andy warhol . . .

Andy Warhol's '15 minutes' of fame are not up yet

By Katherine Dorsett Bennett, CNN

updated 3:20 PM EDT, Wed September 5, 2012

(CNN) -- Iconic Pop artist Andy Warhol is often quoted for his statement, "In the future, everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Twenty-five years after his death, his influence on contemporary art has well surpassed the 15-minute mark.

Campbell Soup Company is the latest entity to honor his legacy.

This week, 1.2 million limited-edition cans of condensed tomato soup with labels inspired by his Pop art go on sale. The specially designed Campbell's soup cans pay tribute to his lively color palette, using orange, blue, pink and teal to spruce up the familiar design. The labels commemorate the 50th anniversary of Warhol's famed art piece "32 Campbell's Soup Cans."

Some of Warhol's famous quotes are printed on the Campbell's cans, too, including "Pop art is for everyone." This quote is significant as his wide-ranging body of work helped "blur the boundaries between high and low culture," said Michael Hermann, director of licensing at The Andy Warhol Foundation. Warhol appealed to a massive audience from all walks of life, he said.

Warhol's humble roots stem from a working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, where he was born in 1928. As an adult, he moved to New York City, where he set up a studio and built his fame and fortune. His enormous body of work included multiple mediums and featured subjects ranging from celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe to simple, everyday items such as a banana.

"I believe Warhol's popularity is certainly due in part to his uncanny ability to present the familiar from unexpected perspectives through visually and conceptually impactful works of art. However, it seems his influence today comes as much from his biography as someone who embodied the American dream and celebrated creativity and individuality," said Hermann.

When once asked why he painted the soup cans, Warhol noted, "I used to have the same (Campbell's soup) lunch every day for 20 years."

He was also known to say, "I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and that was it." His unique style of artistic expression and world view is credited for launching his career and the Pop art movement.

Art collectors have paid millions of dollars for some of Warhol's pieces, but shoppers at Target, where the limited-edition soup cans are on sale, will have to shell out only 75 cents for a 10.75-ounce can.

"What continues to amaze me is that 25 years after his death, Warhol continues to have a profound influence on our culture," said Hermann. "For me, this is a true testament to his genius, and I can only imagine that Andy would have loved shopping at Target for this soup."

Campbell Soup Company never commissioned Warhol to paint the original soup cans. Former president and CEO of the company, William Beverly Murphy, initially had reservations about Warhol's work 50 years ago, and Campbell took a "wait and see approach" before fully supporting him. Now, the company takes great pride in its association with the iconic artist.

"Thanks to Andy Warhol's inspired paintings, Campbell's soup will always be linked to the Pop art movement," Ed Carolan, vice president and general manager, of Campbell North America stated in a news release to CNN.

"It is only fitting that 50 years later, we celebrate the enduring legacy of these two American icons by coming full circle and bringing his art back to the Campbell's soup cans that provided him with inspiration," noted Hermann.

The Campbell's soup labels were produced under license from The Andy Warhol Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation that promotes the visual arts. Some revenue generated from the project will fund the foundation's endowment, from which it distributes grants that support the "creation, presentation and documentation of contemporary visual art," according to Hermann.

In addition to the soup cans, Campbell has partnered with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as a sponsor of the educational programs associated with an exhibit paying tribute to Warhol. The show, "Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years,"opens September 18. Warhol's piece "Big Campbell's Soup Can, 19¢" is included in the exhibition, along with some of his other famous works.

andy warhol . . .

PITTSBURGH, PA.- The Andy Warhol Museum announces a new interactive experience that allows visitors to participate in a recreation of Andy Warhol’s process of filming a Screen Test. This interactive experience is prominently located within the museum’s film and video galleries on the 6th floor, where Warhol’s Screen Tests are on permanent display. 

Between 1964 and 1966, Warhol created almost five hundred of these film portraits of famous and anonymous visitors to his studio, including Salvador Dalí, Dennis Hopper and Edie Sedgwick. Warhol filmed his subjects using a stationary, Bolex camera loaded with 100-foot rolls of black and white 16mm film. Sitters were instructed to sit still for about three minutes, the length of time it took for the roll of film to run through the camera. He later projected the silent Screen Tests in slow motion, thereby extending their duration to four minutes and imbuing them with a dreamlike stillness. During the 1960s, these films were rarely shown in public, but were often shown at The Factory. 

In a gallery reminiscent of Warhol’s Silver Factory studio, museum visitors are invited to create their own screen test utilizing a computer touch screen, a moveable backdrop, a specially modified vintage camera, and twin studio lights. Upon completion, the visitor’s screen test is transformed digitally from real time to slow motion and pushed to the Internet, where their work of art will be available on a custom webpage. The screen test can then be shared on various social media channels. 

“With media so transformed in contemporary life, it is often difficult for visitors to imagine how things were done almost 50 years ago. This interactive experience offers the opportunity to gain insight into how Warhol created one of his most significant bodies of work by demonstrating the process by which he made these films. The visitors’ finished screen tests will reveal the subtle nuances that made Warhol’s films transcend their medium to become visual masterpieces,” stated Geralyn Huxley, curator of film & video. 

“In a most Warholian gesture, we are riding the wave of innovation and new technologies in launching this fun and exciting interactive feature that will allow our guests to achieve their own 15 minutes of fame here at The Andy Warhol Museum. We are always striving to improve our visitor’s experiences at the museum, and this Screen Test Interactive project allows everyone to learn about Warhol’s process while making their own work of art that they can then share on various social media platforms with friends and Warhol fans around the world. It is our core mission to promote and share the work of Andy Warhol with our global audience, and I am thrilled to see what conversations emerge thanks to this cool new project,” stated Eric Shiner, director of The Warhol. 

The Screen Test Interactive project was created by The Warhol team with help from Pittsburgh-based technology startup Interbots, and designer Michael Johnson and developer Evan Tahler.

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andy warhol: motion pictures . . .

In August 1962, Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) began making silkscreen paintings of popular icons, including a series of images of Marilyn Monroe that he began a month after her death. He went on to experiment in portrait making with public photo booth machines, which automatically take four exposures several seconds apart and print them in a strip, like a sequence of film frames.

Combining the seriality of these silkscreen and photo booth portraits with the ephemeral quality of the filmed image, between 1965 and 1966 Warhol shot approximately 500 rolls of film: several-minute silent portraits of acquaintances, friends, and celebrities, including many of the artists musicians, poets, actors, models, playwrights, curators, collectors, critics, and gallerists who composed New York City’s avant-garde scene. Some subjects were invited to the artist’s East 47th Street studio, known as The Factory or The Silver Factory, to sit for their portraits; others were captured spontaneously. At times Warhol left his subjects alone with the camera, creating a heightened sense of vulnerability that is perceptible in the films. His first subjects, seated before a sterile backdrop, were asked not to move or speak (later portraits were shot under more flexible conditions). These films, known as “stillies” around the Factory, were also referred to by Warhol as Living Portrait Boxes, and, later, as Screen Tests.

Warhol shot the portraits at the standard speed for sound film (24 frames per second), but specified that they should be projected at a 16 frames per second, the conventional projection speed for silent films in the early period of cinema. The result is an unusually slow fluidity of pace, a rhythm gently at odds with the large-scale close-ups, which are rendered almost abstract by stark contrasts of light and shadow. The images, still yet moving, play in a continuous loop, bearing a timeless presence.