An art millionaire, one of the pillars of the global art community, an extravagant secular character and a "star maker", Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 in the family of a miner and a cleaner, impoverished emigrants from Austria-Hungary who moved overseas in search of better share. Their son managed to embody " american dream» to life - replicating its main symbols in her works, from Marilyn Monroe to the dollar bill. Warhol promised every person 15 minutes of fame in the future - and, three decades after his death, we are witnessing a fulfilled prophecy on YouTube channels, on Instagram and Facebook. So much has been written about Warhol himself and his art that it is enough for more than one bookcase - or for a decent-sized hard drive ..

holy place

Both Ukraine and Slovakia have been claiming the right to call Warhol their own for many years: the artist’s parents, Ondrej and Yulia-Justyna Warhola, emigrated across the ocean from the village of Mikova in the Presov region of present-day Slovakia (until 1918 - Austria-Hungary). By nationality, they were Rusyns, an ethnic minority, which in modern Ukraine considered part of the titular nation.

However, these disputes, of course, are groundless - Warhol was an exemplary, one hundred percent American, and it is the States that should rightfully be considered his homeland - both "passport" and artistic. Unless, in his religiosity, carefully concealed during his lifetime, the artist remained true to his roots - from childhood he was in the bosom of the Greek Catholic Church of the Byzantine rite and, which few knew, zealously attended mass in the Cathedral of St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan (according to the rector, he first noticed that a strange parishioner was being baptized in the Orthodox manner, and only then he realized who it was). According to the artist's relatives, he was especially proud that he financed his nephew's studies at the seminary.

And in the works of Warhol themselves, art critics see not only a material, but also a spiritual component. “Warhol’s consumer imagery at first glance seems to be occupied only by the outside world. modern culture, up to the complete exclusion inner life faith. But there is also an insistent craving for something more, a thirst that is especially evident in the last Self-Portrait and in the famous cans of Campbell soup. To see this religious component, we must regain a sense of the sacred - the use of material things as paths to the divine, to the penetration of eternity through time and space, ”wrote a prominent researcher contemporary art, critic and theologian James Romaine.

Such a view may seem paradoxical and even shocking, but Romaine offers compelling evidence. He considers the notorious soup cans (one of the dominant motifs for Warhol - he created several versions of his famous work 1962) as a self-portrait of the artist. “Banks, like Warhol's public image, are cold, made of metal by a machine, impenetrable. But the self-portrait is complemented by their content; in reality, this is the most important part of the soup can, but it has little to do with appearance banks. Soup, a warm source of nutrients, is a sensitive substance that will not survive without protective packaging. Likewise, Warhol's faith is hidden under the imagery of a supermarket, ”Romaine concludes.

Next to God

It is worth noting that one of recent works Warhol's work was closely associated with religious themes - a series of silk-screen prints based on the "Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci. However, here the artist rather showed a different perspective of the existence of sacred art in a secular, profane world, supplementing da Vinci's composition, replicated in millions of photos and reproductions, with advertising logos of famous commercial brands.

As Claudia Schmukli, who curated the first U.S. exhibition of the series, noted, “This seemingly heretical disrespect reflects the inevitable transformation of a deeply religious work into a cliché whose spiritual message has been drowned out by endless repetition. Being last episode Warhol, " The Last Supper"serves as a powerful reminder of the principles that filled his entire artistic activity."

It can be seen that the manner of Warhol as a portrait painter, who maniacally removed all skin defects and wrinkles from his models, is explained not only by the desire to “make them beautiful”, but also by the desire for the absolute, for the image perfect person who washed away all sins from himself (not excluding the immanent original). In this light, it becomes clearer and famous saying about "15 minutes of fame for everyone" - fame gives at least the illusion of immortality; for Warhol, this symbolized, according to some researchers, the transformation of an ordinary, unremarkable layman into a creature approaching the divine order.

Warhol may have associated himself in part with Christ - not in a messianic context, obviously heretical for a good Christian, but in the sense in which the famous theologian Richard Niebuhr in his book Christ and Culture (1951) compared the mystical work of an artist "transubstantiating culture”, with the sacrament of the Eucharist, when ordinary bread and wine are turned into Holy Gifts.

And even the stunt known to almost everyone thanks to the film by Oliver Stone with the golden phone “for talking with God” donated to Jim Morrison can be seen outside the cynical wrapper. On the one hand, a golden telephone serves as a symbol of power and wealth - it is not without reason that such devices were loved by Latin American dictators. On the other hand, the first known telephone made of gold was presented by American Catholics as a gift to Pope Pius XI in 1930 (the device was used by Roman bishops until the end of the pontificate of John XXIII in 1963). So Warhol's gift can be explained in different ways (by the way, according to Morrison's biographer Stephen Davis, only the dial was gold on the phone - again a field for interpretation).

However, Warhol himself did not really like to explain - he left this occupation to critics, art historians, philosophers, and the general public, who willingly gossiped about his work, and about his extravagant outfits, friends, and semi-legendary escapades. As almost all of Warhol's biographers note, in reality he was practically not interested in sex, drugs, or even money - he craved fame. And he got it in full.

The expression comes from famous phrase Andy Warhol: "In the future, everyone can be world famous for 15 minutes."

Any time can be divided into fifteen minutes

Most often in questions there is a construction in which it is calculated how many times the character of the question received 15 minutes of fame.

[Moderator: Pause before the word "picasso" in the first sentence and emphasize this word in your voice so that it does not sound like Picasso is being measured.] John Madden suggests introducing the unit of measurement "picasso". It is estimated that Picasso himself had about a million Picassos during his lifetime. Answer what surname we replaced with Picasso.

Answer: Warhol.

A comment: One Warhol is proposed to call 15 minutes of fame. One day of fame is 96 Warhols, a million Warhols is about 30 years of fame.

At the 2004 European Championship, Vyacheslav Malafeev rode as a substitute goalkeeper. However, at the end of the first half of the second match of three played by Russia, the main goalkeeper Ovchinnikov was sent off. As a result, according to the remark of one sports fan, THEY took place, and almost tenfold. Name them in three words.

Answer: 15 minutes of fame.

A comment: He defended the remaining 135 minutes, and there was stoppage time.

Source: Matches Portugal - Russia, Russia - Greece.

In his debut match for Manchester United, Cristiano Ronaldo showed himself brilliantly, entering the field in the 75th minute. Journalist Igor Poroshin, urging not to rush into enthusiastic assessments of the Portuguese game, mentioned contemporary artist. Name this artist.

Answer: Andy Warhole.

A comment: Promised each person 15 minutes of fame. In this case, from 75 to 90 minutes.

Source: Newspaper "Izvestia", August 2003.

Jean Baudrillard, commenting famous saying, writes that if we had a whole OH, then we stole three-quarters from other people. Name it in two words.

Answer: Glory hour.

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Visitors to the Whitney Museum's upcoming exhibition will not only see these iconic Warhol works, but also a host of exhibits that can upend the iconic artist's creative range...
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Andy Warhol: 15 minutes of fame plus eternity

On display at Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Oleg Sulkin

Cans of Campbell soup. Multi-colored series of portraits of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Giant image of Mao Zedong.

Visitors to the opening on Monday 12 November at the Museum american art The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibitions will not only see these canonical works by Andy Warhol, but also a host of exhibits that experts say could revolutionize the creative range of this iconic 20th century pop art pioneer. The exhibition is called "Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again"("Andy Warhol: From A to B and back again").

As emphasized by director of the Whitney Museum Adam Weinberg, addressing reporters at a press preview of the exhibition, this is the first Warhol exhibition in the United States and the world of this magnitude in the last thirty years. It occupies the entire fifth and third floors of the museum building, as well as a large hall on the first floor, which houses a series of portraits of his celebrities and friends. In total, the exposition presents approximately 350 works from dozens of museums and private collections. Observers believe that the exhibition will break attendance records for the Whitney Museum, and the tail of the queue will stretch along Gansevoort Street, which is overlooked by the museum's facade.

"Warhol is amazingly modern," said Adam Weinberg. - He provided a visionary distinction between mass media and commercial commodity market as new mechanisms that open up previously unseen possibilities for art. If Warhol lived in the current era of the selfie, I think he would feel very comfortable. Came from a poor family of immigrants from of Eastern Europe, who has become an insider and, at the same time, an outsider in the world of modern culture, representing several marginal subcultures at once, he personifies the whole new era, the contours of which he outlined with his vision.

Photo: John Angelillo/UPI

Weird in a wig

Warhol's productivity was legendary, he left behind thousands of works. Let's say he was enthusiastic about a particular person, and in a short period of time he created a series of portraits in different techniques and different sizes. There were people in whom he did not lose interest over the years, for example, Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis and Elvis Presley. The same goes for certain artifacts of ideology, popular culture, and consumer goods, such as the hammer and sickle as a symbol of communism, the Coca Cola and Campbell brands.

The main curator of the exhibition, Donna De Salvo, faced a difficult task - to choose from the many similar works of the master one or two of the most representative. She says she "wants to separate myth from man."

When Donna DeSalvo first met Warhol in 1985, she was working at the Dia art foundation, and he was, the curator notes, "an extravagant artist who wore a funny wig."

"People didn't pay attention back then. great attention on his work,” says DeSalvo, who is now Associate Director of the Whitney Museum and has hosted five Warhol exhibitions. “He was considered a strange guy who staggers around vernissages.”

Andy Warhol was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, in a family of emigrants from Czechoslovakia, Carpathian Rusyns by nationality, who professed Catholicism. He was very close to his mother Julia. Warhol moved from Pittsburgh to New York in 1949, his mother followed him. She lived in his house until 1970.

Some of Warhol's relatives came to the vernissage, including his nephew James Warhola, an artist and illustrator of children's books, and his niece Madalene Warhola. In a short interview with Voice of America, Madalene spoke about her relationship with Andy. “He was very kind to us,” she said. - I never would have thought in my childhood that he would become very famous. Coming to us, Andy gave toys that he liked to play with. Sometimes he offered us his paintings as a gift, and we said - "better toys."

Photo by Oleg Sulkin

Drawings and collages

In the 1950s, after Institute of Technology Carnegie, Warhol began his professional career as a magazine illustrator. In addition, he painted his friends and acquaintances with pen, ink and gouache. These drawings are thin, airy, elegant, some frankly homoerotic.

The artist both then and later did not hide the fact that he was gay, and demonstrated his sexual inclinations in many paintings, drawings and films (unlike, say, two other pioneers of pop art, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg). This frankness created many difficulties for him. Indeed, in those years in the United States, homosexuality was not only considered a violation generally accepted morality and deviation of the psyche, but was also a criminal offense.

One wall of the exhibition is entirely occupied by a collage with pasted designer models of shoes, decorated with gold. They bear the names of some of his idols: Elvis Presley, the sex symbol of the 30s actress Mae West and the first transgender actress Christine Jorgensen.

Warhol received his first commercial order in 1963 from patron Ethel Scull. He depicted her on 63 colored panels, based on several photographs of her taken in a street photo booth. Silk screen printing using acrylic paints became his favorite technique, and he remained faithful to it until the end of his days.

One of the halls is devoted to the theme "Death and Disasters". One job is a mess of bloodied limbs, another is an electric chair for executions of suicide bombers in the infamous Sing Sing prison. But the most impressive piece in the series is "Suicide," a collage of repeated shots of the lifeless body of a 23-year-old accountant. She committed suicide by jumping from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.

Photo: John Angelillo/UPI

Celebrities and more

Andy Warhol, underground and Mass culture are indissoluble concepts. He was friends with many rock musicians and show business stars. Known for his album covers for cult group Velvet Underground and for rock idols Rolling Stones. Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nureyev, Edisabeth Taylor, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Niko, Elton John, Rod Stewart and others were regulars at the trendy nightclub Studio 54 in New York, the main "motor" of which was Andy Warhol. Another haven of bohemia and star party there was Warhol's "Factory" - his studio in Manhattan, where he worked and where he willingly invited his friends.

The faces of celebrities such as Aretha Franklin, John Travolta and Nancy Reagan appear on the covers of Interview magazine.

The grandiose collage-installation “Wallpaper for Cows” is a manifestation of a characteristic trend in Warhol's work, when he was looking for a deep aesthetic meaning in the repetition of a certain image. However, as art experts note, much in his work was deliberately outrageous and bantering, often with a fair pinch of irony and sarcasm.

It is no coincidence that in the mid-60s, he programmatically abandoned painting and made silver, helium-filled pillows for happenings, which are also on display at the Whitney exhibition.

Warhol is rightfully considered one of the most radical experimenters in the field of cinema. Almost the entire third floor of the exhibition is occupied by video monitors with headphones, and visitors will be able to see almost all the films created by the artist. In a separate screening room, you can see his early short films, mostly screen tests. One of the mini-movies showed Warhol slowly eating a cheeseburger and then staring long and hard at the camera.

Photo: John Angelillo/UPI

Myth and camouflage

Another favorite motive of Warhol was the rethinking of newspaper aesthetics. The artist mythologized the momentary - the craving of the press for scandalous, frightening sensations like disasters, crashes, murders. One of the most characteristic works of this plan - "129 died in the plane", which is based on the front page of the New York Mirror newspaper in 1962, dedicated to the largest plane crash at that time.

In 1968, Warhol himself experienced an act of brutal violence. Radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who starred in his films, shot him three times, seriously injuring him. He was on the verge of death, but survived and continued to make art.

In 1986, a year before his death, he created giant canvas"The Last Supper in camouflage", based on the famous monumental painting Leonardo da Vinci and, as it were, “covering” it with protective matter, through which fragments of the original are visible. According to art historians, this work is a kind of meditation on the topics of AIDS, faith, sexuality and death.

Warhol died in New York in 1987 at the age of 58. He died in his sleep after an operation to remove his gallbladder.

The artist's statement is widely known that in the future, each person will have their own "15 minutes of fame." His "15 minutes of fame" he turned, it seems, into infinity.

After all, today Warhol is the most expensive artist on the planet. In 2013, the painting "Silver Crash (Double Trouble)" was sold at Sotheby's for $105.4 million. Experts believe that no lower prices are achieved through private transactions, which, as a rule, are not advertised publicly. From 1985 to 2010, the average auction prices for his works increased by an average of 3,400 percent, which is a record for the global art market.

Photo: John Angelillo/UPI

The Andy Warhol exhibition at the Whitney Museum will end on March 31 next year and will move to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and Art Institute Chicago.

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014

Glory A captivating substance that pushes many to commit often reckless acts, in order to then bathe in its rays. Glory can be good and bad, but is the difference so important when attention and fame are provided in both cases. How to measure glory? The authors of the film "15 Minutes" claim that in modern world fame is measured by time on the TV screen

The picture was directed by a little-known director John Hertzfield, who had previously worked mainly on TV and had only a successful crime film Two Days in the Valley (1996) in his luggage. His new tape begins with two subjects from Eastern Europe arriving in the US. Looks like classic brothers from the 90s in worn leather jackets and gangster faces. When asked about the purpose of the visit to the States, one answered: "to spend a vacation," and the second "for the cinema." Movie lover Oleg Razgul (Oleg Taktarov) turned out to be Russian and he really did not deceive passport control, saying that he was a fan of director Frank Capra and wanted to make a movie he did this, first of all stealing a video camera from a nearby store. But the second, a Czech by nationality, Emil Slovak (Karen Rodel), obviously came not to relax and have fun, but to make money, and the so-called easy money. Czechs and Russians don't get along very well, but since they don't know anyone in a foreign country, they have to stick together. At first glance, the brothers are not rich in mind and, in terms of working methods, rather resemble scumbags, but the first impression is deceptive, since the guys know their business. The Russians set themselves the goal of succeeding in short term and at any cost, as a result of which they raise the ears of the whole of New York. The Russian-Czech mentality and irrationality of thinking baffle the entire New York police. It becomes obvious that behind the half-gangster-half-drug addict appearance and some abnormal behavior of the couple, there is a remarkable ingenuity and an inquisitive mind. They quickly figure out what's what and find loopholes (yes, whole holes) in the American judicial and criminal system. And most importantly, from local television, they discover the most fast way become famous and earn.

"We'll be free, rich and famous"

Mark Chapman killed John Lennon and became famous. Lee Harvey Oswald became famous for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Charles Manson and his "family" became famous for the murder of Roman Polanski's wife Oleg and Emil very soon realized that by killing a famous person, you can quickly get your portion of fame. And than famous person the more glory. And where there is fame, there is money, because such stories are like hot cakes for the media. The "Russians" decided to make a film about their bloody adventures and sell it on television - everything ingenious is simple.

“What did you dream about? How I run into a burning building, throw open the door, run through the smoke and save the child”

In addition to two immigrants from Europe, there are many others in the film interesting characters. And all of them are united by one thing the thirst for glory. NYC's top cop Eddie Fleming (Robert De Niro) enjoys the glory. Collaborating with television, he made himself a real screen star, but this played with him in the end. bad joke. Fire Marshal Jody Worsow (Edward Burns) only dreams of such fame, so he takes Fleming's example in everything. "Dirty" journalist Robert Hawkins (Kelsey Grammer) has made a name for himself by chasing the bloodiest stories—he'll do nothing to boost his show's ratings. Fleming's girlfriend and part-time reporter Nicolette Karas (Melina Karakaredes) is Hawkins' biggest rival for TV stardom, but she has a cleaner way of working. The tape breaks into parallel action, giving each character their portion of glory.

“People want to see blood. Blood is success"

In fact, behind the criminal plot, the author hid a real satire on the media and American society generally. Hertzfield defiantly pokes fun at the media, showing them in the most unsightly light of vultures circling over corpses. The director pokes fun at the executive branch, showing the police unarmed in the fight against two psychos acting outside the box and hiding behind the imperfect laws that the cops are forced to comply with. The director openly laughs at American laws that allow the criminal to go unpunished and the innocent to be punished. And of course, throughout the film, he makes fun of people's vanity, which makes them do stupid things. The apogee of all this is the ending of the picture, filmed in tragicomedy genre A non-trivial plot, an unusual story, woven from different genres, subtle humor, non-standard characters and shooting style - all this did not go well for the film, which, with a considerable budget of 60 million and an R rating, predictably failed at the box office. Not every American was to the taste of exposing the imperfection of the model of their society.

The cast of the film is quite interesting. Robert De Niro plays here far from main violin, but he performs his “exits” brilliantly as always. Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov are good and convincing. The first, with his appearance, was destined to play persons of Russian-Jewish origin, which he subsequently did, playing, for example, the prototype of Abramovich in Richevsky's Rock and Roller. Taktarov finally got his 15 minutes of fame, although his role here is laconic. Edward Burns is not the first to play typical idealists the sad-eyed actor is good at such roles. Some famous actors performed a cameo in this tape. So, a girl who looks like Charlize Theron turns out to be Charlize Theron, and the features of Vladimir Mashkov are guessed in Russian plumbing. But Kim Cattrall cannot be confused with anyone, since she is in her usual way. It can also be recognized in little boy, who in the fire scene shouts in Russian “Save me!” Anton Yelchin, but this actor was not yet widely known at that time.

The director, and the cameraman along with him, “play” with the camera in a number of scenes, applying various effects to the picture, but they do it exceptionally well, purposefully separating the main shooting from the shooting of Taktarov’s character. In addition, in such moments, sounds are interestingly superimposed, which gives the film a touch of a thriller. The fire scene turned out to be exceptionally effective both in conception and in execution - tense and realistic. In general, there is dynamism in the action, and scenes devoid of dynamics contain interesting and far from passing dialogues.

Few appreciated the idea of ​​the person who wrote this story and made a film based on it. John Hertzfeld filmed an unusual satire on American society in uniform crime detective, which received only a crushing failure at the box office and mostly negative criticism. But fans of smart and unusual cinema, the picture "15 Minutes" should be of interest.

About love and loneliness

I don't see anything wrong with being alone. I'm fine alone. People greatly exaggerate the meaning of their love. It's not always that important. The same applies to life - people also exaggerate its significance.

The biggest price you have to pay for love is the constant presence of someone next to you, and being alone is much better.

People get so boring when they get together. One must remain alone in order to develop individual characteristics that make people interesting.

About people and fame

The person may laugh or cry. Whenever you cry, you could laugh - the choice is yours.

As soon as you stop wanting something, you immediately get it.

Sometimes people let the same problem ruin their lives for years, and in the meantime they can just say, "So what." This is one of my favorite expressions: "So what?" "Mom didn't love me." So what. "My husband doesn't want me." So what. "I've succeeded, but I'm still alone." So what.

Everyone is entitled to 15 minutes of fame.

Pele is one of the few who refutes my theory: instead of fifteen minutes of fame, he will get fifteen centuries.

About lifestyle

Sex and parties are the only places where you need to appear in person.

If you're watching your weight, try Andy Warhol's New York Diet: In a restaurant, I order everything I don't want, so I can fiddle with it for a long time while everyone else eats.

I don't think everyone should have money. They should not be for everyone - otherwise it will not be known who matters. How boring. Who will you gossip about then?

About beauty and women

Beautiful women are late more often than nondescript women. They are all forgiven. Still, they live in a special time zone.

Sometimes something seems beautiful simply because it is slightly different from the surrounding objects.

In fact, “beautiful” doesn’t really attract me that much. I like more talkative... Talkative people do something. Beautiful - they are something. It's not necessarily a bad thing, I just don't understand what exactly they are.

Beauties in photographs are different from beauties in the flesh. It must be hard being a fashion model because you want to look like your own photo, but that's impossible.