Self Portrait: Essay Research- Andy Warhol

After today getting the book "Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close-Up" which was written by his right hand Bob Colacello, worker from the famous "The Factory" and editor of the "INTER/view", I sat down this afternoon and start to research how the artist career influences all his work, so to situate the picture of the "Andy Warhol as drag" in time i started to read some chapters of the book, and i found out ,and with sadness, I say how the decline of the artist's career is influenced by his own life and his mental health.

Andy Warhol was a very reserved person, that's the reason we hardly see any of his intimate life into his work, and also we barely know much about him apart from his huge success in the Pop Art Movement and his extravagant parties. But when you arrive to a time when you are a 53-year old artist that didn't advance with time and didn't get the latest fashion you start to fall behind, all of the that and the non acceptance of becoming old led Warhol to a mental breakdown, and that situates us in time of those self portrait as drag queen pictures from the 80s. Pictures that were described by Nicholas Baume as "based on negation and disappearance, the primary tropes of Warhol's myth. Warhol's drag is a failure, his masculine characteristics are ill-disguised, his wigs absurd, his looks more stunned than stunning. Indeed for Warhol, the failed performance was always the most fascinating". but in my opinion, what he was trying to show was his fragility as man, a neglacted man.

I chose carefully these 2 pictures to show the difference of 2 Warhols, 1st the 60s one and later the 80s one .
The first picture, shows us Warhol being the peak of his Avant-Garde, when his works were accepted by th public as masterpieces of modern art and the second on shows us a rather fragile human being, with a confused look in his eyes.



Also, is better if i stop otherwise ill write the essay here, just got really excited...

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