Icon Portraits

About The Art:

Warhol was drawn to the glamorous worlds of Hollywood, fashion and celebrity. His interest in pop culture manifested itself early on in his childhood collection of autographed celebrity photographs. Warhol bought and read teen magazines and tabloids to stay current on what was pop, even into adulthood. He carried this interest into his artwork, creating iconic paintings of mega-stars such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. Warhol appropriated images for his portraits from magazines, newspapers or directly from publicity photographs.

Warhol used photographic silkscreen to create his celebrity portraits. This method of printing creates a very precise and defined image and allows the artist to mass-produce a large number of prints with relative ease. Warhol adopted the methods of mass production to make images of movie stars that were themselves mass-produced. Elvis Presley existed not only as a flesh-and-blood person but also as millions of pictures on album covers and movie screens, in newspapers and magazines. He was infinitely reproducible. Similarly, through use of the silkscreen printing process, Warhol could produce as many Elvis paintings as he pleased.

Point of View: 

Discussion Questions: 

1. Compare and contrast the formal aspects of the portraits (e.g., Warhol’s use of color and shape, each artwork's overall balance and unity and the sitters’ poses).

2. Andy Warhol not only made portraits from photographs he shot himself, but also from images he appropriated from mass media. What portraits do you see all the time on the television and in magazines and newspapers?

3. What effect does this repetition have on culture?

4. Are there different types of fame? Which type is most valuable?

5. If you could make a portrait of anyone in the world, who would it be? Why?

Procedure: 

Teachers

These steps should be completed prior to class or before the activity:

Students