Andy Warhols Rorschach Paintings

Andy Warhols inkblot test PaintingsOne of the most important and controversial Pop trick icons in America and a study influence to artists about the gentlemans gentleman, known as The Prince of Pop, Andy Warhol brings an entirely new perspective to the art world. An initiator and leading exp wholenessnt of the Pop art movement of the 1960s, Warhol achieved mastery as a commercial artist during the 1950s and steady grew from their producing melts from famous portraits to best-selling(predicate) culture, shoes and advertising images (Artquotes.net). Born Andrew Warhola in 1928, Warhol lived and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during very hard sequences. Andy had contracted a rare disease at the age of 8 called chorea or St. Vitus dance, an illness of the nervous body that could have possibly proven fatal. He would later recover from the illness, but would gain a skin illness that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Son of a Slovakian immigrant, Warhols father was a construction becomeer who died in accident when Andy was only 13 years old (Artinthepicture.com).During the years following his fathers demise his siblings and classmates started to check off an early talent in drawing and painting. After high school Warhol decided he would study commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of applied science in Pittsburgh and in 1949 graduated with a major in Pictorial Design (Artinthepicture.com). After graduating he decided to move to New York where he plunge temporary jobs as an illustrator for magazines and for commercial advertising. From then on his career as an artist excelled and he became one of New Yorks most sought after and palmy artists. He held his first one-man attest exhibition in 1952 at the Hugo Gallery in New York and soon after became a famous encounter in the New York art scene.Starting in 1978, following his sixteen year reign as the Prince of Pop, Warhol made an unexpected decision and decided to chasten his hand at a bstract painting. Abstract Expressionism would be defined as artists who applied paint rapidly with force onto their huge shroudes in an effort to show feelings and emotions, the persists would release the creativity of the unconscious mind (Artlex.com). The style of the late 1940s and early 1950s was predominantly American and was characterized by its rendering of expressive content by abstract or non-objective means (Sayre 516). Andy Warhols Rorschach,1984 paintings are one of the most intriguing and captivating works of the early 1980s, they display his abstract work in the best Warholian style and cause the viewer to create an image out of their own imagination ( Richard 88-90).The immense Rorschach paintings are massive in scale and required a crew to produce them, a staggering 2010 and were achieved by pullulateing paint onto one side of the canvas, then folding the canvas down the middle and pressing the two sides together. In all their emptiness and derangement the Rorsch ach paintings are psychologically and emotionally charged. Warhol had created the series specifically so that the paintings could be analyzed. The ink blot appearance was first produced by Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss Freudian psychiatrist who developed them as a test, which in incident would elicit disclosure of a persons innermost feelings (Newworldencyclopedia.org). It was mainly used on people suffering psychological instability or disorder and even diagnosed intellectual patients. Always on the prowl for inspiration Warhol used these ink blots in his own works creating the Rorschach series. Warhol was especially implicated in mass production, his guide to fame was caused by the use of his rare creativity in the visual arts that would be used in mass produced commercial items. Often considered a cousin of avant-garde art, Andys commercial art such as the soapbox covers, soup cans, plastic packing would create and turn the industry into a respectable bona fide art form. The Ro rschach series would be an outcome of his earlier work and would also be mass produced. The works are seemingly complex, replete with irony and ornament, annals and psychology, intuition and a lot of misunderstanding. Although Warhol showed deliberate ignorance toward the standardized blots of the official Rorschach test, he was obviously intrigued by their serial repetitiveness and formulaic impersonality. With an estimated 38 paintings bestow in the Rorschach series the immense canvases where not at all produced only with the dark black paint that many remember it for. Warhol experimented with a mixing of colors, thus he came to be known for using color field abstraction. Color field paintings, a type of abstract expressionism, were used by artists who were interested in the lyrical or unique atmospheric effects of vast expanses of color, causing the viewer to be immersed in a color environment (Artlex.com).many of the famous paintings were bright red, gold and beg he even cre ated a beautiful mixture of the colors, mixing purple, red and violet, and in another blue, purple and pink in an amazing array to create whatsoeverthing extraordinary and abstract. Lusciously colorful or dull black, the works were appealing to a wide range of audiences and would get down the viewers eye immediately upon entering any gallery.Warhol used one major technique in creating his infamous works, an unpopular and rarely used pour and fold technique to conjure up the fleshy physicality of kidneys or lungs (Artnet.com).A particularly unique feature of the prints was that it contained no human touch, the paint was merely allowed to blank and settle where ever on the canvas it pleased without any human interference or brushwork, this also would explain the variety of unique prints in the Rorschach series. The symmetrical networks of mainly thick Liquitex Acrylic paint distributed on silk screens created syrupy veins of paint that were easily identifiable and caused a unique d istorted image from each one time. One arguable aspect of his work would also be that he never signed his work out of all 38 paintings not one would contain his signature. One could say that Warhol was particularly fond of genital imagery, but others would argue that the Rorschach paintings not only represent Warhols demented mind, but contained images of the call down and even death itself. Horrific atrocities from the gates of hell to a giant taunting mask, not all feedback was negative though, many saw completely opposite word and positive imagery in the works, from royalty to giant vases, but no matter what the viewers imagination brought about, each canvas created a feeling that the work would engulf the spectator at any time (McShine 382-383). Warhol was said to have included iconography in his famous works such as the Rorschach series, some images might have been developed to represent something to him personally and to others something entirely different. Iconography woul d be defined as a pictorial representation of a subject, or the order of battle of images, or icons illustrating a subject (Artlex.com). He would mainly use it in his earlier works, self portraits of himself with skulls on his head as to depict his own death or murder.Warhols style of work in the Rorschach series was distinctly different from other great players of Pop Art during the era. Working on the subjects he loved and having a strict routine he would turn items of daily use into simplified yet intricate pieces of art. Warhol had worked on this series for a year, which gave him time and a chance to determine the end results. Most of his collection was never shown until after his death. Soon after the completion and major success of the Rorschach paintings, Warhol steadily moved on from his prized series and went on his final adventure in abstraction in 1986 (Glasstire.com).Warhol would play around with camouflage and stretch out the work on canvases as large as thirty feet. H e was so fascinated with the endless possibilities and variations of camouflage iconography that he would eventually add it as an ill-matched overlay to some of his other series. He then left his so fond abstraction series to continue on with his career with his already popular self portraits and later on The Last Supper series (Glasstire.com).From the day he left the calm environment of his normal work place and entered the very chaotic place of The Factory in 1962, he would mass produce silk screen prints and challenge the difference between high and low art to show the world that art can be found in everyday objects. Warhol would keep pushing the limits of art towards new boundaries that would drastically change the art we see around us today. Andy Warhol had made a permanent mark in the art world and had become a world renowned Pop Art icon. In 1987, the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established in his honor and in May 1994, the Andy Warhol Museum opened in his hom e town Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Artinthepicture.com). Being a controversial homosexual man that he was with a bizarre personality, he was obsessed by the ambition of getting rich and famous and he knew scarcely how he would achieve this from the very first day he stepped into the art world.