Andy Warhol Psychology

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Introduction

Andy Warhol, Pop Artist or piece of Pop Art?

Many people believed Andy Warhol’s personality to be very plastic, fake and odd. Warhol constructed the image of a cold, manufactured person which he portrayed as himself to the public eye. Was this however his true personality or perhaps one of his most successful art performances? I intend to discuss how Warhol’s fascination with Hollywood had such a large influence on his work and his appearance. Warhol wanted his persona to become as plastic and manufactured as his mass produced works. He confined his daily wardrobe to black and white, so even when his photograph was printed he would be as easily recognisable as the black and white figure seen in public. A lot of the time Warhol had claimed that he wanted to be perceived as a machine,
“I think everybody should be a machine...The reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine.”
(Swenson, 1963)
Warhol would play up to this idea in some interviews where he would act rather placid, asking the interviewer to answer the questions for him, giving one word answers, speaking through someone else, or just simply sitting quietly not answering at all.
“Why don’t you just tell me the words, they’ll just come out of my mouth”
(Interview with Andy Warhol, 1966 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0KxWkXoCzo)

Was Warhol truly as shy and introverted as he was perceived to be or did he construct the perfect image of Pop Art?
“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”
(Honnef, 1990, p.45)

Chapter One: The Creation of Andy Warhol.

Warhol began his life as Andrew Warhola, the son of Slovakian immigrants. He had always been...

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...ma that he worked so hard to create. Everything Warhol has ever saved from his life has been archived and goes through daily inspections to uncover new meanings for his art or hidden secrets about his infamous life, always without luck. If Warhol did have any secrets they were well covered up, he led his life like he always wanted living in the limelight, befriending the rich and famous getting his own “fifteen minutes of fame”. Is this the only life Warhol led however? At the end of each day when he was without his Superstars, did he take off his “Andy suit” and become Andrew Warhola again? Or did the lines between reality and fantasy become so blurred that the long term performance of Andy Warhol was the only life he lived? It can never be fully known if his persona of Andy Warhol was truly his identity or if in fact it was the greatest piece of Pop Art ever made.

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