Elvis I & II - Andy Warhol

Warhol grew up in Pittsburgh, the son of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants from what is now Slovakia. His father was a construction worker. His mother, Julia, made tin flowers and sold them door to door. She also drew. When Andy was ill as a child (he had chorea, a nervous system disorder that kept him bedridden for stretches), she sat with him making paper cutouts and teaching him to draw. She later moved to New York to live with him and addressed envelopes for his early commercial work. Her handwriting appeared on his artwork. She was good at cats.

He moved to New York after graduating from Carnegie Tech in 1949 and spent the 1950s as a commercial illustrator. He was successful at it: shoe drawings for I. Miller, album covers, magazine illustrations. The work was loose, charming, and camp. He won awards. But commercial art was not taken seriously, and Warhol wanted to be taken seriously.

The Campbell's Soup Cans came in 1962. Thirty-two canvases, one for each flavour. Then Marilyn, then Elvis, then the car crashes and electric chairs. The technique was silk-screen printing: photographic images transferred to canvas through a mesh screen and printed in flat, commercial colours. The process removed the artist's hand almost entirely, which was the point. Warhol made art that looked like it had been manufactured, in a culture that manufactured everything.

The Factory, his silver-foiled studio on East 47th Street, became the centre of a scene that included musicians, actors, drag queens, socialites, and addicts, sometimes all at once. He made films. He started Interview magazine. He managed the Velvet Underground. He was shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968 and nearly died; he wore a surgical corset for the rest of his life.

His late work, often dismissed, includes the Oxidation Paintings (made with urine on metallic paint), the Shadow series, and the Last Supper paintings. He died in 1987 after gallbladder surgery, at fifty-eight. His estate was valued at around 600 million dollars.