Andy Warhol was here
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He was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and died on Tebruary 22, 1987 at age 58 in New York City.
He was an artist, film director, and producer and became an icon in the genre called 'pop art' which flourished in the tacky 1960s and 1970s.
His education was completed at the Carnegie Institute of Technology at Carnegie Mellon University where he prepared for those projects in printmaking, photography, painting, and cinema for which he would become famous.
He was one to experiment profusely with artistic expression. He made money in advertising, and played on celebrity culture becoming quite the mixed media virtuoso.
He was born and raised in Pittsburgh was became a successful commercial illustrator. He did exhibitions early on which cultivated interest in his work and a reputation in art circles where he became known as an influential and controversial artist.
He had a studio in New York called The Factory which attracted intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, persons of artistic interests with little interest in conventional standards of behavior, Hollywood celebrities, and patrons who funded his work.
He promoted a clique of various persons who became known as Warhol superstars who were such only because he declared them so. He is also credited as originating the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame".
He managed and produced an experimental rock band called The Velvet Underground and founded Interview magazine. He was a prolific author and wrote many books, the most significant of which were those about his personal philosophy.
He lived openly as a gay man before the gay liberation movement. In June 1968, he was almost killed by radical feminist and author Valerie Solanas who popped a cap in him inside his own studio.
Andy Warhol died of cardiac arrhythmia in February 1987 at the age of 58 following gallbladder surgery.
I was never a fan. I did recognize him and many in his circle of friends with their Studio 54 mentality which was beyond my experiential inventory. Also the gay thing would have been problematic for a red neck US Navy sailor such as that I became.