-Warhol used many celebrities and well-known figures in most of his pop art work and did a lot of pictures and subjects that revolved around advertising.
Andy Warhol said that the more you look at something the more the meaning of it goes away and you feel better and emptier.
-His artworks expressed his love for American Popular Culture and his love for all things commercial

Materials and processes.-Warhol painted a variety of paintings of the actress Marilyn Monroe after she committed suicide in 1962.
-Warhol made it his goal to mass-produce his art by using a method called silk screen. This method involves enlarging and transferring a photo on to silk. A variety of colours are printed on to a screen using a rubber squeegee.
-His pictures consisted mainly of "blotted ink" drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in much of his early art.
-he also produced a number of sculptures, he uses everyday objects in his sculptures. His first exhibition was created out of the large empty boxes Manufacturers used to pack their products in, to transport them to the Supermarkets.
-His paintings were sometimes oil paint on canvas, sometimes polymer paint (acrylic) on canvas.

Events and trends.-People claim that Andy Warhol is responsible for so many trends in music, art and film. And advertisements influenced him a lot in the way they were produced
-Roy Liechtenstein (one of the first Pop artists) mainly influences his pop art.
-He was originally a commercial illustrator (making drawings for advertisements), so he was heavily influenced by commercials and the advertising industry.
‘Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes’

















How I can use this artist’s work.
Andy Warhol’s use of different and vibrant colours and sometimes lack of simple pictures with less detail would make an interesting and an easy animation style to use.

AO1 Artists and Designers

Banksy
Subjects, themes and issues.-According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. He became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.
-Banksy is an anonymous British graffiti artist, political activist, and painter. His pieces combine a dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.
-He first started tagging in small areas some of his art work and after some attention realised he had and audience and potential he moved to London to gain a larger and more variety of an audience and more surface to tag on.
Movements and styles.
Banksy is mostly known for his unique and individual style of graffiti mainly based on and relates to a variety of political views and situations, and other world issues, which are put on walls and buildings which can be humorous, artistic and insulting.
Context of work.
Banksy can give a piece of art a different feel some of his pictures show stereotypes and famous images with a twist and in a graffiti style, for example a picture of to police men kissing at a lamppost and a terrorist throwing a bouquet of flowers.
Other pieces tackle serious political issues and give them a humorous or insulting nature for example he does a lot of pictures involving police and war and adding elements to give it a meaning and criticizing the way things are
Materials and processes. -Stencils are traditionally hand drawn or printed onto sheets of acetate or card, before being cut out by hand.
-He uses computers for some images due to the photocopy nature of much of his work.
-He mentions in his book, Wall and Piece, that as he was starting to do graffiti, he was always too slow and was either caught or could never finish the art in the one sitting. So he devised a series of intricate stencils to minimize time and overlapping of the colour.
-In the writing and word parts of his work The font that banksy uses is well known one called "STOP" The font is an upper case Sans Serif font.

Events and trends.
Most of Banksy’s work is influenced by political issues
He has also shown the world graffiti at its best and uses it to convey feelings people have about the world.








The rarely seen internationally famous street artist Banksy has completed murals in a disused railway tunnel near Waterloo Station in London, UK. One is a large image of a knife wielding hoodie with a small QR Code which decodes to Banksy’s entry in Wikipedia.











How I can use this artists work.
I like the colour and materials he uses, and the way Banksy’s work is presented using an unusual surface. The way he illustrates his characters in almost block colours would make it good to use for an animation.