Coordinates

38°52′15.56″N77°3′21.46″N

{{infobox company | name

Sotheby's | logo | type Public () | genre | foundation London, UK(11 March 1744) | founder Samuel Baker | location_city | location_country | location New York, New York | locations | area_served | key_people Michael I. Sovern,Executive ChairmanWilliam F. Ruprecht,President and CEO | industry Auctioneering | products Fine arts | services | revenue US$774 million (2010) | operating_income | net_income | owner | num_employees 1,323 (2009) | parent | divisions Sotheby's LondonSotheby's New YorkSotheby's Hong KongSotheby's Moscow | subsid Sotheby's International Realty | slogan | homepage Sothebys.com | footnotes | intl Yes }}

Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.

History

The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being Uppsala Auktionskammare founded in 1731, all Swedish. Sotheby's predecessor, Baker's, was founded in London on 11 March 1744 when Samuel Baker presided over the disposal of "several hundred scarce and valuable" books from the library of a certain Rt. Hon. Sir John Stanley. This disposal however was not by means of auction and as Frank Herrmann and Brian Learmount observe, the business did not seek to auction fine arts in general until much later, their first major success in this field being the sale of a Frans Hals painting for 9 thousand guineas as late as 1913. The current business dates back to 1804 when two of the partners of the original business (Leigh and Sotheby) left to set up their own book dealership.

Today, the firm has an annual turnover of approximately US$774 million and offices on London's New Bond Street and Manhattan's York Avenue. This position has been achieved through natural growth, acquisitions (most notably the 1964 purchase of the United States' largest auctioneer of fine art, Parke-Bernet), and management during the cyclical "art recessions" of the 20th century. Sotheby's New York completed renovations on its York Avenue headquarters in 2001 adding the unique capability to store works on the same premises as the specialist departments, galleries, and auction spaces. Sotheby's New York's offices also house Aulden Cellars (an in-house wine cellar) and the former Bid (an American contemporary restaurant and later bistro), which was closed due to poor attendance.

The company was purchased in 1983 by the American millionaire, shopping malls developer A. Alfred Taubman, who took it public in 1988.

Andrew Festing began working for Sotheby's in 1969 and was head of the British Pictures Department from 1977 to 1981. He became Sotheby’s chief expert on British Pictures.

Sotheby's has an intense rivalry with Christie's for the position of the world's preeminent fine art auctioneer, a title of much subjectivity. In August 2004 Sotheby's introduced an online system. Sotheby's recently augmented its web services to focus more intensely on what its clients desired – in the form of MySotheby's – allowing them to track lots and create "wishlists" that could be automatically updated as new works became available. In May 2007, Sotheby's opened an office in Moscow in response to rapidly growing interest among Russian buyers in the international art market.

As well as numerous high profile real life auctions being held at Sotheby's, the auctioneers has also been used in various films, including the 1983 James Bond film ''Octopussy'' in which Bond (played by Roger Moore) unsuccessfully tried to bid for a rare Fabergé egg, which he had cleverly exchanged for a fake that was finally sold to the villainous Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan).

Auctioned artwork

Sotheby's is distinguished by a number of world records for auctioned works of art. The following monetary values are given in United States dollars.

On 22 May 2002, Norman Rockwell's painting of Rosie the Riveter was sold for $4,959,500.

* On 3 May 2006, Sotheby's auctioned Pablo Picasso's ''Dora Maar au Chat'' which was sold for $95 million to an undisclosed purchaser, becoming the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction at that time.

On 7 June 2007, a Roman-era bronze sculpture of "Artemis and the Stag" was sold at Sotheby's by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York for $28.6 million, by far exceeding its estimates and setting the new record as the most expensive sculpture as well as work from antiquity ever sold at auction.

Sotheby's also holds the world record for most expensive piece of contemporary art ever sold at auction, with Mark Rothko's quintessential 1950 ''White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)'', which grossed $72.8 million in May 2007 and was famously offered by David Rockefeller as well as the most expensive work sold at auction by a living artist with Damien Hirst's "Lullaby Spring" pill cabinet, which grossed roughly $19,300,000 in a June 2007 London sale.

On 6 December 2007, Sotheby's auctioned the Guennol Lioness, a 3-inch limestone lion from ancient Mesopotamia. It is thought to be at least 5,000 years old. It was sold for $57 million, fetching the highest price ever paid for at an auction for a sculpture. On 15 December 2007, Sotheby's auctioned a limited edition copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, written by J.K. Rowling. Although expected to make just $98,350, the book was purchased for a hammer price of $3,835,980 by London fine art dealers Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox on behalf of Amazon.com. The novel, which contained children's stories, was originally mentioned in the Harry Potter novel series. J.K. Rowling finished the actual story in late 2007. Only seven copies are in existence, each version unique by its cover. Six were given away as gifts to those close to her, while the remaining "moonstone edition" was sent up for auction with proceeds going to the The Children's Voice charity. Each leather bound copy was hand written and illustrated by J.K. Rowling. The sculpture ''L'Homme qui marche I'' by Alberto Giacometti sells in London for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction.

Controversy

Illegal antiquities

In 1997, a Channel 4 ''Dispatches'' programme alleged that Sotheby's had been trading in antiquities with no published provenance, and that the organisation continued to use dealers involved in the smuggling of artifacts.

As a result of this exposé, Sotheby's commissioned their own report into illegal antiquities, and made assurances that only legal items with published providence would be traded in the future.

Price fixing scandal

In February 2000, A. Alfred Taubman and Diana (Dede) Brooks, the CEO of the company, stepped down amidst a price fixing scandal. The FBI had been investigating auction practices in which it was revealed that collusion involving commission fixing between Christie's and Sotheby's was occurring.

In October 2000, Brooks admitted her guilt in hopes of receiving a reduced sentence, implicating Taubman.

In December 2001, jurors in a high profile New York City courtroom found Taubman guilty of conspiracy. He served ten months of a one year sentence in prison, while Brooks received a six-month home confinement and a penalty of US$350,000. No staff from Christie's was charged.

At the time of the scandal 59 percent of the company's Class A was owned by Baron Funds.

Teamsters Labor Dispute

Currently, Sotheby's is in a labor dispute with Teamsters Local 814, which represents the art handlers working at the New York City auction house. The contract between the two parties expired on July 1st, 2011, and despite ongoing negotiations, there has been no agreement on a new contract. Local 814's stance is that because of Sotheby's record profits for 2010 (over $680 million), Local 814 should not be giving in to any of Sotheby's concessions. Meanwhile, Sotheby's is bargaining for replacing full-time union jobs with 24 temporary workers, waiving the union's rights to litigate in State or Federal court, reducing work-week hours, and eliminating seniority. Sotheby's hired Jackson Lewis, a "preventive labor relations" law firm, for the negotiations, which are still ongoing. Due to disagreements over a new contract, on July 29, 2011, Sotheby's imposed a lockout on the Local 814 art handlers. The dispute remains unresolved.

Notes

Further reading

Brian Learmount, "A history of the auction", 1985. Barnard & Learmont. ISBN 0951024000

Christopher Mason, ''The Art of the Steal'', 2004. Putnam. ISBN 0-399-15093-5

Peter Watson, "Sotheby's: The Inside Story", 1998. Random House. ISBN 978-0679414032

Robert Lacey "Sotheby's: Bidding For Class", 1998 Little Brown & Co. ISBN 0316511390

External links

Sotheby's official website

Andrew Festing's official website

Sotheby's Impressionist Sale Totals $239m, Tops Low Estimate

IR ON THE NET: Going once, twice... delisted!

Sotheby's International Realty Dallas, Texas Branch

Sotheby's International Realty

Sotheby's Group on Facebook

Category:1744 establishments in England Category:London auction houses Category:Buildings and structures in Manhattan Category:New York auction houses Category:Canadian auction houses Category:Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange Category:Price fixing convictions Category:Companies established in the 1740s

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Coordinates	38°52′15.56″N77°3′21.46″N
name	Andy Warhol
birth name	Andrew Warhola
birth date	August 06, 1928
birth place	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
death date	February 22, 1987
death place	New York City, US
nationality	American
field	Painting, Cinema
training	Carnegie Mellon University
movement	Pop art
works	''Chelsea Girls'' (1966 film)''Exploding Plastic Inevitable'' (1966 event)''Campbell's Soup Cans'' (1962 painting)
signature	Andy Warhol signature.svg }}

Andrew Warhola, Jr. (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included Bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled ''Eight Elvises.'' The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in ''The Economist'', which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.

Childhood (1928–48)

Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 6, 1928. He was the fourth child of Ondrej Varchola (americanized as Andrej Warhola), who died in 1942, and Júlia (née Zavacká, 1892–1972), whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U.S. His parents were working-class Rusynemigrants from Mikó (now called Miková), located in today’s northeastern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Warhol's father immigrated to the US in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older brothers – Pavol (Paul), the oldest, was born in Slovakia; Ján was born in Pittsburgh. Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator.

In third grade, Warhol had chorea, the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever and causes skin pigmentation blotchiness. He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became an outcast at school and bonded with his mother. At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father died in an accident.

Commercial art (1949–61)

Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, (now Carnegie Mellon University). In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements. These were done in a loose, blotted-ink style, and figured in some of his earliest showings at the Bodley Gallery in New York. With the concurrent rapid expansion of the record industry and the introduction of the vinyl record, Hi-Fi, and stereophonic recordings, RCA Records hired Warhol, along with another freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design album covers and promotional materials.

Fine art (1952–67)

He began exhibiting his work during the 1950s. He held exhibitions at the Hugo Gallery, and the Bodley Gallery in New York City and in California his first one-man art-gallery exhibition was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. The exhibition marked his West Coast debut of pop art. Andy Warhol's first New York solo pop art exhibition was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The exhibit included the works ''Marilyn Diptych'', ''100 Soup Cans'', ''100 Coke Bottles'' and ''100 Dollar Bills''. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time poet John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, ''Sleep'', in 1963. It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "The Factory," his studio during these years, and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. He began producing prints using the silkscreen method His work became popular and controversial.

Among the imagery tackled by Warhol were dollar bills, celebrities and brand name products. He also used as imagery for his paintings. Newspaper headlines or photographs of mushroom clouds, electric chairs, and police dogs attacking civil rights protesters. Warhol also used Coca Cola bottles as subject matter for paintings. He had this to say about Coca Cola:

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New York's Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on pop art in December 1962 during which artists like Warhol were attacked for "capitulating" to consumerism. Critics were scandalized by Warhol's open embrace of market culture. This symposium set the tone for Warhol's reception. Throughout the decade it became more and more clear that there had been a profound change in the culture of the art world, and that Warhol was at the center of that shift.

A pivotal event was the 1964 exhibit ''The American Supermarket'', a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that everything in it – from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc. – was created by six prominent pop artists of the time, among them the controversial (and like-minded) Billy Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for $6. The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the perennial question of what art is (or of what is art and what is not). As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; in the 1960s, however, this was particularly true. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with producing silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at "The Factory," Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street (later moved to Broadway). Other members of Warhol's Factory crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary Woronov, Billy Name, and Brigid Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape-record his phone conversations).

During the '60s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "Superstars", including Nico, Joe Dallesandro, Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling. These people all participated in the Factory films, and some – like Berlin – remained friends with Warhol until his death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world, such as writer John Giorno and film-maker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this time.

Attempted murder (1968)

On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator Mario Amaya at Warhol's studio. Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. She authored the ''S.C.U.M. Manifesto'', a separatist feminist attack on males. Solanas appears in the 1968 Warhol film ''I, a Man''. Earlier on the day of the attack, Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script, apparently, had been misplaced.

Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived (surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again). He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art.

Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of explanation, she said that Warhol "had too much control over my life." She was eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of Corrections. After the shooting, the Factory scene became much more tightly controlled, and for many the "Factory 60s" ended. The shooting was mostly overshadowed in the media due to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy two days later.

Warhol had this to say about the attack: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television."

1970s

Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the 1970s were a much quieter decade, as Warhol became more entrepreneurial. According to Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions– including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, and Brigitte Bardot. Warhol's famous portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was created in 1973. He also founded, with Gerard Malanga, ''Interview'' magazine, and published ''The Philosophy of Andy Warhol'' (1975). An idea expressed in the book: "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art."

Warhol used to socialize at various nightspots in New York City, including Max's Kansas City; and, later in the '70s, Studio 54. He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and a meticulous observer. Art critic Robert Hughes called him "the white mole of Union Square."

1980s

Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of '80s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi.

During this time Warhol created the Michael Jackson painting signifying his success attributed to his best-selling album ''Thriller''.

By this period, Warhol was being criticized for becoming merely a "business artist". In 1979, reviewers disliked his exhibits of portraits of 1970s personalities and celebrities, calling them superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the significance of the subjects. They also criticized his 1980 exhibit of 10 portraits at the Jewish Museum in New York, entitled ''Jewish Geniuses'', which Warhol – who was uninterested in Judaism and Jews – had described in his diary as "They're going to sell." In hindsight, however, some critics have come to view Warhol's superficiality and commerciality as "the most brilliant mirror of our times," contending that "Warhol had captured something irresistible about the zeitgeist of American culture in the 1970s."

Warhol also had an appreciation for intense Hollywood glamour. He once said: "I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."

Death

Warhol died in New York City at 6:32 a.m. on February 22, 1987. According to news reports, he had been making good recovery from a routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia. Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication.

Warhol's body was taken back to Pittsburgh by his brothers for burial. The wake was at Thomas P. Kunsak Funeral Home and was an open-coffin ceremony. The coffin was a solid bronze casket with gold plated rails and white upholstery. Warhol was dressed in a black cashmere suit, a paisley tie, a platinum wig, and sunglasses. He was posed holding a small prayer book and a red rose. The funeral liturgy was held at the Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church on Pittsburgh's North Side. The eulogy was given by Monsignor Peter Tay. Yoko Ono also made an appearance. The coffin was covered with white roses and asparagus ferns. After the liturgy, the coffin was driven to St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, a south suburb of Pittsburgh. At the grave, the priest said a brief prayer and sprinkled holy water on the casket. Before the coffin was lowered, Paige Powell dropped a copy of ''Interview'' magazine, an ''Interview'' t-shirt, and a bottle of the Estee Lauder perfume "Beautiful" into the grave. Warhol was buried next to his mother and father. A memorial service was held in Manhattan for Warhol on April 1, 1987, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.

Warhol's will dictated that his entire estate – with the exception of a few modest legacies to family members – would go to create a foundation dedicated to the "advancement of the visual arts". Warhol had so many possessions that it took Sotheby's nine days to auction his estate after his death; the auction grossed more than US$20 million.

In 1987, in accordance with Warhol's will, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts began. The Foundation serves as the official Estate of Andy Warhol, but also has a mission "to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process" and is "focused primarily on supporting work of a challenging and often experimental nature."

The Artists Rights Society is the U.S. copyright representative for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for all Warhol works with the exception of Warhol film stills. The U.S. copyright representative for Warhol film stills is the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Additionally, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has agreements in place for its image archive. All digital images of Warhol are exclusively managed by Corbis, while all transparency images of Warhol are managed by Art Resource.

The Andy Warhol Foundation released its 20th Anniversary Annual Report as a three-volume set in 2007: Vol. I, 1987–2007; Vol. II, Grants & Exhibitions; and Vol. III, Legacy Program. The Foundation remains one of the largest grant-giving organizations for the visual arts in the U.S.

Works

Paintings

By the beginning of the 1960s, Warhol had become a very successful commercial illustrator. His detailed and elegant drawings for I. Miller shoes were particularly popular. They consisted mainly of "blotted ink" drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in much of his early art. Although many artists of this period worked in commercial art, most did so discreetly. Warhol was so successful, however, that his profile as an illustrator seemed to undermine his efforts to be taken seriously as an artist.

Pop art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists (such as Willem de Kooning). Warhol's first pop art paintings were displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department Store Bronwit Teller's window display. This was the same stage his Pop Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced. Eventually, Warhol pared his image vocabulary down to the icon itself – to brand names, celebrities, dollar signs – and removed all traces of the artist's "hand" in the production of his paintings.

To him, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons were already being used by Lichtenstein, typography by Jasper Johns, and so on; Warhol wanted a distinguishing subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. It was the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup cans and Warhol's dollar paintings. On 23 November 1961 Warhol wrote Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography, ''Pop, The Genius of Warhol'', was payment for coming up with the idea of the soup cans as subject matter. For his first major exhibition Warhol painted his famous cans of Campbell's Soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his life. The work sold for $10,000 at an auction on November 17, 1971, at Sotheby's New York – a minimal amount for the artist whose paintings sell for over $6 million more recently.

He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the hand-made from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.

In 1979, Warhol was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 4 race version of the then elite supercar BMW M1 for the fourth installment in the BMW Art Car Project. Unlike the three artists before him, Warhol declined the use of a small scale practice model, instead opting to immediately paint directly onto the full scale automobile. It was indicated that Warhol spent only a total of 23 minutes to paint the entire car.

Warhol produced both comic and serious works; his subject could be a soup can or an electric chair. Warhol used the same techniques– silkscreens, reproduced serially, and often painted with bright colors – whether he painted celebrities, everyday objects, or images of suicide, car crashes, and disasters, as in the 1962–63 ''Death and Disaster'' series. The ''Death and Disaster'' paintings included ''Red Car Crash'', ''Purple Jumping Man'', and ''Orange Disaster.''

The unifying element in Warhol's work is his deadpan Keatonesque style – artistically and personally affectless. This was mirrored by Warhol's own demeanor, as he often played "dumb" to the media, and refused to explain his work. The artist was famous for having said that all you need to know about him and his works is already there, "Just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it." His Rorschach inkblots are intended as pop comments on art and what art could be. His cow wallpaper (literally, wallpaper with a cow motif) and his oxidation paintings (canvases prepared with copper paint that was then oxidized with urine) are also noteworthy in this context. Equally noteworthy is the way these works – and their means of production – mirrored the atmosphere at Andy's New York "Factory". Biographer Bob Colacello provides some details on Andy's "piss paintings":

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Warhol's first portrait of ''Basquiat'' (1982) is a black photosilkscreen over an oxidized copper "piss painting".

After many years of silkscreen, oxidation, photography, etc., Warhol returned to painting with a brush in hand in a series of over 50 large collaborative works done with Jean-Michel Basquiat between 1984 and 1986. Despite negative criticism when these were first shown, Warhol called some of them "masterpieces," and they were influential for his later work.

The influence of the large collaborations with Basquiat can be seen in Warhol's ''The Last Supper'' cycle, his last and possibly his largest series, seen by some as "arguably his greatest," but by others as “wishy-washy, religiose” and “spiritless." It is also the largest series of religious-themed works by any U.S. artist.

At the time of his death, Warhol was working on ''Cars'', a series of paintings for Mercedes-Benz.

A self-portrait by Andy Warhol (1963-64), which sold in New York at the May Post-War and Contemporary evening sale in Christie's, fetched $38.4 million.

Films

Warhol worked across a wide range of media – painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture. In addition, he was a highly prolific filmmaker. Between 1963 and 1968, he made more than 60 films, plus some 500 short black-and-white "screen test" portraits of Factory visitors. One of his most famous films, ''Sleep'', monitors poet John Giorno sleeping for six hours. The 35-minute film ''Blow Job'' is one continuous shot of the face of DeVeren Bookwalter supposedly receiving oral sex from filmmaker Willard Maas, although the camera never tilts down to see this. Another, ''Empire'' (1964), consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building in New York City at dusk. The film ''Eat'' consists of a man eating a mushroom for 45 minutes. Warhol attended the 1962 premiere of the static composition by LaMonte Young called ''Trio for Strings'' and subsequently created his famous series of static films including ''Kiss'', ''Eat'', and ''Sleep'' (for which Young initially was commissioned to provide music). Uwe Husslein cites filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who accompanied Warhol to the Trio premiere, and who claims Warhol's static films were directly inspired by the performance.

''Batman Dracula'' is a 1964 film that was produced and directed by Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. It was screened only at his art exhibits. A fan of the Batman series, Warhol's movie was an "homage" to the series, and is considered the first appearance of a blatantly campy Batman. The film was until recently thought to have been lost, until scenes from the picture were shown at some length in the 2006 documentary ''Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis''.

Warhol's 1965 film ''Vinyl'' is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' popular dystopian novel ''A Clockwork Orange''. Others record improvised encounters between Factory regulars such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico, and Jackie Curtis. Legendary underground artist Jack Smith appears in the film ''Camp''.

His most popular and critically successful film was ''Chelsea Girls'' (1966). The film was highly innovative in that it consisted of two 16 mm-films being projected simultaneously, with two different stories being shown in tandem. From the projection booth, the sound would be raised for one film to elucidate that "story" while it was lowered for the other. The multiplication of images evoked Warhol's seminal silk-screen works of the early 1960s.

Other important films include ''Bike Boy'', ''My Hustler'', and ''Lonesome Cowboys'', a raunchy pseudo-western. These and other titles document gay underground and camp culture, and continue to feature prominently in scholarship about sexuality and art. ''Blue Movie'' – a film in which Warhol superstar Viva makes love and fools around in bed with a man for 33 minutes of the film's playing-time – was Warhol's last film as director. The film was at the time scandalous for its frank approach to a sexual encounter. For many years Viva refused to allow it to be screened. It was publicly screened in New York in 2005 for the first time in over thirty years.

After his June 3, 1968, shooting, a reclusive Warhol relinquished his personal involvement in filmmaking. His acolyte and assistant director, Paul Morrissey, took over the film-making chores for the Factory collective, steering Warhol-branded cinema towards more mainstream, narrative-based, B-movie exploitation fare with ''Flesh'', ''Trash'', and ''Heat''. All of these films, including the later ''Andy Warhol's Dracula'' and ''Andy Warhol's Frankenstein'', were far more mainstream than anything Warhol as a director had attempted. These latter "Warhol" films starred Joe Dallesandro – more of a Morrissey star than a true Warhol superstar.

In the early '70s, most of the films directed by Warhol were pulled out of circulation by Warhol and the people around him who ran his business. After Warhol's death, the films were slowly restored by the Whitney Museum and are occasionally projected at museums and film festivals. Few of the Warhol-directed films are available on video or DVD.

Factory in New York

Factory: 1342 Lexington Avenue (the first Factory)

The Factory: 231 East 47th street 1963–1967 (the building no longer exists)

Factory: 33 Union Square 1967–1973 (Decker Building)

Factory: 860 Broadway (near 33 Union Square) 1973–1984 (the building has now been completely remodeled and was for a time (2000–2001) the headquarters of the dot-com consultancy Scient)

Factory: 22 East 33rd Street 1984–1987 (the building no longer exists)

Home: 1342 Lexington Avenue

Home: 57 East 66th street (Warhol's last home)

Last personal studio: 158 Madison Avenue

Filmography

The following are the films directed or produced by Andy Warhol.

1963 ''Andy Warhol Films Jack Smith Filming Normal Love'' ''Sarah-Soap'' ''Denis Deegan'' ''Kiss (film) ''Rollerskate/Dance Movie'' ''Jill and Freddy Dancing'' ''Elvis at Ferus'' ''Taylor and Me'' ''Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of'' ''Duchamp Opening'' ''Salome and Delilah'' ''Haircut No. 1'' ''Haircut No. 2'' ''Haircut No. 3'' ''Henry in Bathroom'' ''Taylor and John'' ''Bob Indiana, Etc.'' ''Billy Klüver (film) ''John Washing'' ''Naomi and John'' ''Screen Tests'' ''Naomi and Rufus Kiss'' ''Blow Job (film) ''Jill Johnston Dancing'' ''Shoulder (film) ''Eat (film) ''Dinner At Daley's'' ''Soap Opera (film) ''Batman Dracula'' ''Three (1964 film) ''Jane and Darius'' ''Couch (film) ''Empire (1964 film) ''Henry Geldzahler (film) ''Taylor Mead's Ass'' ''Six Months'' ''Mario Banana'' ''Harlot (film) ''Mario Montez Dances'' ''Isabel Wrist'' ''Imu and Son'' ''Allen (film) ''Philip and Gerard'' ''13 Most Beautiful Women'' ''13 Most Beautiful Boys'' ''50 Fantastics and 50 Personalities'' ''Pause (film) ''Messy Lives'' ''Lips (film) ''Apple (film) ''The End of Dawn'' ''John and Ivy'' ''Screen Test Number 1 (film) ''Screen Test Number 2 (film) ''The Life of Juanita Castro'' ''Drink (film) ''Suicide (film) ''Horse (film) ''Vinyl (1965 film) ''Bitch (film) ''Poor Little Rich Girl (1965 film) ''Face (1965 film) ''Restaurant (1965 film) ''Kitchen (film) ''Afternoon (film) ''Beauty No. 1'' ''Beauty No. 2'' ''Space (film) ''Factory Diaries ''Outer and Inner Space'' ''Prison (1965 film) ''The Fugs and The Holy Modal Rounders'' ''Paul Swan (film) ''My Hustler'' ''My Hustler II'' ''Camp (1965 film) ''More Milk, Yvette'' ''Lupe (film) ''The Closet (1965 film) ''Ari and Mario'' ''3 Min. Mary Might'' ''Eating Too Fast'' ''The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound'' ''Hedy (film) ''Rick (1966 film) ''Withering Heights'' ''Paraphernalia (film) ''Whips (film) ''Salvador Dalí (film) ''The Beard (film) ''Superboy (1966 film) ''Patrick (1966 film) ''Chelsea Girls'' ''Bufferin (film) ''Bufferin Commercial'' ''Susan-Space'' ''The Velvet Underground Tarot Cards'' ''Nico/Antoine'' ''Marcel Duchamp (film) ''Dentist: Nico'' ''Ivy (1966 film) ''Denis (film) ''Ivy and Denis I'' ''Ivy and Denis II'' ''Tiger Hop'' ''The Andy Warhol Story'' ''Since (film) ''The Bob Dylan Story'' ''Mrs. Warhol'' ''Kiss the Boot'' ''Nancy Fish and Rodney'' ''Courtroom (film) ''Jail (Warhol film) ''Alien in Jail'' ''A Christmas Carol (1966 film) ''Four Stars (film) ''Imitation of Christ (film) ''Ed Hood'' ''Donyale Luna (film) ''I, a Man'' ''The Loves of Ondine'' ''Bike Boy'' ''Tub Girls'' ''The Nude Restaurant'' ''Construction-Destruction-Construction'' ''Sunset (1967 film) ''Withering Sighs'' ''Vibrations (film) ''Lonesome Cowboys (1968 film) ''San Diego Surf (film) ''Flesh (film) ''Blue Movie'' ''Trash (film) ''Women in Revolt'' ''Water (1971 film) ''Factory Diaries'' ''Heat (1972 film) ''L'Amour (film) ''Flesh for Frankenstein'' ''Blood for Dracula'' ''Vivian's Girls'' ''Nothing Special footage'' ''Fight (film) ''Andy Warhol's Bad''

Year !! Film !! Cast !! Notes
	|	Sleep (film)>Sleep''	John Giorno	Runtime of 320+ minutes
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	Kiss''||||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1963	Billy Klüver''||||
	1963	|||
	1963	|||
	1964	|||
	1964	|||
	1964	Blow Job''||	DeVeren Bookwalter	frames per second>frame/s, projected at 16 frame/s
	1964	|||
	1964	Shoulder''||||
	1964	Eat''||	Robert Indiana
	1964	|||
	1964	Soap Opera''||||
	1964	|||
	1964	Three''||||
	1964	|||
	1964	Couch''||||
	1964	Empire''||||Runtime of 8 hours 5 minutes
	1964	Henry Geldzahler''||||
	1964	|	Taylor Mead
	1964	|||
	1964	|||
	1964	Harlot''||||
	1964	|||
	1964	|||
	1964	|||
	1964	Allen''||||
	1964	|||
	1964	|||
	1964	|||
	1964	|||
	1964	Pause''||||
	1964	|||
	1964	Lips''||||
	1964	Apple''||||
	1964	|||
	1965	|||
	1965	Screen Test #1''||||
	1965	Screen Test #2''||||
	1965	|||
	1965	Drink''||||
	1965	Suicide''||||
	1965	Horse''||||
	1965	Vinyl''||||
	1965	Bitch''||||
	1965	Poor Little Rich Girl''||	Edie Sedgwick
	1965	Face''||||
	1965	Restaurant''||||
	1965	Kitchen''||||
	1965	Afternoon''||||
	1965	|	Edie Sedgwick
	1965	|	Edie Sedgwick
	1965	Space''||||
	1965	|||
	1965	|||
	1965	Prison''||||
	1965	|||
	1965	Paul Swan''||||
	1965	|||
	1965	|||
	1965	Camp''||||
	1965	|||
	1965	Lupe''||||
	1965	The Closet''||||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	Hedy''||||
	1966	Rick''||||
	1966	|||
	1966	Paraphernalia''||||
	1966	Whips''||||
	1966	Salvador Dalí''||||
	1966	The Beard''||||
	1966	Superboy''||||
	1966	Patrick''||||
	1966	|||
	1966	Bufferin''||||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	Marcel Duchamp''||||
	1966	|||
	1966	Ivy''||||
	1966	Denis''||||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	Since''||||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	|||
	1966	Courtroom''||||
	1966	Jail''||||
	1966	|||
	1966	A Christmas Carol''||||
	1966	Four Stars aka ****''||||runtime of 25 hours
	1967	Imitation of Christ''||||
	1967	|||
	1967	Donyale Luna''||||
	1967	|||
	1967	|||
	1967	|||
	1967	|||
	1967	|||
	1967	|||
	1967	Sunset''||||
	1967	|||
	1967	Vibrations''||||
	1968	Lonesome Cowboys''||||
	1968	San Diego Surf''||||
	1968	Flesh''||||
	1969	|||
	1969	Trash''||	Joe Dallessandro, Holly Woodlawn
	1970	|||
	1971	Water''||||
	1971	|||
	1972	Heat''||||
	1973	L'Amour''||||
	1973	|||
	1974	|||
	1973	|||
	''Phoney''||||
	1975	|||
	1975	Fight''||||
	1977	|||

Music

In the mid 1960s, Warhol adopted the band the Velvet Underground, making them a crucial element of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia performance art show. Warhol, with Paul Morrissey, acted as the band's manager, introducing them to Nico (who would perform with the band at Warhol's request). In 1966 he "produced" their first album ''The Velvet Underground & Nico'', as well as providing its album art. His actual participation in the album's production amounted to simply paying for the studio time. After the band's first album, Warhol and band leader Lou Reed started to disagree more about the direction the band should take, and their artistic friendship ended. In 1989, after Warhol's death, Reed and John Cale re-united for the first time since 1972 to write, perform, record and release the concept album ''Songs for Drella'', a tribute to Warhol.

Warhol designed many album covers for various artists starting with the photographic cover of John Wallowitch's debut album, ''This Is John Wallowitch!!!'' (1964). He designed the cover art for the Rolling Stones albums ''Sticky Fingers'' (1971) and ''Love You Live'' (1977), and the John Cale albums ''The Academy in Peril'' (1972) and ''Honi Soit'' in 1981. In 1975, Warhol was commissioned to do several portraits of Mick Jagger, and in 1982 he designed the album cover for the Diana Ross album Silk Electric. One of his last works was a portrait of Aretha Franklin for the cover of her 1986 gold album ''Aretha'', which was done in the style of the ''Reigning Queens'' series he had completed the year before.

Warhol strongly influenced the New Wave/punk rock band Devo, as well as David Bowie. Bowie recorded a song called "Andy Warhol" for his 1971 album ''Hunky Dory''. Lou Reed wrote the song "Andy's Chest", about Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Warhol, in 1968. He recorded it with the Velvet Underground, and this version was released on the VU album in 1985.

Books and print

Beginning in the early 1950s, Warhol produced several unbound portfolios of his work.

The first of several bound self-published books by Warhol was ''25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy'', printed in 1954 by Seymour Berlin on Arches brand watermarked paper using his blotted line technique for the lithographs. The original edition was limited to 190 numbered, hand colored copies, using Dr. Martin's ink washes. Most of these were given by Warhol as gifts to clients and friends. Copy #4, inscribed "Jerry" on the front cover and given to Geraldine Stutz, was used for a facsimile printing in 1987 and the original was auctioned in May 2006 for US $35,000 by Doyle New York.

Other self-published books by Warhol include:

''A Gold Book''

''Wild Raspberries''

''Holy Cats''

After gaining fame, Warhol "wrote" several books that were commercially published: ''a, A Novel'' (1968, ISBN 0-8021-3553-6) is a literal transcription– containing spelling errors and phonetically written background noise and mumbling– of audio recordings of Ondine and several of Andy Warhol's friends hanging out at the Factory, talking, going out. ''The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again)'' (1975, ISBN 0-15-671720-4)– according to Pat Hackett's introduction to ''The Andy Warhol Diaries'', Pat Hackett did the transcriptions and text for the book based on daily phone conversations, sometimes (when Warhol was traveling) using audio cassettes that Andy Warhol gave her. Said cassettes contained conversations with Brigid Berlin (also known as Brigid Polk) and former ''Interview'' magazine editor Bob Colacello.

''Popism: The Warhol Sixties'' (1980, ISBN 0-15-672960-1), authored by Warhol and Pat Hackett is a retrospective view of the sixties and the role of pop art.

''The Andy Warhol Diaries'' (1989, ISBN 0-446-39138-7), edited by Pat Hackett, is a diary dictated by Warhol to Hackett in daily phone conversations. Warhol started the diary to keep track of his expenses after being audited, although it soon evolved to include his personal and cultural observations.

Warhol created the fashion magazine ''Interview'' that is still published today. The loopy title script on the cover is thought to be either his own handwriting or that of his mother, Julia Warhola, who would often do text work for his early commercial pieces.

Other media

Although Andy Warhol is most known for his paintings and films, he authored works in many different media. Drawing: Warhol started his career as a commercial illustrator, producing drawings in "blotted-ink" style for advertisements and magazine articles. Best known of these early works are his drawings of shoes. Some of his personal drawings were self-published in small booklets, such as ''Yum, Yum, Yum'' (about food), ''Ho, Ho, Ho'' (about Christmas) and (of course) ''Shoes, Shoes, Shoes''. His most artistically acclaimed book of drawings is probably ''A Gold Book'', compiled of sensitive drawings of young men. ''A Gold Book'' is so named because of the gold leaf that decorates its pages. Sculpture: Warhol's most famous sculpture is probably his ''Brillo Boxes'', silkscreened ink on wood replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes (designed by James Harvey), part of a series of "grocery carton" sculptures that also included Heinz ketchup and Campbell's tomato juice cases. Other famous works include the ''Silver Clouds''– helium filled, silver mylar, pillow-shaped balloons. A ''Silver Cloud'' was included in the traveling exhibition ''Air Art'' (1968–69) curated by Willoughby Sharp. ''Clouds'' was also adapted by Warhol for avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham's dance piece ''RainForest'' (1968). Audio: At one point Warhol carried a portable recorder with him wherever he went, taping everything everybody said and did. He referred to this device as his "wife". Some of these tapes were the basis for his literary work. Another audio-work of Warhol's was his "Invisible Sculpture", a presentation in which burglar alarms would go off when entering the room. Warhol's cooperation with the musicians of The Velvet Underground was driven by an expressed desire to become a music producer. Time Capsules: In 1973, Warhol began saving ephemera from his daily life– correspondence, newspapers, souvenirs, childhood objects, even used plane tickets and food– which was sealed in plain cardboard boxes dubbed Time Capsules. By the time of his death, the collection grew to include 600, individually dated "capsules". The boxes are now housed at the Andy Warhol Museum. Television: Andy Warhol dreamed of a television show that he wanted to call ''The Nothing Special'', a special about his favorite subject: Nothing. Later in his career he did create two cable television shows, ''Andy Warhol's TV'' in 1982 and ''Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes'' (based on his famous "fifteen minutes of fame" quotation) for MTV in 1986. Besides his own shows he regularly made guest appearances on other programs, including ''The Love Boat'' wherein a Midwestern wife (Marion Ross) fears Andy Warhol will reveal to her husband (Tom Bosley, who starred alongside Ross in sitcom ''Happy Days'') her secret past as a Warhol superstar named Marina del Rey. Warhol also produced a TV commercial for Schrafft's Restaurants in New York City, for an ice cream dessert appropriately titled the "Underground Sundae". Fashion: Warhol is quoted for having said: "I'd rather buy a dress and put it up on the wall, than put a painting, wouldn't you?" One of his most well-known Superstars, Edie Sedgwick, aspired to be a fashion designer, and his good friend Halston was a famous one. Warhol's work in fashion includes silkscreened dresses, a short sub-career as a catwalk-model and books on fashion as well as paintings with fashion (shoes) as a subject. Performance Art: Warhol and his friends staged theatrical multimedia happenings at parties and public venues, combining music, film, slide projections and even Gerard Malanga in an S&M; outfit cracking a whip. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable in 1966 was the culmination of this area of his work. Theater: Andy Warhol's PORK opened on May 5, 1971 at LaMama theater in New York for a two week run and was brought to the Roundhouse in London for a longer run in August, 1971. Pork was based on tape-recorded conversations between Brigin Berlin and Andy during which Brigid would play for Andy tapes she had made of phone conversations between herself and her mother, socialite Honey Berlin. The play featured Jayne County as "Vulva" and Cherry Vanilla as "Amanda Pork". In 1974, Andy Warhol also produced the stage musical Man On The Moon, which was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Photography: To produce his silkscreens, Warhol made photographs or had them made by his friends and assistants. These pictures were mostly taken with a specific model of Polaroid camera that Polaroid kept in production especially for Warhol. This photographic approach to painting and his snapshot method of taking pictures has had a great effect on artistic photography. Warhol was an accomplished photographer, and took an enormous amount of photographs of Factory visitors, friends. Computer: Warhol used Amiga computers to generate digital art, which he helped design and build with Amiga, Inc. He also displayed the difference between slow fill and fast fill on live TV with Debbie Harry as a model. (video)

Producer and product

Warhol had assistance in producing his paintings. This is also true of his film-making and commercial enterprises.

He founded the gossip magazine ''Interview'', a stage for celebrities he "endorsed" and a business staffed by his friends. He collaborated with others on all of his books (some of which were written with Pat Hackett.) He adopted the young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the band The Velvet Underground, presenting them to the public as his latest interest, and collaborating with them. One might even say that he produced people (as in the Warholian "Superstar" and the Warholian portrait). He endorsed products, appeared in commercials, and made frequent celebrity guest appearances on television shows and in films (he appeared in everything from ''Love Boat'' to ''Saturday Night Live'' and the Richard Pryor movie, ''Dynamite Chicken'').

In this respect Warhol was a fan of "Art Business" and "Business Art"– he, in fact, wrote about his interest in thinking about art as business in ''The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again''.

Personal life

Sexuality

It is thought that Warhol was homosexual, and quite likely a virgin. His family maintains that he was not homosexual and was celibate. The question of how Warhol's sexuality influenced his work and shaped his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on the artist and is an issue that Warhol himself addressed in interviews, in conversation with his contemporaries, and in his publications (''e.g.'' ''Popism: The Warhol Sixties''). Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor, and films like ''Blow Job,'' ''My Hustler'' and ''Lonesome Cowboys'') draw from gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of sexuality and desire. Many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters. The first works that he submitted to a fine art gallery, homoerotic drawings of male nudes, were rejected for being too openly gay. In ''Popism'', furthermore, the artist recalls a conversation with the film maker Emile de Antonio about the difficulty Warhol had being accepted socially by the then more famous (but closeted) gay artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. De Antonio explained that Warhol was "too swish and that upsets them." In response to this, Warhol writes, "There was nothing I could say to that. It was all too true. So I decided I just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things that I didn't want to change anyway, that I didn't think I 'should' want to change... Other people could change their attitudes but not me". In exploring Warhol's biography, many turn to this period – the late 1950s and early 1960s – as a key moment in the development of his persona. Some have suggested that his frequent refusal to comment on his work, to speak about himself (confining himself in interviews to responses like "Um, no" and "Um, yes", and often allowing others to speak for him) – and even the evolution of his pop style – can be traced to the years when Warhol was first dismissed by the inner circles of the New York art world.

Religious beliefs

Warhol was a practicing Ruthenian Rite Catholic. He regularly volunteered at homeless shelters in New York, particularly during the busier times of the year, and described himself as a religious person. Many of Warhol's later works depicted religious subjects, including two series, ''Details of Renaissance Paintings'' (1984) and ''The Last Supper'' (1986). In addition, a body of religious-themed works was found posthumously in his estate.

During his life, Warhol regularly attended Mass, and the priest at Warhol's church, Saint Vincent Ferrer, said that the artist went there almost daily, although he was not observed taking communion or going to confession and sat or knelt in the pews at the back. The priest thought he was afraid of being recognized; Warhol said he was self-conscious about being seen in a Latin Rite church crossing himself "in the Orthodox way" (right to left instead of the reverse).

His art is noticeably influenced by the eastern Christian iconographic tradition which was so evident in his places of worship.

Warhol's brother has described the artist as "really religious, but he didn't want people to know about that because [it was] private". Despite the private nature of his faith, in Warhol's eulogy John Richardson depicted it as devout: "To my certain knowledge, he was responsible for at least one conversion. He took considerable pride in financing his nephew's studies for the priesthood".

Dedicated museums

Two museums are dedicated to Warhol. The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, is located at 117 Sandusky Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the largest American art museum dedicated to a single artist, holding more than 12,000 works by the artist.

The other museum is the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, established in 1991 by Warhol's brother John Warhola, the Slovak Ministry of Culture, and the Warhol Foundation in New York. It is located in the small town of Medzilaborce, Slovakia. Warhol's parents and his two eldest brothers were born 15 kilometres away in the village of Miková. The museum houses several originals donated mainly by the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York and also personal items donated by Warhol's relatives.

Movies about Warhol

;Dramatic portrayals

In 1979, Warhol appeared as himself in the film ''Cocaine Cowboys''.

After his passing, Warhol was portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone's film ''The Doors'' (1991), by David Bowie in ''Basquiat'', a film by Julian Schnabel, and by Jared Harris in the film ''I Shot Andy Warhol'' directed by Mary Harron (1996). Warhol appears as a character in Michael Daugherty's 1997 opera ''Jackie O''. Actor Mark Bringleson makes a brief cameo as Warhol in ''Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery'' (1997). Many films by avant-garde cineast Jonas Mekas have caught the moments of Andy's life. Sean Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the 1998 film ''54''. Guy Pearce portrayed Warhol in the 2007 film, ''Factory Girl'', about Edie Sedgwick's life. Actor Greg Travis portrays Warhol in a brief scene from the 2009 film ''Watchmen''.

Gus Van Sant was planning a version of Warhol's life with River Phoenix in the lead role just before Phoenix's death in 1993.

;Documentaries The 2001 documentary, ''Absolut Warhola'' was produced by Polish director Stanislaw Mucha, featuring Warhol's parents' family and hometown in Slovakia. ''Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film'' is a reverential four-hour 2006 movie by Ric Burns. ''Andy Warhol: Double Denied'' is a 52 minute movie by lan Yentob about the difficulties in authenticating Warhol's work.

See also

Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board

Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000

Andy Warhol Bridge in Pittsburgh.

Bodley Gallery

15 minutes of fame

Moon Museum

References

Further reading

"A symposium on Pop Art". ''Arts Magazine'', April 1963, pp. 36–45. The symposium was held in 1962, at The Museum of Modern Art, and published in this issue the following year.

Doyle, Jennifer, Jonathan Flatley, and José Esteban Muñoz eds. (1996). ''Pop Out: Queer Warhol.'' Durham: Duke University Press.

Foster, Hal, ''The Return of the Real'' (ch.5), MIT Press / October Book, 1996.

James, James, "Andy Warhol: The Producer as Author", in ''Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties'' (1989), pp. 58–84. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Krauss, Rosalind E. "Warhol's Abstract Spectacle". In ''Abstraction, Gesture, Ecriture: Paintings from the Daros Collection''. New York: Scalo, 1999, pp. 123–33.

Lippard, Lucy R., ''Pop Art'', Thames and Hudson, 1970 (1985 reprint), ISBN 0-500-20052-1

Scherman, Tony & Dalton, David, ''POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol'', HarperCollins, New York, N.Y. 2009

Suarez, Juan Antonio (1996). ''Bike Boys, Drag Queens, & Superstars: Avant-Garde, Mass Culture, and Gay Identities in the 1960s Underground Cinema.'' Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

External links

Warhol Foundation in New York City

Andy Warhol Collection in Pittsburgh

Time Capsules: the Andy Warhol Collection

FBI file on Andy Warhol

Documentation of recent exhibitions of work by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol at Brooke Alexander Gallery

Andy Warhol's Empire group on Facebook

David Cronenberg speaking about the work of Andy Warhol">David Cronenberg speaking about the work of Andy Warhol on UbuWeb

Warholstars: Andy Warhol Films, Art and Superstars

Pop Art Masters – Andy Warhol

Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work

"Warhol, Soup Cans, Cowboys" (''Studio 360'' radio program, December 10, 2005)

exhibition of 10 statues of liberty in Gallerie Lavignes bastille, Paris 1986

The Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art – city of origin

Warhol in Paris – slideshow by ''The First Post''

digital painting of Debbie Harry at the Commodore Amiga product launch press conference in 1985">Andy Warhol makes a digital painting of Debbie Harry at the Commodore Amiga product launch press conference in 1985

Andy Warhol: A Documentary film by Ric Burns for PBS

Footage and interview with Andy Warhol at the Anthony D'Offay Gallery in london 1986

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af:Andy Warhol als:Andy Warhol ar:آندي وارهول an:Andy Warhol az:Endi Uorxol bn:অ্যান্ডি ওয়ারহল zh-min-nan:Andy Warhol be:Эндзі Уорхал be-x-old:Эндзі Ўорхал bs:Andy Warhol br:Andy Warhol bg:Анди Уорхол ca:Andy Warhol cs:Andy Warhol cy:Andy Warhol da:Andy Warhol de:Andy Warhol et:Andy Warhol el:Άντι Γουόρχολ es:Andy Warhol eo:Andy Warhol eu:Andy Warhol fa:اندی وارهول hif:Andy Warhol fr:Andy Warhol fy:Andy Warhol ga:Andy Warhol gl:Andy Warhol ko:앤디 워홀 hi:एंडी वारहोल hr:Andy Warhol ilo:Andy Warhol id:Andy Warhol is:Andy Warhol it:Andy Warhol he:אנדי וורהול jv:Andy Warhol ka:ენდი უორჰოლი sw:Andy Warhol lad:Andy Warhol la:Andreas Warhol lv:Endijs Vorhols lb:Andy Warhol lt:Andy Warhol li:Andy Warhol lmo:Andy Warhol hu:Andy Warhol mk:Енди Ворхол ml:ആൻഡി വോഹോൾ mi:Andy Warhol mr:अँडी वॉरहोल arz:اندى وارهول mn:Энди Уорхол nl:Andy Warhol new:एन्डी वार्होल ja:アンディ・ウォーホル no:Andy Warhol nn:Andy Warhol oc:Andy Warhol uz:Andy Warhol pag:Andy Warhol pnb:اینڈی وارہول pms:Andy Warhol pl:Andy Warhol pt:Andy Warhol kaa:Andy Warhol ro:Andy Warhol rue:Енді Варгол ru:Уорхол, Энди sq:Andy Warhol scn:Andy Warhol simple:Andy Warhol sk:Andy Warhol sl:Andy Warhol sr:Енди Ворхол sh:Andy Warhol fi:Andy Warhol sv:Andy Warhol tl:Andy Warhol ta:அன்டி வார்ஹால் th:แอนดี วอร์ฮอล tr:Andy Warhol uk:Енді Воргол ur:اینڈی وارہول vi:Andy Warhol vo:Andy Warhol war:Andy Warhol zh-yue:安迪華荷 bat-smg:Andy Warhol zh:安迪·沃荷

Coordinates	38°52′15.56″N77°3′21.46″N
name	Danny Meyer
birth date	March 14, 1958
birth place	St. Louis, Missouri
education	Trinity College
website	http://www.unionsquarehospitalitygroup.com }}

Daniel "Danny" Meyer (b. 1958 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a New York City restaurateur and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG).

Meyer was born and raised in St. Louis, where he attended John Burroughs School. He graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1980. In 1985, at 27, he began his career as a restaurateur by opening Union Square Cafe.

Meyer and USHG have won 24 James Beard Foundation Awards.

Publications

''Setting the Table : The Power of Hospitality in Restaurants, Business, and Life''

References

External links

CBS News Article - Danny Meyer

NRA Show Danny Meyer of Union Square Cafe NYC on Enlightened Hospitality

Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:People from New York City Category:Trinity College, Hartford alumni Category:People from St. Louis, Missouri Category:American restaurateurs

Coordinates	38°52′15.56″N77°3′21.46″N
name	Damien Hirst
birth date	June 07, 1965
birth place	Bristol, England, UK
nationality	British
field	Conceptual art, installation art, painting
training	Leeds College of Art and Design, Goldsmiths
movement	Young British Artists
works	''The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'', ''For the Love of God''
patrons	Charles Saatchi
awards	Turner Prize }}

Damien Steven Hirst (born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.

Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde. ''The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'', a tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine (clear display case) became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s, and the symbol of Britart worldwide. He has also made "spin paintings," created on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings", which are rows of randomly coloured circles created by his assistants.

In September 2008, he took an unprecedented move for a living artist by selling a complete show, ''Beautiful Inside My Head Forever'', at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries. The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for ''The Golden Calf'', an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.

In several instances since 1999, sources for certain of Hirst's works have been challenged and contested as plagiarised, both in written articles by journalists and artists, and, in one instance, through legal proceedings which led to an out-of-court settlement.

Hirst has made certain controversial statements to the media including, following the 11 September attacks, Hirst congratulated the attackers, stating, "You've got to hand it to them on some level." On 18 September 2002, he "apologised unreservedly" for the remarks.

Life and career

Early life

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. His father was reportedly a motor mechanic, who left the family when Hirst was 12. His mother, Mary Brennan, of Irish Catholic descent, worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau, and has stated that she lost control of her son when he was young. He was arrested on two occasions for shoplifting. However, Hirst sees her as someone who would not tolerate rebellion: she cut up his bondage trousers and heated one of his Sex Pistols vinyl records on the cooker to turn it into a fruit bowl (or a plant pot). He says, "If she didn't like how I was dressed, she would quickly take me away from the bus stop." She did, though, encourage his liking for drawing, which was his only successful educational subject.

His art teacher "pleaded" for Hirst to be allowed to enter the sixth form, where he took two A-levels, achieving an "E" grade in art. He was refused admission to Leeds College of Art and Design, when he first applied, but attended the college after a subsequent successful application.

He went to an exhibition of work by Francis Davison, staged by Julian Spalding at the Hayward Gallery in 1983. Davison created abstract collages from torn and cut coloured paper, which Hirst said, "blew me away", and which he modelled his own work on for the next two years.

He worked for two years on London building sites, then studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London (1986–89), although again he was refused a place the first time he applied. In 2007, Hirst was quoted as saying of ''An Oak Tree'' by Goldsmiths' senior tutor, Michael Craig-Martin: "That piece is, I think, the greatest piece of conceptual sculpture. I still can't get it out of my head." While a student, Hirst had a placement at a mortuary, an experience that influenced his later themes and materials.

Warehouse shows

In July 1988, in his second year at Goldsmiths College, Hirst was the main organiser of an independent student exhibition, ''Freeze'', in a disused London Port Authority administrative block in London's Docklands. He gained sponsorship from the London Docklands Development Corporation. The show was visited by Charles Saatchi, Norman Rosenthal and Nicholas Serota, thanks to the influence of his Goldsmiths' lecturer Michael Craig-Martin. Hirst's own contribution to the show consisted of a cluster of cardboard boxes painted with household paint. After graduating, Hirst was included in ''New Contemporaries'' show and in a group show at Kettles Yard Gallery in Cambridge. Seeking a gallery dealer, he first approached Karsten Schubert, but was turned down.

In 1990 Hirst, along with his friend Carl Freedman and Billee Sellman, curated two enterprising "warehouse" shows, ''Modern Medicine'' and ''Gambler'', in a Bermondsey former Peek Freans biscuit factory they designated "Building One". Saatchi arrived at the second show in a green Rolls Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, ''A Thousand Years'', consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head. They also staged Michael Landy's ''Market''. At this time, Hirst said, "I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say 'f off'. But after a while you can get away with things."

In 1991 his first solo exhibition, organised by Tamara Chodzko – Dial, ''In and Out of Love'', was held in an unused shop on Woodstock Street in central London; he also had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris. The Serpentine Gallery presented the first survey of the new generation of artists with the exhibition ''Broken English'', in part curated by Hirst. At this time Hirst met the up-and-coming art dealer, Jay Jopling, who then represented him.

Career in contemporary art

In 1991, Charles Saatchi had offered to fund whatever artwork Hirst wanted to make, and the result was showcased in 1992 in the first ''Young British Artists'' exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in North London. Hirst's work was titled ''The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'' and was a shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine, and sold for £50,000. The shark had been caught by a commissioned fisherman in Australia and had cost £6,000. It became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s, and the symbol of Britart worldwide. The exhibition also included ''A Thousand Years''. As a result of the show, Hirst was nominated for that year's Turner Prize, but it was awarded to Grenville Davey.

Hirst's first major international presentation was in the Venice Biennale in 1993 with the work, ''Mother and Child Divided'', a cow and a calf cut into sections and exhibited in a series of separate vitrines. He curated the show ''Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away'' in 1994 at the Serpentine Gallery in London, where he exhibited ''Away from the Flock'' (a sheep in a tank of formaldehyde). On 9 May, Mark Bridger, a 35 year old artist from Oxford, walked in to the gallery and poured black ink into the tank, and retitled the work ''Black Sheep''. He was subsequently prosecuted, at Hirst's wish, and was given two years' probation. The sculpture was restored at a cost of £1,000.

In 1995, Hirst won the Turner Prize. New York public health officials banned ''Two Fucking and Two Watching'' featuring a rotting cow and bull, because of fears of "vomiting among the visitors". There were solo shows in Seoul, London and Salzburg. He directed the video for the song "Country House" for the band Blur. ''No Sense of Absolute Corruption'', his first solo show in the Gagosian Gallery in New York was staged the following year. In London the short film, ''Hanging Around'', was shown—written and directed by Hirst and starring Eddie Izzard. In 1997 the ''Sensation'' exhibition opened at the Royal Academy in London. ''A Thousand Years'' and other works by Hirst were included, but the main controversy occurred over other artists' works. It was nevertheless seen as the formal acceptance of the YBAs into the establishment.

In 1997, his autobiography and art book, ''I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now'', was published. With Alex James of the band Blur and actor Keith Allen, he formed the band Fat Les, achieving a number 2 hit with a raucous football-themed song ''Vindaloo'', followed up by ''Jerusalem'' with the London Gay Men's Chorus. Hirst also painted a simple colour pattern for the Beagle 2 probe. This pattern was to be used to calibrate the probe's cameras after it had landed on Mars. He turned down the British Council's invitation to be Britain's representative at the 1999 Venice Biennale because "it didn't feel right". He sued British Airways claiming a breach of copyright over an advert design with coloured spots for its low budget airline, Go.

2000s

In 2000, Hirst's sculpture ''Hymn'' (which Saatchi had bought for a reported £1m) was given pole position at the show ''Ant Noises'' (an anagram of "sensation") in the Saatchi Gallery. Hirst was then sued himself for breach of copyright over this sculpture (see Appropriation below). Hirst sold three more copies of his sculpture for similar amounts to the first. In September 2000, in New York, Larry Gagosian held the Hirst show, ''Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings''. 100,000 people visited the show in 12 weeks and all the work was sold.

On 10 September 2002, on the eve of the first anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, Hirst said in an interview with BBC News Online: :"The thing about 9/11 is that it's kind of like an artwork in its own right. It was wicked, but it was devised in this way for this kind of impact. It was devised visually... You've got to hand it to them on some level because they've achieved something which nobody would have ever have thought possible, especially to a country as big as America. So on one level they kind of need congratulating, which a lot of people shy away from, which is a very dangerous thing."

The next week, following public outrage at his remarks, he issued a statement through his company, Science Ltd: :"I apologise unreservedly for any upset I have caused, particularly to the families of the victims of the events on that terrible day."

Hirst gave up smoking and drinking in 2002, although the short-term result was that his wife Maia "had to move out because I was so horrible." He had met Joe Strummer (former lead singer of The Clash) at Glastonbury in 1995, becoming good friends and going on annual family holidays with him. Just before Christmas 2002, Strummer died of a heart attack. This had a profound effect on Hirst, who said, "It was the first time I felt mortal." He subsequently devoted a lot of time to founding a charity, Strummerville, to help young musicians.

In April 2003, the Saatchi Gallery opened at new premises in County Hall, London, with a show that included a Hirst retrospective. This brought a developing strain in his relationship with Saatchi to a head (one source of contention had been who was most responsible for boosting their mutual profile). Hirst disassociated himself from the retrospective to the extent of not including it in his CV. He was angry that a Mini car that he had decorated for charity with his trademark spots was being exhibited as a serious artwork. The show also scuppered a prospective Hirst retrospective at Tate Modern. He said Saatchi was "childish" and "I'm not Charles Saatchi's barrel-organ monkey ... He only recognises art with his wallet ... he believes he can affect art values with buying power, and he still believes he can do it."

In September 2003 he had an exhibition ''Romance in the Age of Uncertainty'' at Jay Jopling's White Cube gallery in London, which made him a reported £11m, bringing his wealth to over £35m. It was reported that a sculpture, ''Charity'', had been sold for £1.5m to a Korean, Kim Chang-Il, who intended to exhibit it in his department store's gallery in Seoul. The 22-foot (6.7m), 6-ton sculpture was based on the 1960s Spastic Society's model, which is of a girl in leg irons holding a collecting box. In Hirst's version the collecting box is shown broken open and is empty.

''Charity'' was exhibited in the centre of Hoxton Square, in front of the White Cube. Inside the gallery downstairs were 12 vitrines representing Jesus's disciples, each case containing mostly gruesome, often blood-stained, items relevant to the particular disciple. At the end was an empty vitrine, representing Christ. Upstairs were four small glass cases, each containing a cow's head stuck with scissors and knives. It has been described as an "extraordinarily spiritual experience" in the tradition of Catholic imagery. At this time Hirst bought back 12 works from Saatchi (a third of Saatchi's holdings of Hirst's early works), via Jay Jopling, for a total fee reported to exceed £8 million. Hirst had sold these pieces to Saatchi in the early 1990s for a considerably smaller sum, his first installations costing less than £10,000.

On 24 May 2004, a fire in the Momart storage warehouse destroyed many works from the Saatchi collection, including 17 of Hirst's, although the sculpture ''Charity'' survived, as it was outside in the builder's yard. That July, Hirst said of Saatchi, "I respect Charles. There's not really a feud. If I see him, we speak, but we were never really drinking buddies."

Hirst designed a cover for the ''Band Aid 20'' charity single featuring the "Grim Reaper" in late 2004. The image showed an African child perched on his knee. This was not to the liking of the record company executives and was replaced by reindeer in the snow standing next to a child.

In December 2004, ''The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'' was sold by Saatchi to American collector Steve Cohen, for $12 million (£6.5 million), in a deal negotiated by Hirst's New York agent, Gagosian. Cohen, a Greenwich hedge fund manager, then donated the work to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Sir Nicholas Serota had wanted to acquire it for the Tate Gallery, and Hugo Swire, Shadow Minister for the Arts, tabled a question to ask if the government would ensure it stayed in the country. Current export regulations do not apply to living artists.

Hirst exhibited 30 paintings at the Gagosian Gallery in New York in March 2005. These had taken 3½ years to complete. They were closely based on photos, mostly by assistants (who were rotated between paintings) but with a final finish by Hirst.

In February 2006, he opened a major show in Mexico, at the Hilario Galguera Gallery, called ''The Death of God, Towards a Better Understanding of Life without God aboard The Ship of Fools''. The exhibition attracted considerable media coverage as Hirst's first show in Latin America. In June that year, he exhibited alongside the work of Francis Bacon (''Triptychs'') at the Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London. Included in the exhibition was the seminal vitrine, ''A Thousand Years'' (1990), and four triptychs: paintings, medicine cabinets and a new formaldehyde work entitled ''The Tranquility of Solitude (For George Dyer)'', influenced by Bacon.

''A Thousand Years'', one of Hirst's most provocative and engaging works, contains an actual life cycle. Maggots hatch inside a white minimal box, turn into flies, then feed on a bloody, severed cow's head on the floor of a claustrophobic glass vitrine. Above, hatched flies buzz around in the closed space. Many meet a violent end in an insect-o-cutor; others survive to continue the cycle. ''A Thousand Years'' was admired by Bacon, who in a letter to a friend a month before he died, wrote about the experience of seeing the work at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Margarita Coppack notes that "It is as if Bacon, a painter with no direct heir in that medium, was handing the baton on to a new generation." Hirst has openly acknowledged his debt to Bacon, absorbing the painter's visceral images and obsessions early on and giving them concrete existence in sculptural form with works like ''A Thousand Years''.

Hirst gained the auction record for the most expensive work of art by a living artist—his ''Lullaby Spring'' in June 2007, when a 3 metre-wide steel cabinet with 6,136 pills sold for 19.2 million dollars to Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar.

In June 2007, ''Beyond Belief'', an exhibition of Hirst's new work, opened at the White Cube gallery in London. The centre-piece, a Memento Mori titled ''For the Love of God'', was a human skull recreated in platinum and adorned with 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats. Approximately £15,000,000 worth of diamonds were used. It was modelled on an 18th century skull, but the only surviving human part of the original is the teeth. The asking price for ''For the Love of God'' was £50,000,000 ($100 million or 75 million euros). It didn't sell outright, and on 30 August 2008 was sold to a consortium that included Hirst himself and his gallery White Cube.

In November 2008, the skull was exhibited at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam next to an exhibition of paintings from the museum collection selected by Hirst. Wim Pijbes, the museum director, said of the exhibition, "It boosts our image. Of course, we do the Old Masters but we are not a 'yesterday institution'. It's for now. And Damien Hirst shows this in a very strong way."

In June 2011, Hirst was selected by the Red Hot Chili Peppers to design the artwork for their fourthcoming album, ''I'm with You'', released in August 2011. According to singer, Anthony Kiedis “Its an image. Its art. Iconic. We didn’t give it it's meaning but it's clearly open to interpretation.”

Works

Beautiful Inside My Head Forever

''Beautiful Inside My Head Forever'' was a two day auction of Hirst's new work at Sotheby's, London, taking place on 15 and 16 September 2008.

It was unusual as he bypassed galleries and sold directly to the public. Writing in ''The Independent'', Cahal Milmo said that the idea of the auction was conceived by Hirst's business advisor of 13 years, Frank Dunphy, who had to overcome Hirst's initial reluctance about the idea.

The sale raised £111 million ($198 million) for 218 items. The auction exceeded expectations, and was ten times higher than the existing Sotheby's record for a single artist sale, occurring as the financial markets plunged. ''The Sunday Times'' said that Hirst's business colleagues had "propped up" the sale prices, making purchases or bids which totalled over half of the £70.5 million spent on the first sale day: Harry Blain of the Haunch of Venison gallery said that bids were entered on behalf of clients wishing to acquire the work.

Cartrain

In December 2008, Hirst contacted the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) demanding action be taken over works containing images of his skull sculpture ''For the Love of God'' made by a 16 year old graffiti artist, Cartrain, and sold on the internet gallery 100artworks.com. On the advice of his gallery, Cartrain handed over the artworks to DACS and forfeited the £200 he had made; he said, "I met Christian Zimmermann [from DACS] who told me Hirst personally ordered action on the matter." In June 2009, copyright lawyer Paul Tackaberry compared the two images and said, "This is fairly non-contentious legally. Ask yourself, what portion of the original–and not just the quantity but also the quality–appears in the new work? If a 'substantial portion' of the 'original' appears in the new work, then that's all you need for copyright infringement... Quantitatively about 80% of the skull is in the second image."

Cartrain walked into Tate Britain in July 2009 and removed a pack of "very rare Faber Castell 1990 Mongol 482 series pencils" from Damien Hirst's pharmacy installation. Cartrain had then made a "fake" police appeal poster stating that the pencils had been "stolen" and that if anyone had any information they should call the police on the phone number advertised. Cartrain was arrested for £500,000 worth of theft.

Painting

In October 2009, Hirst revealed that he had been painting with his own hand in a style influenced by Francis Bacon for several years. According to Sarah Thornton, "For his latest violation of art-world etiquette, he’s enacting the fantasy of being a lonely romantic painter." ''No Love Lost'', his show of these paintings at the Wallace Collection in London received "one of the most unanimously negative responses to any exhibition in living memory". Tom Lubbock of ''The Independent'' called Hirst's work derivative, weak and boring: "Hirst, as a painter, is at about the level of a not-very-promising, first-year art student." Rachel Campbell-Johnston of ''The Times'' said it was "shockingly bad".

Work philosophy

Although Hirst participated physically in the making of early works, he has always needed assistants (Carl Freedman helped with the first vitrines), and now the volume of work produced necessitates a "factory" setup, akin to Andy Warhol's or a Renaissance studio. This has led to questions about authenticity, as was highlighted in 1997, when a spin painting that Hirst said was a "forgery" appeared at sale, although he had previously said that he often had nothing to do with the creation of these pieces.

Hirst said that he only painted five spot paintings himself because, "I couldn't be fucking arsed doing it"; he described his efforts as "shite"—"They're shit compared to ... the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel." He also describes another painting assistant who was leaving and asked for one of the paintings. Hirst told her to, "'make one of your own.' And she said, 'No, I want one of yours.' But the only difference, between one painted by her and one of mine, is the money.'" By February 1999, two assistants had painted 300 spot paintings. Hirst sees the real creative act as being the conception, not the execution, and that, as the progenitor of the idea, he is therefore the artist:

"Art goes on in your head," he says. "If you said something interesting, that might be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down. Art comes from everywhere. It's your response to your surroundings. There are on-going ideas I've been working out for years, like how to make a rainbow in a gallery. I've always got a massive list of titles, of ideas for shows, and of works without titles."

Hirst is also known to volunteer repair work on his projects after a client has made a purchase. For example, this service was offered in the case of the suspended shark purchased by Steven A. Cohen.

Appropriation and plagiarism claims

In 1999, chef Marco Pierre White said Hirst's ''Butterflies On Mars'' had plagiarised his own work, ''Rising Sun'', which he then put on display in the restaurant Quo Vadis in place of the Hirst work.

In 2000, Hirst was sued for breach of copyright over his sculpture, ''Hymn'', which was a , six ton, enlargement of his son Connor's 14" ''Young Scientist Anatomy Set'', designed by Norman Emms, 10,000 of which are sold a year by Hull-based toy manufacturer Humbrol for £14.99 each. Hirst paid an undisclosed sum to two charities, Children Nationwide and the Toy Trust in an out-of-court settlement, as well as a "good will payment" to Emms. The charitable donation was less than Emms had hoped for. Hirst also agreed to restrictions on further reproductions of his sculpture.

In 2006, a graphic artist and former research associate at the Royal College of Art, Robert Dixon, author of 'Mathographics', alleged that Hirst's print ''Valium'' had "unmistakable similarities" to one of his own designs. Hirst's manager contested this by explaining the origin of Hirst's piece was from a book ''The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry'' (1991)—not realising this was one place where Dixon's design had been published.

In 2007, artist John LeKay said he was a friend of Damien Hirst between 1992 and 1994 and had given him a "marked-up duplicate copy" of a Carolina Biological Supply Company catalogue, adding "You have no idea how much he got from this catalogue. The Cow Divided is on page 647 – it is a model of a cow divided down the centre, like his piece." This refers to Hirst’s work ''Mother and Child, Divided''—a cow and calf cut in half and placed in formaldehyde. LeKay also claimed Hirst had copied the idea of ''For the Love of God'' from LeKay's crystal skulls made in 1993, and said, "I would like Damien to acknowledge that 'John really did inspire the skull and influenced my work a lot.'" Copyright lawyer Paul Tackaberry reviewed images of LeKay's and Hirst's work and saw no basis for copyright infringement claims in a legal sense.

In 2010, in ''The Jackdaw'', Charles Thomson said there were 15 cases where Hirst had plagiarised other work. Examples cited were Joseph Cornell who had created a similar piece to Hirst's ''Pharmacy'' in 1943; Lori Precious who had made stained-glass window effects from butterfly wings from 1994, a number of years before Hirst; and John LeKay who did a crucified sheep in 1987. Thomson said that Hirst's spin paintings and installation of a ball on a jet of air were not original, since similar pieces had been made in the 1960s. A spokesperson for Hirst said the article was "poor journalism" and that Hirst would be making a "comprehensive" rebuttal of the claims.

Hirst's own collection

In November 2006, Hirst was curator of ''In the darkest hour there may be light'', shown at the Serpentine Gallery, London, the first public exhibition of (a small part of) his own collection. Now known as the ‘murderme collection’, this significant accumulation of works spans several generations of international artists, from well-known figures such as Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin, Richard Prince and Andy Warhol, to artists in earlier stages of their careers such as his former assistant Rachel Howard, David Choe, Nicholas Lumb, Tom Ormond and Dan Baldwin.

“As a human being, as you go through life, you just do collect. It was that sort of entropic collecting that I found myself interested in, just amassing stuff while you’re alive.” – Damien Hirst, 2006.

Hirst is currently restoring the Grade I listed Toddington Manor, near Cheltenham, where he intends to eventually house the complete collection.

In 2007, Hirst donated the 1991 sculptures "The Acquired Inability to Escape" and "Life Without You" and the 2002 work "Who is Afraid of the Dark?" (fly painting), and an exhibition copy from 2007 of "Mother and Child Divided" to the Tate Museum from his own personal collection of works.

Restaurant ventures

Hirst had a short-lived partnership with chef Marco Pierre White in the restaurant "Quo Vadis". His best-known restaurant involvement was Pharmacy, located in Notting Hill, London, which closed in September 2003. Although one of the owners, Hirst had only leased his art work to the restaurant, so he was able to retrieve and sell it at a Sotheby's auction, earning over £11 million. Some of the work had been adapted, e.g. by signing it prior to the auction.

Hirst opened and currently helps to run a seafood restaurant, 11 The Quay, in the seaside town of Ilfracombe in the UK.

9/11 controversy

Following the 11 September attacks, often known as "9/11", Hirst told BBC News Online: "You've got to hand it to them on some level, because they've achieved something which nobody would have thought possible, especially to a country as big as America. So on one level they need congratulating, which a lot of people shy away from, which is a very dangerous thing." On 18 September 2002, he "apologised unreservedly" for the remarks.

Charitable work

Hirst is a supporter of the indigenous rights organisation, Survival International. On September 2008, Hirst donated the work, ''Beautiful Love Survival'', at the Sotheby’s London sale, ''Beautiful Inside My Head Forever'', to raise money for this organisation. Later, he also contributed his writing to the book, ''We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples'', released in October 2009, in support of Survival. The book explores the existence and threats of indigenous cultures around the world.

Personal life

Hirst lives with his Californian girlfriend, Maia Norman, by whom he has three sons: Connor Ojala, (born 1995, Kensington and Chelsea, London), Cassius Atticus (born 2000, North Devon) and Cyrus Joe (born 2005, Westminster, London). Since the birth of Connor, he has spent most of his time at his remote farmhouse, a 300 year old former inn, near Combe Martin, Devon. Hirst and Norman are not married, although Hirst refers to Norman as his "common-law wife". The artist owns a large compound in Baja, Mexico which serves as a part-time residence and art studio. The studio employs several artists that carry out Hirst's projects.

Hirst has admitted serious drug and alcohol problems during a ten year period from the early 1990s: "I started taking cocaine and drink... I turned into a babbling fucking wreck." During this time he was renowned for his wild behaviour and eccentric acts, including for example, putting a cigarette in the end of his penis in front of journalists. He frequented the high profile Groucho Club in Soho, London, and was banned on occasion for his behaviour.

Net worth

Hirst is reputed to be the richest living artist to date. In 2009, the annually collated chart of the wealthiest individuals in Britain and Ireland, Sunday Times Rich List, placed Hirst at joint number 238 with a net worth of £235m. Hirst's wealth was valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List, hence Damien Hirst is Britain’s wealthiest artist.

In September 2008, he took an unprecedented move for a living artist by selling a complete show, ''Beautiful Inside My Head Forever'', at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries. The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for ''The Golden Calf'', an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.

In several instances since 1999, the sources for certain of Hirst's works have been challenged and contested, both in written articles by journalists and artists, and, in one instance, through legal proceedings which led to an out-of-court settlement.

Critical responses to conceptual work

Positive

Hirst has been praised in recognition of his celebrity and the way this has galvanised interest in the arts, raising the profile of British art and helping to (re)create the image of "Cool Britannia." In the mid-1990s, the then-Heritage Secretary, Virginia Bottomley recognised him as "a pioneer of the British art movement", and even sheep farmers were pleased he had raised increased interest in British lamb. Janet Street-Porter praised his originality, which had brought art to new audiences and was the "art-world equivalent of the Oasis concerts at Earl's Court".

Andres Serrano is also known for shocking work and understands that contemporary fame does not necessarily equate to lasting fame, but backs Hirst: "Damien is very clever ... First you get the attention ... Whether or not it will stand the test of time, I don't know, but I think it will." Sir Nicholas Serota commented, "Damien is something of a showman ... It is very difficult to be an artist when there is huge public and media attention. Because Damien Hirst has been built up as a very important figure, there are plenty of sceptics ready to put the knife in."

Tracey Emin said: "There is no comparison between him and me; he developed a whole new way of making art and he's clearly in a league of his own. It would be like making comparisons with Warhol." Despite Hirst's insults to him, Saatchi remains a staunch supporter, labelling Hirst a genius and stating:

Negative

There has been equally vehement opposition to Hirst's work. Norman Tebbit, commenting on the ''Sensation'' exhibition, wrote "Have they gone stark raving mad? The works of the 'artist' are lumps of dead animals. There are thousands of young artists who didn't get a look in, presumably because their work was too attractive to sane people. Modern art experts never learn." The view of the tabloid press was summed up by a ''Daily Mail'' headline: "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all." The ''Evening Standard'' art critic, Brian Sewell, said simply, "I don't think of it as art ... It is no more interesting than a stuffed pike over a pub door. Indeed there may well be more art in a stuffed pike than a dead sheep."

The Stuckist art group was founded in 1999 with a specific anti-Britart agenda by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish; Hirst is one of their main targets. They wrote (referring to a Channel 4 programme on Hirst):

In 2003, under the title ''A Dead Shark Isn't Art'', the Stuckism International Gallery exhibited a shark which had first been put on public display two years before Hirst's by Eddie Saunders in his Shoreditch shop, JD Electrical Supplies. Thomson asked, "If Hirst’s shark is recognised as great art, then how come Eddie’s, which was on exhibition for two years beforehand, isn’t? Do we perhaps have here an undiscovered artist of genius, who got there first, or is it that a dead shark isn’t art at all?" The Stuckists suggested that Hirst may have got the idea for his work from Saunders' shop display.

In 2008 leading art critic Robert Hughes said Hirst was responsible for the decline in contemporary art. Hughes said Hirst's work was "tacky" and "absurd" in a 2008 TV documentary called ''The Mona Lisa Curse'' made by Hughes for Channel 4 in Britain. Hughes said it was "a little miracle" that the value of £5 million was put on Hirst's ''Virgin Mother'' (a 35 foot bronze statue), which was made by someone "with so little facility". Hughes called Hirst's shark in formaldehyde "the world's most over-rated marine organism" and attacked the artist for "functioning like a commercial brand", making the case that Hirst and his work proved that financial value was now the only meaning that remained for art.

Artworks

His works include:

''In and Out of Love'' (1991), an installation of potted plants, caterpillars and monochrome canvases painted with sugar solution and glue. There were also (in a separate room) tables with ashtrays containing used cigarette butts. Eventually, the caterpillars metamorphose into butterflies, and the insects become fixed to the surfaces of the canvases. In its now fixed form, the work is held by the Yale Center for British Art and is on regular exhibit there.

''The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'' (1991), a tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde. This piece was one of the works in his Turner Prize nomination show.

''A Thousand Years'' (1991), composed of a vitrine with a glass division. In one half is the severed head of a cow on the floor; in the other is an insect electrocutor. Maggots introduced into the vitrine feed off the cow and then develop into flies that are killed by the electrocutor.

''Pharmacy'' (1992), a life-size recreation of a chemist's shop.

''Amonium Biborate'' (1993)

''Away from the Flock'' (1994), composed of a dead sheep in a glass tank of formaldehyde.

''Arachidic Acid'' (1994) an early example of Hirst's spot paintings.

''Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything'' (1996) multiple cows in a line head-to-tail, divided cross-sectionally into equal rectangular tanks of formaldehyde, equally-spaced, each containing about of the animals.

''Beautiful Axe , Slash, Gosh Painting'' (1999) Signed on the reverse. Gloss household paint on canvas

''Hymn'' (1999), a scaled-up replica of his son Connor's toy: a basic anatomical model of the male human body. The sculpture is tall and composed of painted bronze.

''Mother and Child Divided'', composed of a cow and a calf sliced in half in a glass tank of formaldehyde.

''Two Fucking and Two Watching'', includes a rotting cow and bull. This work was banned from exhibition in New York by public health officials.

''God'', composed of a cabinet containing pharmaceutical products.

''The Virgin Mother'', a massive sculpture depicting a pregnant female human, with layers removed from one side to expose the fœtus, muscle and tissue layers, and skull underneath. This work was purchased by real estate magnate Aby Rosen for display on the plaza of one of his properties, the Lever House, in New York City.

''Breath'' (2001), a 45-second film of Samuel Beckett's play for the ''Beckett on Film'' series.

''Painting-By-Numbers'' (2001), a do-it-yourself painting kit comprising a stamped canvas, brushes, and 90 paint tins in plexiglass designed to make one infamous 'dot' painting. Part of the exhibition was binned by a gallery cleaner who mistook it for trash.

''The Stations of the Cross'' (2004), a series of twelve photographs depicting the final moments of Jesus Christ, made in collaboration with the photographer David Bailey.

''The Wrath of God'' (2005), a new version of a shark in formaldehyde.

''The Inescapable Truth'', (2005). Glass, steel, dove, human skull and formaldehyde solution.

''The Sacred Heart of Jesus'', (2005). Perspex, bull's heart, silver, assorted needles, scalpels, and formaldehyde solution.

''Faithless'', (2005). Butterflies and household gloss on canvas

''The Hat Makes de Man'', (2005). Painted bronze that simulates wood and hats.

''The Death of God'', (2006). Household gloss on canvas, human skull, knife, coin and sea shells. This painting, which is a part of a group of others which were made in Mexico, are believed to be "the beginning of Hirst's Mexican period".

''For The Love of God'', a platinum cast of an 18th century skull covered in 8,601 diamonds.

''Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain'', a black calf tied to a pole pierced with arrows. The calf is in a tank of formaldehyde. Performer George Michael has recently purchased this calf and has made it Hirst's fourth most expensive piece.

''Temple'' (2008), a massive painted bronze sculpture of a man, with similar treatment to "Virgin Mother", above, reminiscent of models used by anatomy students, with revealed organs and internal structure. This work was exhibited outside the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco in 2010, during a summer retrospective of the artist's work.

See also

Appropriation (art)

Neo-conceptual art

Conceptual art

Spin art

References

External links

Official Damien Hirst Website

A Conversation with Damien Hirst

OtherCriteria – Damien Hirst's publishing company

Artist's profile at White Cube, including examples of work

Damien Hirst at Gagosian Gallery

Gordon Burn and Damien Hirst in conversation

''Life and death and Damien Hirst'' Channel 4 TV micro site

Video of Hirst's 9/11 comments on BBC

Damien Hirst's ''Pharmacy'' on Tate interactive site

"The Art Damien Hirst Stole" by Charles Thomson from ''The Jackdaw''

Damien Hirst: Print Maker, Bowes Museum"

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London Category:British curators Category:British mixed media artists Category:Conceptual artists Category:Contemporary painters Category:English painters Category:People from Bristol Category:British restaurateurs Category:Turner Prize winners

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