Byron says, “Andy Warhol is generally considered the most significant artist of the Twentieth Century.”
I told him, “That simply cannot be true. Andy Warhol used big swathes of bright, shallow colors, no depth, no shadows.”
Chairman Mao
Andy Warhol
The most memorable Warhol image for me besides the cliched Campbell’s Soup cans, is (for some reason) the purple Chairman Mao. But, generally I walk straight past Andy Warhol’s work in museums. Why would I not? I’ve already seen Campbell Soup cans almost every day of my life. What should interest me about that? Why would I prefer Andy Warhol’s garishly bright images of Marilyn, Jackie, and Liz to photographs filled with subtle light and shade, insinuated hints of character. Why would I prefer Warhol images to detailed and skillfully created portrait paintings? I told Byron, “Andy Warhol can only be considered significant if he was representing a completely shallow culture.” The conversation has stayed on my mind.
Something from, The Museum of Modern Art Learning Site:
Assembly Line Art?
In August 1962, Andy Warhol began to produce paintings using the screenprinting process. He recalls, “The rubber-stamp method I’d been using to repeat images suddenly seemed too homemade; I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly-line effect. With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It all sounds so simple—quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. My first experiments with screens were heads of Troy Donahue and Warren Beatty, and then when Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month (August 1962), I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face.” (Andy Warhol, Popism, 1980)
Marilyn
Multiplying Marilyn
Warhol took Marilyn Monroe as his subject in different mediums, silkscreening the actress’s image multiple times in a grid in bright colors and in black and white. By repeating Monroe’s image (and that of other celebrities) over and over again, Warhol acknowledged his own fascination with a society in which personas could be manufactured, commodified, and consumed like products.
Turns out, Warhol was developing a theme. He was showing us our culture of constantly repeating, slowly morphing images of commodities.
Art - As I See It 