FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME By Wendy Cromwell / Photo courtesy of The Greenberg Gallery
Andy Warhol is credited with saying, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” From his early career as a fashion illustrator, Andy Warhol understood the power of media imagery, the reach of advertising, and the fleeting attention span of the modern consumer. That’s partly why he painted images taken straight from pop culture. From the success of his signature paintings in the early 1960s, Warhol became a celebrity. His art became a global brand through merchandising and cultivating a celeb persona. Selfies? Warhol practically invented them! But there’s more to Warhol than just those Marilyns: he introduced the art of brand influencing as we know it. By blending business strategy with art production, he devised the roadmap for some of today’s most successful artists operating as brands with multi-channel 28 slmag.net
businesses. AND Warhol was an astute social observer who exploited our celebrity-obsessed culture, anticipating today’s image-heavy reality. Takeaway: Warhol saw the future -- through his camera lens. Origin Story: Cue the Campbell’s. It began in the early 60s: Warhol lifted the Campbell’s brand from the shelves to the canvas, hand-painting 32 cans of soup in all -- one for every flavor. In 1962, The Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles exhibited them together, in a row. The gallery’s owner bought them all, selling them to the Museum of Modern Art in New York two decades later. With this early success, Warhol began to automate production, switching from hand-painted images to stencils, hiring assistants to help feed demand (no pun intended!). Warhol’s studio, which he called The Factory, was born.
