Andy Warhol

In his later career the American artist Andy Warhol (1928-87) was famous simply for being famous, so much had his own celebrity overtaken awareness of the art he actually produced. This paradoxical state of affairs receives a fascinating analysis in this film surveying Warhol's art. It begins with Warhol's early success in commercial art and reaction against the prevailing tenets of Abstract Expressionism, tracing his emergence as a leading figure of the American Pop Art movement of the early 1960s. It shows how his repeat images of mundane commodities such as Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, and the early mega-stars Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, acquired iconic status as expressions of the American Dream in its new phase of mass-media culture and machine production. Warhol's activities as an 'underground' film-maker are also covered here in depth, with commentary from the cast members of such films as Sleep and the notoriously sexually explicit Chelsea Girls providing a unique insight beneath the mask-like surface of Warhol's images.