Andy Warhol

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Mark B. Pohlad

Like his films, Warhol's untimely death seemed anticlimactic, even banal. He died of complications after a fairly routine operation on February 22, 1987. The auction of his possessions, in itself a cultural event, revealed that Warhol had always been an impassioned collector. His extensive collection of folk art had been exhibited in 1977 at the Museum of Modern Art. His influence as an arbiter of taste continued even after his death. The sale of his possessions, including his collections of all manner of kitschy art and furnishings, influenced the retro styles of the late 1980s and 1990s. Today the Estate of Andy Warhol handles his artworks and their reproduction.

The meaning of Warhol's art has been endlessly debated and alternately seen to be tremendously deep or mind-numbingly superficial. The artist often mystified interviewers by affecting a profound detachment--often to the point of boredom. In one early interview the artist explained, "If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it." Warhol will always be associated with those aspects of 1960s popular culture that involve outrageous behavior, a sensationalist media, and the art world as glitzy big business. His most famous pronouncement, "in the future everybody, will be famous for fifteen minutes," seems an accurate observation about the media's insatiable appetite for creating quickly consumable media targets.