Blog task three

Andy Warhol August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives. It is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.

Warhol's art encompassed many forms of media, including hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, and music. He was also a pioneer in computer-generated art using Amiga computers that were introduced in 1984, two years before his death. He founded Interview Magazine and was the author of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He is also notable as a gay man who lived openly as such before the gay liberation movement. His studio, The Factory, was a famous gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) A 2009 article in The Economist described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market".^[3] Warhol's works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold.

I personally don't like this work or the artist very much it looks as if its a blurred picture of Elvis, not so great but the think that sucks the most is the price is sold for, i think its insane! but i guess if the person who got it in the end is happy, then good for them. now Andy Warhol is a very rich man.

In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol turned to celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Elizabeth Taylor as artistic subject matter. He produced several life-sized portraits of Elvis Presley, America’s most famous rock and roll singer and sex symbol throughout the 1950s. By 1963, when this painting was made, Elvis—whose hip-shaking moves had scandalized some only a decade before—was being overshadowed by a new generation of performers, and his career was on the decline.

In Double Elvis, Warhol created a strobe effect by overlapping two images of the singer—most likely sourced from a publicity still for the Western film Flaming Star (1960). The silver background conveys a sense of glamour, while also serving a practical purpose—the opacity of the spray paint allowed Warhol to easily mask and silkscreen multiple images on top of each other. Double Elvis originally belonged to a long, continuous canvas of Elvises that was later cut and stretched into multiple paintings. The artist’s interest in film might explain why he created Elvis in double—the singer/actor appears to be moving back and forth, as if in a film strip.