Author(s): Peter Gidal

Artists | Film

In 1961 a fashionable commercial artist named Andy Warhol created an artistic furor in New York with his deadpan versions of the Campbell’s Soup can. Since then he has become the most talked about but least understood artist of the late 20th century. Warhol made acceptable the use of industrial techniques in the creation of paintings obsessed with modern clichés--car crashes, Coke bottles, sex symbols such as Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. At the same time, his films-- Blowjob, Sleep, Chelsea Girls, Lonesome Cowboys --forced us to look at the object/subject, transformed the bizarre into the banal, and remade the form and content of cinematic experiment and production.Originally published in 1971, Peter Gidal’s Andy Warhol was the first book written on Warhol’s films and paintings, a concise and astute analysis of an artistic revolution. ”Idol of the jet set,” ”trend-maker,” superstar, Warhol was taken at more than face value in Gidal’s unconventional and insightful exploration. Twenty years later, Andy Warhol remains a seminal text, essential for a serious understanding of the artist and the work.