Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune

by Justin Spring (Contributor), Andy Warhol (Illustrator)

Drawn from the rich collection of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Fame and Misfortune approaches Warhol’s career through the artist’s abiding obsession with fame and celebrity, and, by extension, with disaster and tragedy. These key themes resurface throughout Warhol’s paintings, works on paper, photographs, and film and video works, beginning with his iconic paintings and prints of the 1960s up until the last pictures created just before his untimely death in 1987. Warhol spent most of his life observing the famous even as he acquired fame for himself, and as a result, his visual meditations on fame (and fortune, and misfortune) are in many ways like a trip through a house of as much reflections of the artist’s identity as they are trip through American culture of the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

80 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 2012

About the author

Justin Spring is a New York based writer specializing in twentieth-century American art and culture. He is the author of many monographs, catalogs, museum publications, and books, including the biography Fairfield Porter: A Life in Art (Yale University Press, 2000) and Paul Cadmus: The Male Nude (Universe, 2002). He has been the recipient of a number of grants, fellowships, and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the International Association of Art Critics Best Show Award. He has held research fellowships from Yale University, Brown University, Radcliffe College and Amherst College. His monograph on Paul Cadmus was a finalist for the Lamda Literary Award in Art History.