Warhol's World

by Andy Warhol (Artist), Anthony D'Offay (Editor), Timothy Hunt (Editor)

The power in Warhol's portraits stems in part from the depth of his engagement with the society his subjects moved in. Nowhere is this involvement more clearly demonstrated than in his late photography. These previously unpublished images from the Andy Warhol Foundation reveal the reality behind the curtain at Studio 54 and the Factory, and look into the bloodshot eyes of the endless throng of celebrities that came to make up the artist's social life. If there had remained in Warhol something of the true voyeur, an alternately detached and star-struck watcher, that role largely shifted as he himself became visible in celebrity's funhouse mirrors, and became a more profoundly involved and then again more fascinated participant; Warhol's World finds the artist at the far end of that transition, at one with his subjects, all lost to themselves and found by the camera. Warhol's own position in the New York scene brought him unparalleled access to subjects like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mick Jagger, Debbie Harry, Diana Ross, Robert Rauschenberg, Jerry Hall, Bianca Jagger, Grace Jones, Demi Moore, David Hockney, Kenny Scharf, Diana Vreeland, Paloma Picasso and Ozzy Ozbourne, and this extensive book establishes--if there was any doubt--that Warhol cared deeply about human society, human interaction, and human frailty, and took intense joy in documenting them in the microcosm that was his Village.

Genres: Photography

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

About the author

Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).