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Explore Andy Warhol's life-from his Pittsburgh roots to his career in New York City.

Early life

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in a two-room apartment at 73 Orr Street in a working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants from an area in the Carpathian Mountains in what is present-day Eastern Slovakia, his parents Andrej and Julia Warhola had three sons, Paul, John, and Andy, the youngest.

In 1934, the family moved to their home at 3252 Dawson Street in Pittsburgh's South Oakland neighborhood, which was closer to their church St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic. Devout Byzantine Catholics, the family regularly attended mass and observed their Eastern European heritage.

As a child, Warhol suffered from Sydenham chorea, a neurological disorder commonly known as St. Vitus dance, characterized by involuntary movements. When the disorder occasionally kept him home from school, Warhol would read comics and Hollywood magazines and play with paper cutouts. Growing up in Depression-era Pittsburgh, the family had few luxuries, but Warhol's parents bought him his first camera when he was eight years old.

He attended elementary at Holmes School and took free Tam O'Shanter art classes at Carnegie Institute (now Carnegie Museum of Art) taught by Joseph Fitzpatrick, before attending Schenley High School in 1942. Recognizing his son's talent, Andrej saved money to pay for Warhol's college education, and he attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) from 1945 to 1949.

Health

Throughout his life, Warhol fixated on his physical imperfections. As a child, Sydenham chorea (St. Vitus dance) occasionally kept him bedridden, and he had pigment issues that caused discoloration of his skin, leading to the nicknames "Spot" and "Andy the Red-nosed Warhola." In response to his perceived physical flaws, Warhol cultivated different looks through his clothing, wigs, cosmetics, and plastic surgery to change the shape of his nose. Later in his life he had premature baldness and massive scars from gunshot wounds suffered in 1968. His lifelong interest in beauty regimes and skin care made its way into his work, with early paintings depicting a nose job, wigs, and pain relief for corns. By the 1980s, Warhol had a near daily exercise regime and took vitamin supplements to improve his hair and skin; he incorporated bodybuilder imagery into his work and exercise equipment populates photographs of his studio.

1950s

Andy Warhol, "Success is a Job in New York," Glamour magazine, 1949
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
1998.3.2453

Warhol was known for his blotted-line ink drawings, using a process he developed in college and refined in the 1950s. This working method combined drawing with basic printmaking and allowed Warhol to repeat an image and to create multiple illustrations along a similar theme. He could also make color or compositional changes quickly in response to client requests.

Andy Warhol, Seated Male Nude Torso, 1950s
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
1998.1.1692

Sexuality

In the early 1950s, many of Warhol's friends and fellow artists were accepted to show at the Tanager Gallery in New York City, but the works he submitted were rejected because of their subject matter-two men embracing. Warhol was a gay man, and homosexuality was criminalized in 1950s America. Warhol filled sketchbooks in the 1950s with drawings titled Boy Portraits , which were loving, humorous depictions of the male form and studies of feet, torsos, and genitalia. During his foray into film in the 1960s, Warhol did not shy away from sexuality. His films included scenes of sexual escapades, explicit and not-from turning tricks to sleeping. One of Warhol's earliest films featured his then-boyfriend, poet John Giorno, sleeping nude in the nearly six-hour-long (1963). Throughout his career, Warhol blurred the lines between his romantic and professional relationships, mixing business and pleasure. Edward Wallowitch, Ted Carey, John Giorno, Jed Johnson, and Jon Gould were some of Warhol's business associates with whom he also had intimate relationships. He returned to the male-and female-nude in the 1970s with his and series. In the 1980s, Warhol's focus on the body in his work and return to hand painting corresponded with the early days of the HIV/AIDS public health crisis, which devastated New York City's arts scene and gay community.

Entrepreneur

As equally as he was an artist, Warhol was an entrepreneur. He kickstarted his career in the 1950s as a commercial illustrator, earning a sizeable revenue to finance his artistic ventures. Warhol grew up during the rise of post-war consumer culture in the U.S. and England and realized the benefit of assembly lines in manufacturing, employing studio assistants and processes to aid his artistic production. Warhol successfully balanced commercial and entrepreneurial endeavors with avant-garde, underground work. He continually pushed himself to experiment in new media-publishing, film, music production, television, fashion, theater-throughout his career and frequently collaborated with artists and brands. Warhol wrote in THEPhilosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), "Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

1960s

In 1963, Warhol began his series of Death and Disaster paintings that used images from magazines and newspapers as well as police and press photographs of suicides, car crashes, and accidents as source material. Warhol produced a range of films between 1963 and 1968, beginning with his first feature-length film (1963), five hours and twenty-one minutes of poet John Giorno asleep. His groundbreaking eight-hour-long silent film (1964) features continuous slow motion footage of the Empire State Building in New York City. In 1966, he made his most commercially successful film, the three-hour-long, double-screen The Chelsea Girls .

Warhol first began making box sculptures in 1963. Invoking a factory assembly line and enlisting help from his studio assistants at the Silver Factory, he created hundreds of replicas of large supermarket product boxes-including Brillo Boxes , Heinz Boxes , Del Monte Boxes , and more. The ﬁnished sculptures were nearly indistinguishable from their cardboard supermarket counterparts, single packing cartons. The Brillo Boxes were first exhibited in 1964 at the Stable Gallery in New York where they were tightly packed and piled high, recalling a grocery warehouse.

Running at the same time as was Warhol's exhibition of Cow Wallpaper and Silver Clouds at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City. Created with engineer Billy Klüver, the metallic, floating Silver Clouds sculptures are made of silver plastic film filled with helium and air. Choreographer Merce Cunningham saw the sculptures at the opening and asked Warhol if he could use the floating installation as stage décor for his piece Rainforest (1968). The clouds floated among dancers on stage.

Corset, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
1998.3.8198.1

William John Kennedy, Untitled (Andy Warhol Looking Through American Man), 1964, reprinted 2010
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Gift of Kiwi Arts Group
© William John Kennedy, Courtesy of KIWI Arts Group
2013.12.96

Repetition

In college, Warhol developed a blotted-line technique that combined drawing with basic printmaking. Blotted line allowed him to create a variety of illustrations using the same initial pattern, important to his commercial illustration career when he could bring several ideas to clients. This was the beginning of his lifelong interest to quickly create multiples. Warhol famously quipped, "I want to be a machine," alluding to his interest in mass production. His most notable style, photographic silkscreen printing, replicated the look of commercial advertising. It gave Warhol a faithful duplication of his source images while allowing him to experiment with various techniques, such as over-printing (printing one color on top of another), registration (aligning colors on a single image), and color combinations. Warhol worked with art assistants and professional printers to produce thousands of silkscreen paintings and print portfolios throughout his lifetime.

1970s

Warhol became increasingly involved in publishing in the late 1960s, becoming fully immersed in the 1970s. In 1969, he co-founded , a magazine devoted to film, fashion, and popular culture that gave him access to the stars. He published his first mass-produced book, Andy Warhol's Index (Book) , in 1967, and Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) was published in 1975. Published posthumously in 1989, The Andy Warhol Diaries chronicle his daily life from November 24, 1976, through February 17, 1987, five days before he died; his assistant and friend Pat Hackett transcribed their daily phone conversations detailing the previous day's events.

During this period, Warhol used a Polaroid camera and a tape recorder to document his daily life, from business meetings to star-studded social occasions. He also used Polaroid photographs as source materials for his iconic celebrity portraits and many still lifes throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

A major 1972 exhibition that signaled Warhol's renewed focus on painting featured a series of works depicting Chairman Mao. Warhol saw the pervasiveness of Mao's image in China as akin to Western advertising strategies. By 1974, increasing his painting production, Warhol moved his office to a larger space on the 3rd floor of 860 Broadway on Union Square. The 1970s saw a prolific number of paintings, often including controversial or charged imagery, including Vote McGovern (1972), Ladies and Gentlemen (1975), (1976), Hammer and Sickle (1976), and Oxidation Paintings (1978), which were created by Warhol friends and studio assistants urinating onto a canvas primed with a metallic paint.

Warhol started his largest serial work in 1974, the . He filled, sealed, and sent to storage 569 standard-sized cardboard boxes, 20 filing cabinets (two Time Capsules Time Capsules per cabinet), and a large steamer trunk. Each Time Capsule is filled with ephemera-letters, photographs, publications, recordings, clothing, food, medicine, toys, antiques, ticket stubs, artworks, and more-dating from the 1950s to his death in 1987.

Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, 1975
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution Dia Center for the Arts
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
1997.1.8b

Celebrity

Warhol was infatuated with Hollywood celebrity and fame since childhood. He wrote to movie stars for headshots and fan photos, assembling scrapbooks between 1938 and 1941. In the 1960s, The Factory became a hangout for artists, musicians, and writers, including Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Truman Capote, and many more. Warhol's Superstars, including Edie Sedgwick, Brigid Berlin, Ondine, and Candy Darling, were Factory goers who appeared in his films and became fixtures in his social life. In the 1970s, Warhol was a regular at the New York disco Studio 54, and he received hundreds of portrait commissions from wealthy socialites, musicians, and film stars. He remained in the spotlight in the 1980s with his television work and high-fashion modeling. Warhol achieved stardom, and helped others do the same, realizing his expression, " In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."

Collecting

Central to Warhol's practice were collecting and documenting. He collected everything from watches to cookie jars, and his largest serial work, Time Capsules , encapsulated items from his daily life from the 1950s to his death. He documented the world around him not only through his paintings and films, but also through his tape recorder and Polaroid photography, capturing his encounters, both mundane and magnificent.

1980s

Throughout his career, Warhol frequently collaborated with artists, and in 1984 he worked with young artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. When working with Basquiat and Clemente, each artist worked independently on the canvas before passing it along, the artist's individual marks remaining distinct and recognizable signs and logos becoming part of the compositions. Warhol also returned to hand painting with a brush in the 1980s, something he had set aside in the 1960s in favor of the silkscreen.

Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper), 1985-1986
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
1998.1.791a-j

Warhol took an interest in television and produced two cable shows, Andy Warhol's T.V. (1980-83) and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (1985-87) for MTV. He also made television appearances on The Love Boat and Saturday Night Live , appeared in both print and television commercials, produced music videos, and modeled in fashion shows. Continuing his artistic experimentation, Warhol made a series of digital artworks in 1985 using an Amiga 1000.

Nine months before his death, Warhol created a series of iconic monumental self-portraits featuring his gaunt face, fixed gaze, and a spiky wig, some of the canvases measuring nine feet square.

On February 22, 1987, Warhol died at New York Hospital in Manhattan due to complications following a surgery to remove his gall bladder. Warhol is buried next to his mother and father at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, a suburb south of Pittsburgh.

Religion

Warhol was born into a devout Byzantine Catholic family that attended mass at Pittsburgh's St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church . Later in life in New York City, Warhol regularly attended St. Vincent Ferrer to pray and to attend mass. As a child, Warhol would have seen the richly painted iconostasis during mass and learned about this wall of icons and their role in worship in Eastern Catholic churches. Warhol painted religious symbols using imagery such as Raphael's , Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper , and the cross as source material.

If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.

Andy Warhol, The East Village Other, 1966

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T03093 MARILYN DIPTYCH 1962

Both canvases inscribed on back 'Andy Warhol/62'
Acrylic on canvas (diptych), each panel 80 7/8×57 (205.4×144.7); overall dimensions 80 7/8×114 (205.4×289.4)
Purchased from Mr and Mrs Burton
Tremaine through the Pace Gallery, New York (Grant-in-Aid) 1980
Prov: Mr and Mrs Burton Tremaine, New York and Meriden, Conn. (purchased from the artist through the Stable Gallery, New York, 1962)
Exh: Six Painters and the Object, Guggenheim Museum, New York, March-June 1963 (works not numbered); The New Art, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., March 1964 (43, repr.-the left-hand panel only, probably the only part exhibited); The Atmosphere of '64, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, April-June 1964 (works not numbered); The New American Realism, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass., February-April 1965 (works not numbered, repr.); Art of the United States: 1690-1966, Whitney Museum, New York, September-November 1966 (284); Works by Leading Artists in Homage to Marilyn Monroe, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, December 1967 (47, repr.); Andy Warhol, Pasadena Art Museum, May-June 1970 (works not listed); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, July-September 1970 (works not listed); Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, October-November 1970 (works not listed); Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, December 1970-January 1971 (works not listed); Tate Gallery, February-March 1971 (19, repr.); Whitney Museum, New York, April-June 1971 (works not listed); Printed Art: A View of Two Decades, Museum of Modern Art, New York, February-March 1980 (works not numbered, repr. in colour); Major Works of the '60s, Pace Gallery, New York, April 1980 (no catalogue)
Lit: Rainer Crone, Andy Warhol, 1970, no.67, p.289, repr.p.118
Repr: Jules David Prown and Barbara Rose, American Painting from the Colonial Period to the Present, New York 1977, p.212 in colour; Milton W.Brown, Sam Hunter, John Jacobus and others, American Art: Painting-Sculpture-Architecture-Decorative Arts-Photography, New York 1979, p.558 in colour; The Tate Gallery: Illustrated Biennial Report 1980-82, 1983, p.50 in colour

Marilyn Monroe died tragically from an overdose of sleeping pills on 5 August 1962, the same month that Warhol started doing silkscreens. Between then and the end of the year he made at least twenty-three of her using a silkscreen technique, all based on the same photograph , a 20th Century Fox still taken by Gene Kornman as publicity for the film Niagara of 1953. Some are in colour and some just in black and white.

The present work, which consists of two panels, the left-hand one in colour and the right-hand in black and white, each panel with twenty-five images in five rows, is the largest of his early paintings of her and is usually regarded as the culmination of the series. Mrs Burton Tremaine, who with her husband bought it from him in 1962, soon after it was completed, recalls:

'We bought the picture directly from Andy Warhol at his Studio, before he had a dealer. I think it was Ivan Karp who urged us to go to Warhol's house on Lexington Avenue. His house was opposite a supermarket, and the soup cans were quite visible from his front entrance. Andy had two stereo machines running at high pitch, one playing Bach, the other Rock. Andy himself was the only low key note in the Studio. He seemed shy and it took a bit of coaxing before he showed us everything, and we bought several pieces that day. He first showed us the black MARILYNS, and several pictures later the coloured one appeared. I said I thought they should be presented as a , Andy replied "gee whiz yes" so he brought back the black one, stood it next to the coloured one and we all saw we had achieved a very complex and moving statement about MARILYN so I really felt I was a collaborator! And, of course, we bought them both.' (Letter of 22 September 1982.)

Because of its size the Tremaines were not able to hang it in their home very often, so they lent it for most of the time from 1970 onwards to the Wadsworth Atheneum at Hartford, Connecticut, where their son was President for several years. Included in the exhibition Printed Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the early part of 1980, it was withdrawn from the exhibition early, at the end of March, for inclusion in Major Works of the '60s at the Pace Gallery, which was a show of works from the Tremaines's collection.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1980-82: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1984

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silkscreen ink and acrylic paint on 2 canvases

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'Marilyn Diptych', Andy Warhol, 1962 | Tate

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Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych is made of two silver canvases on which the artist silkscreened a photograph of Marilyn Monroe fifty times. At first glance, the work-which explicitly references a form of Christian painting (see below) in its title-invites us to worship the legendary icon, whose image Warhol plucked from popular culture and immortalized as art.

But as in all of Warhol's early paintings, this image is also a carefully crafted critique of both modern art and contemporary life.

Not only pop culture

With sustained looking, Warhol's works reveal that he was influenced not only by pop culture, but also by art history-and especially by the art that was then popular in New York. For example, in this painting, we can identify the hallmarks of Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

As in the work of these older artists, the monumental scale of Marilyn Diptych (more than six feet by nine feet) demands our attention and announces the importance of the subject matter. Furthermore, the seemingly careless handling of the paint and its "allover composition"-the even distribution of form and color across the entire canvas, such that the viewer's eyes wander without focusing on one spot-are each hallmarks of Abstract Expressionism, as exemplified by Jackson Pollock's drip paintings. Yet Warhol references these painters only to undermine the supposed expressiveness of their gestures: like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, whose work he admired, he uses photographic imagery, the silkscreen process and repetition to make art that is not about his interior life, but rather about the culture in which he lived.

Emotional flatness

Warhol takes as the subject of his painting an impersonal image. Though he was an award-winning illustrator, instead of making his own drawing of Monroe, he appropriates an image that already exists. Furthermore, the image is not some other artist's drawing, but a photograph made for mass reproduction. Even if we don't recognize the source (a publicity photo for Monroe's 1953 film Niagara), we know the image is a photo, not only because of its verisimilitude, but also because of the heightened contrast between the lit and shadowed areas of her face, which we associate with a photographer's flash.

True to form, the actress looks at us seductively from under heavy-lidded eyes and with parted lips; but her expression is also a bit inscrutable, and the repetition remakes her face into an eerie, inanimate mask. Warhol's use of the silkscreen technique further "flattens" the star's face. By screening broad planes of unmodulated color, the artist removes the gradual shading that creates a sense of three-dimensional volume, and suspends the actress in an abstract void. Through these choices, Warhol transforms the literal flatness of the paper-thin publicity photo into an emotional "flatness," and the actress into a kind of automaton. In this way, the painting suggests that "Marilyn Monroe," a manufactured star with a made-up name, is merely a one-dimensional (sex) symbol-perhaps not the most appropriate object of our almost religious devotion.

Repetitions

While Warhol's silkscreened repetitions flatten Monroe's identity, they also complicate his own identity as the artist of this work. The silkscreen process allowed Warhol (or his assistants) to reproduce the same image over and over again, using multiple colors. Once the screens are manufactured and the colors are chosen, the artist simply spreads inks evenly over the screens using a wide squeegee. Though there are differences from one face to the next, these appear to be the accidental byproducts of a quasi-mechanical process, rather than the product of the artist's judgment. Warhol's rote painting technique is echoed by the rigid composition of the work, a five-by-five grid of faces, repeated across the two halves of its surface.

Here, as in many Neo-Dada, minimalist and conceptual works, the grid is like a program that the artist uses to "automate" the process of composing the work, instead of relying on subjective thoughts or feelings to make decisions. In other words, Warhol's "cool," detached composition is the opposite of the intimate, soulful encounter with the canvas associated with Abstract Expressionism. But whereas most works that use grids are abstract, here, the the grid repeats a photo of a movie star, causing the painting to resemble a photographer's contact sheet, or a series of film strips placed side-by-side. These references to mechanical forms of reproduction further prove that for Warhol, painting is no longer an elevated medium distinct from popular culture.

Ghostly symmetry

Aside from radically changing our notion of painting, Warhol's choices create a symmetry between the artist and his subject, who each seem to be less than fully human: the artist becomes a machine, just as the actress becomes a mask or a shell. Another word we could use to describe the presence of both the artist and the actress might be ghostly, and in fact, Warhol started making his series of "Marilyn" paintings only after the star had died of an apparent suicide, and eventually collected them with other disturbing paintings under the title "Death in America." Her death haunts this painting: on the left, her purple, garishly made-up face resembles an embalmed corpse, while the lighter tones of some of the faces on the right make it seem like she is disappearing before our eyes.

Warhol once noted that through repeated exposure to an image, we become de-sensitized to it. In that case, by repeating Monroe's mask-like face, he not only drains away her life, but also ours as well, by deadening our emotional response to her death. Then again, by making her face so strange and unfamiliar, he might also be trying to re-sensitize us to her image, so that we remember she isn't just a symbol, but a person whom we might pity. From the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, he may even be forcing us to relive, and therefore work through, the traumatic shock of her death. The painting is more than a mere celebration of Monroe's iconic status. It is an invitation to consider the consequences of the increasing role of mass media images in our everyday lives.

Additional resources

" Andy Warhol's 'Marilyn Diptych', a Scene of Tragic Glamour " (Sotheby's)

Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900: modernism antimodernism postmodernism, 2nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2011).

Steven Henry Madoff, ed., Pop Art: A Critical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

Kynaston McShine, ed., Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989).

Annette Michelson, ed., Andy Warhol (October Files) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002).

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Warhol used a quasi-mechanical process of silkscreen to reproduce Marilyn Monroe's familiar face again and again.

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Reopening this week after being closed a week into its runs due to the pandemic, The Tate Modern will present 'Andy Warhol', an eponymous retrospective tracing the life and career of the peerless pop artist and icon. Popularly radical and radically popular, Warhol was an artist who reimagined what art could be in an age of immense social, political and technological change.​

In this Anatomy of An Artwork story - the latest in a series in which we spotlight a single piece of art from a major new exhibition - we'll do a deep dive on the Warhol masterpiece, 'Marilyn Diptych1962', with help from Tate curator Gregor Muir. When you've read it, check out our Artspace-exclusive gallery of this legendary artist's work, available now for you to buy.

In her 1979 book of essays, The White Album, writer Joan Didion noted; "We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience." Abstraction is the primary coping mechanism of society in flux- that trusted old guard under siege by the charring flames of change. We cling to symbols like cruel lovers or distant parents, hoping to discern the outlines of a compass in otherwise unyielding negatives of truth.

Therein lies the tricky bit about discussing Marilyn Monroe or Andy Warhol with any real authority; it simply can't be done. Both boast legacies too capacious and diluted for authentic examination, and both manufactured that dilution as an essential part of their shared but distinct mystiques.

Perimeter-glitching details that should humanize these people-Monroe was an abused foster kid from the rural Midwest who transformed herself into a cultural apotheosis of femininity, Warhol was a shy, sick, gay child of immigrants who single-handedly redefined contemporary art- seem only to bolster their dramatic mythological arcs. Warhol's deployment of Monroe's image magnified her cultural impact to a point of brazen nothingness, which was the whole point, of course. Warhol still reigns as the crown prince of vacancy, and Marilyn, despite her best efforts, was its queen.

Onto the art: the history of diptychs is an explicitly educational one. The term's etymology derives from the Greek root 'dis', meaning 'two', and 'ptyke', meaning 'fold', originally coined to describe the hinged, collapsible tablets popularized prior to the advent of the printing press. As Christianity gained traction across the Roman Empire, portable altarpieces grew more and more en vogue, helping to increase iconographic accessibility for vast swathes of illiterate citizens.

From 500 to the late 1100s, before the proliferation of Gothic cathedrals, stained glass windows and allegorical paintings on canvas, morality tales still required illustration, and these modest little wood panels, often depicting the Virgin Mary and various other attendants, appeared on countless altars throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Diptychs could also serve as testaments to individual piety, wealth, or social status, too; the pallid face of Dutch cleric Jean Carondelet opposite a luminous Virgin and child ("Diptych of Jean Carondelet", 1517) made painter Jean Gossaert a household name in the 16th century, and the most famous example in the Western canon, the Wilton Diptych of 1396, features patron King Richard II being presented by three saints to the Mary and the baby Jesus, each delicately limned in gold leaf applique. These objects intertwined instruction with devotion, sprinkling in just enough material spectacle to catch the eye and keep it captive.

It's little wonder, then, that a contemporary artist raised in the Catholic, Slavic ghettos of Pittsburgh found fit to apply this theological paradigm to celebrity, America's most fashionable form of faith. Andy Warhol created the Marilyn Diptych silkscreen just four months after Monroe's barbiturate overdose in August 1962, an event that inspired a nearly 50% spike in Los Angeles-area suicides for weeks and launched more conspiracy theories, drag acts, pop songs, biopics and active shrines than even the legend herself could shimmy a shoulder at.

Monroe was 36 at the time of her death, long in the tooth for a sex symbol and plagued by a heady combination of depression, malaise, and addiction that made her quite the liability on film sets. The press lambasted her efforts at serious acting, her marriage to Death of a Salesman playwright Arthur Miller had snapped under the pressure of his fetishistic cruelty, and years of crash diet-induced gallstones and untreated endometriosis led her in and out of the hospital on a bimonthly basis. Productions halted, lawsuits mounted, and things got hard-too hard.

Monroe's passing effectively froze her in time, preserving the doe-eyed, girlish vulnerability and nubile form simultaneously revered and reviled by her adoring public. Her personhood had ceased en entire somewhere in the early '50s, when the "dumb blonde" archetype she minted onscreen subsumed the genuine, flesh-stricken strife she couldn't quite outrun. Eaten alive by emblematic expectation, Monroe still couldn't achieve even a wavering semblance of humanity.

In Ways of Seeing, art theorist John Berger declares, " Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object-and most particularly an object of vision: a sight." Monroe was trapped in a revolving room of one-way mirrors. She never got out.

If '62 was the worst year on record for Monroe, it was gang-busters for Warhol, who had successfully transitioned from a lucrative career as a commercial illustrator (photographer John Copland insisted that "no one drew shoes the way Andy did... [with] a sort of sly, Toulouse-Lautrec sophistication") into the controversial fine artist du jour. A July 1962 show with Ferus Gallery in California introduced exasperated critics to his soupcans, a splash big enough to result in a solo turn at New York City's Stable Gallery in November. Marilyn Diptych debuted there, a potent, droning silkscreen painting that sports 50 gridded iterations of a Monroe press headshot from Niagara, the 1953 flick best remembered for that skin-tight, acid pink dress.

"In August 62 I started doing silkscreens," Warhol said, commenting on the painting. "I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly line effect. With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. When Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face, the first Marilyns."

The format of the Marilyn Diptych, 1962, mirrors the form of a Christian work of art depicting the Virgin Mary on one side and the crucified Jesus on the other. The comparison references the idolization of Marilyn Monroe. Gregor Muir, Director of Collection, International Art, at Tate and curator of the New Andy Warhol show told Artspace:

"This Diptych was put together not by Warhol, but by the collector (art and design show organizer Emily Hall Tremaine). She bought one painting and then found another and said, 'Can I put these two together Andy?' He said 'gee whizz that looks great.' And that is how the painting came to be. "There's an amazing process to it. On the right, on the silver side, what you're seeing is the underprinting which Warhol did in many of these works. What he was doing was laying down an early sort of drawing that he could then paint over.

"What you see on the left is the paint over that underprinting, and then another print on top. There is some interesting game playing going on. You see on the left, that every single face is different. Every one is handpainted, loosely according to the underprint. But it's interesting to see the difference. You've got a clean face throughout on this [the left side], and on the right you see the decaying echo of Marilyn, a painting committed by Warhol not long after her death.

"One of the key things for this Tate exhibition is religion and death, coupled with the idea of clear identity and also this idea of the immigrant story, and the upbringing that Warhol had. While there are many questions about the fact that Warhol was a man of faith, sometimes unknown, his take on faith is an important question. It's very interesting to see how Warhol could ever have escaped religion given the upbringing that he had. His mother knew the liturgy by heart, and he went to church every day in Pittsburgh, often walking miles. The area was referred to by Warhol as the Czech ghetto. It's clear he lived in a deeply European bubble. Warhol is, in a sense, looking at religious iconography, it's surrounding him and he's fully aware of the power of the Greek Byzantine church. Here is Marilyn, as a religious icon herself."

The left panel is also a full-throttle study in color theory; Warhol's fluky, sterile touch renders the starlet's face in lavender and hair in pyretic yellow against a searing orange background. The right panel, a starker documentation of the piece's procedural underpinnings, repeats the pattern in black and white, a smudged, stained lyric that evokes the very newspapers precipitating Monroe's fatal denigration. The contrast is as graphic as it is haunting, insistent the way a nervous cackle in an empty room might feel.

If Lyotard simplified the postmodern as "incredulity towards metanarratives", Warhol electrified the concept in a visual language both punishing and laudatory, using the syntax of capitalist exploitation to steep viewers in their own empathetic shortcomings. His interventions evoke a casual timbre of violence, the imprint of a necessarily hollow obsession. This is a hot, mean vacancy, the sort that troubles and entrances in equal measure. 60 years later, its dynamism is just as immediate, and its story is just as hypnotic.

Take a look at the many Warhol works for sale on Artspace now on our Andy Warhol artist page, Buy Phaidon's Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne Volumes 1-5, made in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Foundation; Giant Size, the best selling visual biography featuring over 2,000 photographs and images and Stephen Shore's photographic document Andy Warhol: Factory spanning the years 1965-67.

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Andy Warhol at Tate Modern has been extended to run until November 15, 2020. Details of the show here.

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ANATOMY OF AN ARTWORK 'Marilyn Diptych, 1962' by Andy Warhol

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Reopening this week after being closed a week into its runs due to the pandemic, The Tate Modern will present 'Andy Warhol', an eponymous retrospective tracing the life and career of the peerless pop artist and icon.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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The Postwar Booms

Historians use the word "boom" to describe a lot of things about the 1950s: the booming economy, the booming suburbs and most of all the so-called "baby boom." This boom began in 1946, when a record number of babies-3.4 million-were born in the United States. About 4 million babies were born each year during the 1950s. In all, by the time the boom finally tapered off in 1964, there were almost 77 million "baby boomers."

After World War II ended, many Americans were eager to have children because they were confident that the future promised peace and prosperity. In many ways, they were right. Between 1945 and 1960, the gross national product more than doubled, growing from $200 billion to more than $500 billion, kicking off "the Golden Age of American Capitalism." Much of this increase came from government spending: The construction of interstate highways and schools, the distribution of veterans' benefits and most of all the increase in military spending-on goods like airplanes and new technologies like computers-all contributed to the decade's economic growth. Rates of unemployment and inflation were low, and wages were high. Middle-class people had more money to spend than ever-and, because the variety and availability of consumer goods expanded along with the economy, they also had more things to buy.

Moving to the Suburbs

The baby boom and the suburban boom went hand in hand. Almost as soon as World War II ended, developers such as William Levitt (whose "Levittowns" in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania would become the most famous symbols of suburban life in the 1950s) began to buy land on the outskirts of cities and use mass production techniques to build modest, inexpensive tract houses there. The G.I. Bill subsidized low-cost mortgages for many returning soldiers, which meant that it was often cheaper to buy one of these suburban houses than it was to rent an apartment in the city.

These houses were perfect for young families-they had informal "family rooms," open floor plans and backyards-and so suburban developments earned nicknames like "Fertility Valley" and "The Rabbit Hutch."

Though the G.I. Bill helped white Americans prosper and accumulate wealth in the postwar years, it didn't deliver on that promise for veterans of color. In fact, the wide disparity in the bill's implementation ended up driving growing gaps in wealth, education and civil rights between white and Black Americans.

Suburban homes, meanwhile, weren't always so perfect for the (mostly white) women who lived in them. In fact, the booms of the 1950s had a particularly confining effect on many American women. Advice books and magazine articles ("Don't Be Afraid to Marry Young," "Cooking to Me Is Poetry," "Femininity Begins At Home") urged women to leave the workforce and embrace their roles as wives and mothers. The idea that a woman's most important job was to bear and rear children was hardly a new one, but it began to generate a great deal of dissatisfaction among women who yearned for a more fulfilling life. (In her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, women's rights advocate Betty Friedan argued that the suburbs were "burying women alive.") This dissatisfaction, in turn, contributed to the rebirth of the feminist movement in the 1960s.

The Civil Rights Movement

A growing group of Americans spoke out against inequality and injustice during the 1950s. African Americans had been fighting against racial discrimination for centuries; during the 1950s, however, the struggle against racism and segregation entered the mainstream of American life. For example, in 1954, in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the Supreme Court declared that "separate educational facilities" for black children were "inherently unequal." This ruling was the first nail in Jim Crow's coffin.

Many Southern whites resisted the Brown ruling. They withdrew their children from public schools and enrolled them in all-white "segregation academies," and they used violence and intimidation to prevent blacks from asserting their rights. In 1956, more than 100 Southern congressmen even signed a "Southern Manifesto" declaring that they would do all they could to defend segregation.

Despite these efforts, a new movement was born. In December 1955, a Montgomery activist named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white person. Her arrest sparked a 13-month boycott of the city's buses by its black citizens, which only ended when the bus companies stopped discriminating against Black passengers. Acts of "nonviolent resistance" like the boycott helped shape the civil rights movement of the next decade.

Did you know? When Rosa Parks died in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

The Cold War & The Korean War

The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, known as the Cold War, was another defining element of the 1950s. After World War II, Western leaders began to worry that the USSR had what one American diplomat called "expansive tendencies"; moreover, they believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened democracy and capitalism everywhere. As a result, communism needed to be "contained"-by diplomacy, by threats or by force.

This policy is what drew American forces into the Korean War in July 1950. A month earlier, some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. As far as American officials were concerned, fighting on behalf of the Republic of Korea was pushback against forces of international communism itself.

The United States never formally declared war on North Korea. Instead, President Harry Truman referred to the addition of ground troops as a "police action." The Korean War armistice, signed on July 27, 1953, drew a new border between North Korea and South Korea, granting South Korea some additional territory and demilitarizing the zone between the two nations.

Cold War tensions shaped domestic policy as well. Many people in the United States worried that communists, or "subversives," could destroy American society from the inside as well as from the outside. Between 1945 and 1952, Congress held 84 hearings designed to put an end to "un-American activities" in the federal government, in universities and public schools and even in Hollywood. These hearings did not uncover many treasonous activities-or even many communists-but it did not matter: Tens of thousands of Americans lost their jobs, as well as their families and friends, in the anti-communist "Red Scare" of the 1950s.

1950s Pop Culture

In the 1950s, televisions became something the average family could afford, and by 1950 4.4 million U.S. families had one in their home. The Golden Age of Television was marked by family-friendly shows like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Twilight Zone and Leave It To Beaver. In movie theaters, actors like John Wayne, James Stuart, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe dominated the box office. The Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning signaled a new age in art, paving the way for the Pop Art of artists like Andy Warhol in the 1960s.

1950s Music

Elvis Presley. Sam Cooke. Chuck Berry. Fats Domino. Buddy Holly. The 1950s saw the emergence of Rock 'n' Roll, and the new sound swept the nation. It helped inspire rockabilly music from Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. People swayed to The Platters and The Drifters. Music marketing, changed, too: For the first time, music began to target youth.

On February 3, 1959, American musicians Buddy Holly. Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson died in a plane crash over Clear Lake, Iowa, in what became known as " The Day The Music Died "-an event immortalized in Don McLean's 1972 song "American Pie."

Shaping the 1960s

The booming prosperity of the 1950s helped to create a widespread sense of stability, contentment and consensus in the United States. However, that consensus was a fragile one, and it splintered for good during the tumultuous 1960s.

Sources

The Elvic Oracle. The New Yorker.
1950s Rock 'n' Roll. Rolling Stone.
The Day The Music Died. Biography.
The Fifties: The Way We Really Were. Douglas T. Miller and Marion Novak.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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The 1950s - American Culture & Society | HISTORY

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During the 1950s, the United States was the world's strongest military power. Its economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity-new cars, suburban houses and other consumer goods-were available to more people than ever before. However, the 1950s also saw great conflict.

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Author of approximately 100 prints, both lithographs, and etching, of which circa 10 have yet to be identified, James E. Allen (1894-1964) is today remembered as a printmaker, while his lifetime fame came from his illustrations.

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In People in the Sun, five people sit on the terrace of a hotel gazing toward a line of distant mountains. Stark contrasts and cool light emphasize their static poses and deadpan expressions.

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DIFFERENT FORMS OF ISOLATION | HOPPER'S 'PEOPLE IN THE SUN' | PAINTING OF THE WEEK PODCAST | S1 E11

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In 1956, Bob Richards of the United States accomplished something no other male Olympian had ever done before or since: he won a second gold medal in the pole vault.

Two years later, Richards had another first: he was featured on the front cover of Wheaties. Prior to that year, athletes were only shown on the back of the cereal boxes.

Now, with the Summer Olympics underway in Tokyo, the question arises: will an American athlete from these games grab gold and become the next to be featured on the cover of " The Breakfast of Champions?"

For 100 years, Wheaties has been a source of morning nutrition and wholesomeness for Americans. The wheat-and-bran mixture of flakes has fueled the inner-athlete of countless consumers-young and old-giving them the energy to excel at their daily activities.

Almost since the beginning, sports figures-including Olympians-have been associated with the General Mills product. Using a clever marketing strategy instituted by company president James Ford Bell, Wheaties promoted the cereal as a healthy breakfast option through its association with athletics and athletes. Sports heroes have figured prominently in this approach since 1934, when Yankees' slugger and baseball Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig was the first to adorn the back of a box. That same year, pioneer American aviator Elinor Smith, who at 16 was the youngest test pilot in the world, became the first woman on the back of the box.

"Wheaties believes that the world needs more champions," says Taylor Gessell, brand experience manager at General Mills. "To inspire fans, the brand features athletes who excel on and off the field by putting their faces and causes on a national pedestal."

While Richards holds the record for being the first athlete on the front of a box, he was not the first Olympian to be featured by Wheaties. That honor-in 1935-goes to Babe Didrikson, who won gold medals in track at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles and became a popular professional golfer.

Wheaties got its start in 1921 by virtue of a fluke. That year, a health clinician accidentally dropped bran gruel on a stove, which bubbled up into a crispy flake. The Washburn Crosby Company-which later became General Mills in Minneapolis-took that idea and turned it into the Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes, first introduced in 1924. The name was soon changed after an internal competition came up with the newer, catchier title.

Michael J. Lansing says there is more to the story, though. The professor and chair of the Department of History at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, who is writing a book about the history of the Minnesota milling industry, points out that the product's development was far more calculated than that.

"Wheaties was really the result of some careful strategy by the leadership at Washburn Crosby," he says. "The company, the largest flour miller in the United States at the time, was facing some pretty serious problems. America was turning away from white flour and wanted a more nutritious alternative."

In the 1920s, consumers were reeling from digestive problems. Dieticians urged Americans to add more fiber to their diets, including products made with whole grains. As demand for white flour fell, leadership at Washburn Crosby looked for another way to keep the mills of Minneapolis grinding. They tried the fluke flake idea but abandoned it, then returned to it after other efforts failed.

"They circled back to it after one of the manager's said the cereal idea could solve a bunch of their problems," Lansing says. "They went through another round of research and development, and came up with a way to combine all the parts of the wheat kernel, along with other ingredients, into an edible product."

At first, Wheaties wasn't much of a hit in the market. However, the company came up with a novel concept to market the new cereal. It created a fictional character- Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy, an athlete and all-around good guy-to promote the product. He starred on a national radio program, and the new hero was featured on the cereal box.

Washburn Crosby tried one more thing to sell the cereal: a singing jingle. Sales soared after a barbershop quartet belted out the first-ever song in a radio commercial -with the simple lyrics: "Have you tried Wheaties? They're whole wheat with all of the bran. Won't you try Wheaties?" After that, the cereal became the most popular in America.

"Wheaties finally takes off as a product," Lansing says. "They recorded the barbershop quartet and used the jingle in other markets. It was a concerted effort around sales, marketing and merchandising."

Wheaties also played an important role in the development of sports programming on radio and later television. According to Lansing, the company convinced Major League Baseball teams to broadcast their games on the air at a time when they believed it would hurt ticket sales. The cereal advertised heavily during those games, as well as on other sportscasts in the future, and created a whole new genre of over-the-airwaves programs.

"Without Wheaties, there would be no ESPN," Lansing says.

Though Jack Armstrong would remain popular for decades, Wheaties realized it could become a stronger brand by using real sports figures. Gehrig was the first athlete to replace the All-American Boy and endorse the cereal as healthy and nutritious.

"Wheaties has served as a staple in sports culture," Gessell says. "Since 1934, 850 athletes have appeared on Wheaties boxes spanning decades, sports, gender, age and unforgettable moments in history. Wheaties has reserved its boxes for champions who use their sports platforms for something greater and inspire others."

In that regard, Wheaties has been a trendsetter. In addition to first woman Elinor Smith, other important firsts include Babe Didrickson Zaharias as the first Olympian and first female athlete in 1935; catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers Roy Campanella, first Black athlete in 1952; gold medal gymnast Mary Lou Retton, first female athlete on the front of the box in 1984; football legend Walter Payton, first Black athlete on the front in 1986; female football player Sam Gordon, 9, youngest athlete on a regional box in 2012; gold medalist Evan Strong, first Paralympic athlete in 2014; and gold medalist Jennifer Finzel, first Special Olympian in 1997.

As far as most appearances, that record belongs to basketball superstar and NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan, who has been on the box 18 times. Golfer Tiger Woods is second with 14 appearances.

Earleir this year, athlete and activist Tommie Smith was featured on the front of a box. He won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, then famously stood on the podium with a raised fist against racism. Smith was at first harshly criticized for his action, which was later accepted as a human rights statement.

The athlete was overcome with emotion when he learned he would be recognized on the cereal box. "As a world champion, I always wanted to be on a Wheaties box," Smith said in a news release. "To now be recognized by Wheaties and selected to grace the cover of their box, in the class with other great champion athletes, is an honor."And the list keeps growing. For its 100th anniversary, Wheaties is honoring superstars of the past, including three-time heavy weight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who won a gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. He had been on the box cover two other times. Others will be introduced as the year progresses.

"Wheaties chose to kick off the Century Box Series with 'The Greatest,' Muhammad Ali, in honor of the athlete's six core principles of confidence, conviction, dedication, giving, spirituality and respect," Gessell says. "No one was quite like Muhammad Ali. Beyond his unrivaled prowess in the boxing ring, he was also an agent for social change, racial justice and a civil rights icon. As an indomitable boxing champion and humanitarian, Ali exemplifies the Wheaties Champion and paved the way for future champions to come."

Who will be the next athlete to grace the Century Box Series? Wheaties isn't saying, but rest assured it will be someone who definitely deserves the prized spot.
Editor's Note, July 27, 2021: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that four-time track and field gold medalist Jesse Owens was the first Black athlete to appear on the Wheaties box in 1936, when, in fact, it was catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers Roy Campanella in 1952.

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How Wheaties Became the 'Breakfast of Champions'

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Images of Olympians and other athletes on boxes helped the cereal maintain a competitive edge

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The Daly Family, of Washington, D.C., featured in Parents' Magazine as "America's Outstanding Family" of 1948. (Maureen Arnson)

The iconic 1950s family of the breadwinner father going off to work and caregiving mother taking care of the homefront, has been described by economists as the most efficient family structure. Everyone has a distinct job to do in their "separate spheres" of public and private life. And in the 1950s, the majority of children were being raised in such "typical" families.

We all know that's not true anymore. But perhaps what we haven't fully understood yet is that today, there is no one "typical" family. The breadwinner-homemaker family, the norm since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 19 th century, is being replaced by a new norm of diversity.

"There hasn't been the collapse of one dominant family structure and the rise of another. It's really a fanning out into all kinds of family structures," said Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland. "Different is the new normal."

In a report for the Council on Contemporary Families being released today, Cohen notes that in the 1950s, 65 percent of all children under 15 were being raised in traditional breadwinner-homemaker families. Today, only 22 percent are.

Many people assume dual-income families are now the predominant family structure, Cohen said. And while the greatest percentage of young children do live in such families, they make up just 34 percent of all young children, not even close to a majority.

23 percent are being raised by a single mother, only half of whom have ever been married.

7 percent live with a parent who cohabits with an unmarried partner. A category so rare in the 1960s, Cohen notes, that the U.S. Census Bureau didn't even consider counting it.

3 percent live with a single father.

3 percent live with grandparents, but no parents.

As children return to school this month, Cohen said that they come from so many distinct family arrangements that we can no longer assume they share the same experiences and have the same needs.

How we got here is a combination of a changing economy, rising education, job opportunities and independence of women, a decline in gender discrimination and a rise since the 1960s of the welfare state, Cohen said, which made it possible for people to have more choices in work and family life.

"The big story, really, is the decline of marriage," Cohen said. "That's what's really changed." From the 1950s to 2010, married couple families dropped from two-thirds of all households to 45 percent, less than half.

Most troubling, Cohen said, is the rapid rise in single parenthood, which is associated with higher levels of poverty. A separate study of 11 wealthy countries found that in other countries, poverty rates for unmarried mothers barely differ from married couples. The gap was largest in the United States.

And yet, despite the diversity now of U .S. families, most of the laws and policies that affect families' work and life have not changed. U.S. tax policy, the Social Security system, laws governing work hours, all still favor married breadwinner-homemaker families.

"People may be disappointed that we don't have more stable, long-term tradition marriages, but people have to understand that, inside that model, was a lot of suffering, heartache and exploitation," Cohen said, referring to Betty Friedan's chronicling of the silent dissatisfaction of many 1950s housewives. "And truthfully, we don't know what the 'right' level of marriage is for people to be happy. Likewise with divorce. Everyone acts like divorce is bad news. But if there were no divorces, it would mean that no one took a risk. Or changed. What's the 'right' level of divorce? We don't know."

Just like today, with so many family structures, he said, it's impossible to say any longer, which one is not only normal, but 'right.'

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Unlike in the 1950s, there is no 'typical' U.S. family today

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The iconic 1950s family of the breadwinner father going off to work and caregiving mother taking care of the homefront, has been described by economists as the most efficient family structure. Everyone has a distinct job to do in their "separate spheres" of public and private life.

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In People in the Sun, five people sit on the terrace of a hotel gazing toward a line of distant mountains. Stark contrasts and cool light emphasize their static poses and deadpan expressions.

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During the 1930s, many measures were undertaken to relieve the direct impacts of droughts and to reduce the region's vulnerability to the dry conditions. Many of these measures were initiated by the federal government, a relatively new practice. Before the 1930s drought, federal aid had generally been withheld in emergency situations in favor of individual and self-reliant approaches. This began to change with the development of the Great Depression in the late 1920s and the 1933 inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The depression helped "soften deep-rooted, hard-line attitudes of free enterprise, individualism, and the passive role of the government", thus paving the way for Roosevelt's New Deal programs, which in turn provided a framework for drought relief programs for the Great Plains (Warrick, 1980).

Warrick et al. (1975) describe these drought relief programs, which are credited with saving many livelihoods throughout the drought periods. The programs had a variety of goals, all of which were aimed at the reduction of drought impacts and vulnerability:

Providing emergency supplies, cash, and livestock feed and transport to maintain the basic functioning of livelihoods and farms/ranches.

Establishing health care facilities and supplies to meet emergency medical needs.

Establishing government-based markets for farm goods, higher tariffs, and loan funds for farm market maintenance and business rehabilitation.

Providing the supplies, technology, and technical advice necessary to research, implement, and promote appropriate land management strategies.

Removing dead trees and planting new trees to alleviate psychological stress and create shelter belts.

President Roosevelt visiting a farmer who received a drought relief grant, Mandan, North Dakota, 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein.(Image: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-DIG-fsa8b28231 DLC)

As important as these programs may have been, the survival of a majority of the families and enterprises undoubtedly rested solely with their perseverance and integrity. Whether they stayed or moved into the drought regions or migrated to other areas in hopes of a better life, families encountered new hardships and obstacles that would require ingenuity, resilience, and humility.

Those who remained in the drought regions were forced to endure severe dust storms and their health effects, diminished incomes, animal infestations, and the physical and emotional stress over their uncertain futures. Humor helped; tales about birds flying backward to keep from getting sand in their eyes, housewives scouring pots and pans by holding them up to keyholes for a sandblasting, and children who had never seen rain were among the favorite stories of Dust Bowl inhabitants. In the end, it was a combination of willpower, stamina, humor, pride, and, above all, optimism that enabled many to survive the Dust Bowl. These qualities are succinctly expressed in the comments of one contemporary Kansan: "We have faith in the future. We are here to stay" (quoted in Hurt, 1981).

The 1930s drought and its associated impacts finally began to abate during spring 1938. By 1941, most areas of the country were receiving near-normal rainfalls. These rains, along with the outbreak of World War II, alleviated many of the domestic economic problems associated with the 1930s. In fact, the new production demands and positive climatic conditions brought the United States into a rapid economic boom.

Even though short-term conditions seemed to be relatively stable, this production growth had some drawbacks. One drawback (described by Hurt, 1981) was that the start of World War II shifted remaining funds and priorities away from drought-related programs. Men were taken off work programs to enter the armed forces and to produce for the war effort. Moreover, items such as gasoline and replacement parts were redirected from federal drought and conservation programs to the war efforts. This meant that conservation programs and research were significantly reduced during this period. Another drawback was that with the return of the rains, many people soon forgot about conservation programs and measures implemented during the 1930s droughts. This led to a return to some of the inappropriate farming and grazing practices that made many regions so vulnerable to drought in the 1930s.

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The Dust Bowl | National Drought Mitigation Center

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During the 1930s, many measures were undertaken to relieve the direct impacts of droughts and to reduce the region's vulnerability to the dry conditions. Many of these measures were initiated by the federal government, a relatively new practice. Before the 1930s drought, federal aid had generally been withheld in emergency situations in favor of individual and self-reliant approaches.

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Great Depression: Causes, Definition & Dates | HISTORY

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The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in world history. Learn about the Dust Bowl, New Deal, causes of the Great Depression, a Great Depression timeline more.

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Wheaties is celebrating 100 years as the Breakfast of Champions™ with a limited-edition box series featuring some of the most iconic champions to grace our cover. Join the celebration with new boxes, collectable merch and other surprises happening all year long.

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The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Thomas Cole inspired the generation of American landscape painters that came to be known as the Hudson River School. Born in Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, England, in 1801, at the age of seventeen he emigrated with his family to the United States, first working as a wood engraver in Philadelphia before going to Steubenville, Ohio, where his father had established a wallpaper manufacturing business. Dissatisfied in the business, Cole received rudimentary instruction from an itinerant artist, began painting portraits, genre scenes, and a few landscapes, and set out to seek his fortune through Ohio and Pennsylvania. By 1823, he was working for his father again in Pittsburgh, where his family had relocated, but soon moved on to Philadelphia to pursue his art, inspired by paintings he saw at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Moving to New York City in spring 1825, Cole made a trip up the Hudson River to the eastern Catskill Mountains in the vicinity of the recently opened Catskill Mountain House hotel. Based on his sketches there and along the river, he executed three landscapes that a city bookseller agreed to display in his window. Colonel John Trumbull, already renowned as the painter of the American Revolution, saw Cole's pictures and instantly purchased one, recommending the other two to his colleagues William Dunlap and Asher B. Durand. What Trumbull recognized in the work of the young painter was the perception of wildness inherent in American scenery that landscape artists had theretofore ignored. Trumbull brought Cole to the attention of various patrons, who began eagerly buying his work. Dunlap publicized the discovery of the new talent and Cole was welcomed into New York's cultural community, which included the poet and editor William Cullen Bryant and the author James Fenimore Cooper. Cole became one of the founding members of the National Academy of Design in 1825.

Even as Cole expanded his travels and subjects to include scenes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, he aspired to what he termed a "higher style of landscape" that included narrative-some of the paintings in paired series-including biblical and literary subjects, such as Cooper's popular Last of the Mohicans. By 1829, his success enabled him to take the Grand Tour of Europe and especially Italy, where he remained in 1831-32, visiting Florence, Rome, and Naples. Thereafter he painted many Italian subjects: the Metropolitan's View near Tivoli (Morning) (1832; 03.27) is an example. The region around Rome, along with classical myth, also inspired the Museum's fanciful Titan's Goblet (1833; 04.29.2). Cole's travels and the encouragement and patronage of the New York merchant Luman Reed culminated in his most ambitious historical landscape series, The Course of Empire (1833-36; New-York Historical Society), five pictures dramatizing the rise and fall of an ancient classical state. Cole also continued to paint, with ever rising technical assurance, sublime American scenes such as the Metropolitan's View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm-The Oxbow ( 08.228), in which he included a portrait of himself painting the vista, and View on the Catskill-Early Autumn (1836-37; 95.13.3), in which he pastorally interpreted the prospect of his beloved Catskill Mountains from the village of Catskill, where he had moved the year before and met his wife-to-be, Maria Bartow.

The artist's marriage brought with it increasing religious piety, manifested in the four-part series The Voyage of Life (1840; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, N.Y.). In it, a river journey represents the human passage through life to eternal reward. Cole painted and exhibited a replica of the series in Rome, where he returned in 1841-42, traveling south to Sicily. After his return, he lived and worked chiefly in Catskill, keeping up with art activity in New York primarily through Durand. He continued to produce American and foreign landscape subjects of great beauty and brio, including the Metropolitan's Mountain Ford (1846; 15.30.63). In 1844, Cole welcomed into his Catskill studio the young Frederic Church, who studied with him until 1846 and went on to become the most renowned exponent of the generation that followed Cole. By 1846, Cole was at work on his largest and most ambitious series, The Cross and the World (unlocated), but in February 1848 contracted pleurisy and died before completing it. At a memorial in New York, Bryant mourned that "much is taken away from the charms of Nature when such a man departs" but consoled himself with the thought that Cole "will be reverenced in future years as a great master in art." Even before Cole's death, his earliest acolyte, Durand, who had traveled and sketched with Cole in the late 1830s and become a landscape painter in his own right, had ascended to the presidency of the National Academy of Design. Durand would foster a young generation of landscape artists inspired by Cole's example to primacy in American art through the Civil War era.

Avery, Kevin J. "Thomas Cole (1801-1848)." In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cole/hd_cole.htm (August 2009)

Noble, Rev. Louis Legrand. The Life and Works of Thomas Cole. 1853; reprint. Hensonville, N.Y.: Black Dome Press, 1997.

Parry, Ellwood C. III. "Thomas Cole's Early Career: 1818-1829." Edward J. Nygren, Views and Visions: American Landscape before 1830. Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1986.

Parry, Ellwood C. III. Thomas Cole: Ambition and Imagination. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989.

Truettner, William H., and Alan Wallach. Thomas Cole: Landscape into History. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

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Thomas Cole (1801-1848) | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Thomas Cole inspired the generation of American landscape painters that came to be known as the Hudson River School.

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The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Thomas Cole inspired the generation of American landscape painters that came to be known as the Hudson River School. Born in Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, England, in 1801, at the age of seventeen he emigrated with his family to the United States, first working as a wood engraver in Philadelphia before going to Steubenville, Ohio, where his father had established a wallpaper manufacturing business. Dissatisfied in the business, Cole received rudimentary instruction from an itinerant artist, began painting portraits, genre scenes, and a few landscapes, and set out to seek his fortune through Ohio and Pennsylvania. By 1823, he was working for his father again in Pittsburgh, where his family had relocated, but soon moved on to Philadelphia to pursue his art, inspired by paintings he saw at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Moving to New York City in spring 1825, Cole made a trip up the Hudson River to the eastern Catskill Mountains in the vicinity of the recently opened Catskill Mountain House hotel. Based on his sketches there and along the river, he executed three landscapes that a city bookseller agreed to display in his window. Colonel John Trumbull, already renowned as the painter of the American Revolution, saw Cole's pictures and instantly purchased one, recommending the other two to his colleagues William Dunlap and Asher B. Durand. What Trumbull recognized in the work of the young painter was the perception of wildness inherent in American scenery that landscape artists had theretofore ignored. Trumbull brought Cole to the attention of various patrons, who began eagerly buying his work. Dunlap publicized the discovery of the new talent and Cole was welcomed into New York's cultural community, which included the poet and editor William Cullen Bryant and the author James Fenimore Cooper. Cole became one of the founding members of the National Academy of Design in 1825.

Even as Cole expanded his travels and subjects to include scenes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, he aspired to what he termed a "higher style of landscape" that included narrative-some of the paintings in paired series-including biblical and literary subjects, such as Cooper's popular Last of the Mohicans. By 1829, his success enabled him to take the Grand Tour of Europe and especially Italy, where he remained in 1831-32, visiting Florence, Rome, and Naples. Thereafter he painted many Italian subjects: the Metropolitan's View near Tivoli (Morning) (1832; 03.27) is an example. The region around Rome, along with classical myth, also inspired the Museum's fanciful Titan's Goblet (1833; 04.29.2). Cole's travels and the encouragement and patronage of the New York merchant Luman Reed culminated in his most ambitious historical landscape series, The Course of Empire (1833-36; New-York Historical Society), five pictures dramatizing the rise and fall of an ancient classical state. Cole also continued to paint, with ever rising technical assurance, sublime American scenes such as the Metropolitan's View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm-The Oxbow ( 08.228), in which he included a portrait of himself painting the vista, and View on the Catskill-Early Autumn (1836-37; 95.13.3), in which he pastorally interpreted the prospect of his beloved Catskill Mountains from the village of Catskill, where he had moved the year before and met his wife-to-be, Maria Bartow.

The artist's marriage brought with it increasing religious piety, manifested in the four-part series The Voyage of Life (1840; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, N.Y.). In it, a river journey represents the human passage through life to eternal reward. Cole painted and exhibited a replica of the series in Rome, where he returned in 1841-42, traveling south to Sicily. After his return, he lived and worked chiefly in Catskill, keeping up with art activity in New York primarily through Durand. He continued to produce American and foreign landscape subjects of great beauty and brio, including the Metropolitan's Mountain Ford (1846; 15.30.63). In 1844, Cole welcomed into his Catskill studio the young Frederic Church, who studied with him until 1846 and went on to become the most renowned exponent of the generation that followed Cole. By 1846, Cole was at work on his largest and most ambitious series, The Cross and the World (unlocated), but in February 1848 contracted pleurisy and died before completing it. At a memorial in New York, Bryant mourned that "much is taken away from the charms of Nature when such a man departs" but consoled himself with the thought that Cole "will be reverenced in future years as a great master in art." Even before Cole's death, his earliest acolyte, Durand, who had traveled and sketched with Cole in the late 1830s and become a landscape painter in his own right, had ascended to the presidency of the National Academy of Design. Durand would foster a young generation of landscape artists inspired by Cole's example to primacy in American art through the Civil War era.

Avery, Kevin J. "Thomas Cole (1801-1848)." In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cole/hd_cole.htm (August 2009)

Noble, Rev. Louis Legrand. The Life and Works of Thomas Cole. 1853; reprint. Hensonville, N.Y.: Black Dome Press, 1997.

Parry, Ellwood C. III. "Thomas Cole's Early Career: 1818-1829." Edward J. Nygren, Views and Visions: American Landscape before 1830. Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1986.

Parry, Ellwood C. III. Thomas Cole: Ambition and Imagination. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989.

Truettner, William H., and Alan Wallach. Thomas Cole: Landscape into History. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

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Thomas Cole (1801-1848) | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Thomas Cole inspired the generation of American landscape painters that came to be known as the Hudson River School.

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Title: View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm-The Oxbow

Artist: Thomas Cole (American, Lancashire 1801-1848 Catskill, New York)

Dimensions: 51 1/2 x 76 in. (130.8 x 193 cm)

Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908

Accession Number: 08.228

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Thomas Cole | View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm-The Oxbow | American | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Title: View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm-The Oxbow Artist: Thomas Cole (American, Lancashire 1801-1848 Catskill, New York) Dimensions: 51 1/2 x 76 in. (130.8 x 193 cm) Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908 Accession Number: 08.228

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art's new show, "Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings" is gorgeous, politically right for right now, and a lesson in the mutability of art history.

In the 1960s, pioneering scholarship in American art confirmed that Cole (1801-1848) was the nation's first major landscape artist and progenitor of what would be called (though not by him) the Hudson River School. The fact that he was born in England and spent formative time in Europe was noted, without being particularly noticed. The focus was on his identity as a Yankee romantic, the poetic advocate and spiritual protector of a New World Eden beset by industrial encroachments, with forests being mowed down for gain and railroads slicing the land.

When the 1990s brought an emphasis on art being viewed as unspiritual, unpoetical, socioeconomic evidence, the perspective on Cole changed. Considered within the framework of the Andrew Jackson presidency, which coincided with the high point of Cole's career in the 1830s, the artist and his work were cast as reactionary, evidence of resistance to the era's push toward democratic populism, urbanism and Westward expansion. Cole was seen as aligning himself with the attitudes and interests of his wealthy patrons. His Eden was a gated rural estate from which the common man was shut out.

Through a 2018 lens, the perspective becomes still more complicated. Today, populism is being strategically used as a divisive political force. Environmental regulations are being stripped away. In a time of walls and deportations, Cole's immigrant status - he became a naturalized United States citizen only after living here for 17 years - takes on new weight. Aspects of his conservatism begin to make sense.

It's Cole the immigrant and internationalist that the show highlights. He was born in 1801 in northwestern England, where the industrial revolution was grinding away. He grew up in landscapes blackened by pollution from William Blake's "dark Satanic mills." Cole witnessed episodes of class violence, when textiles workers, left jobless by mechanization, attacked factories and were, in turn, brutally punished by a new commercial elite.

Cole's father, a luckless small-time businessman, moved his family from place to place. In the process, Cole picked up an education, and learned engraving as a print shop apprentice, initially designing patterns for calico fabrics, later making prints of well-known paintings. The big move came in 1818, when the family sailed to the United States, settling at first in Philadelphia. The teenage Cole stayed in that city as his family wandered westward. From this point, his largely self-taught career as an artist began.

As always true, he had little patience with cities and headed out of them when he could. Wherever he went - including, briefly, to the Caribbean - he sketched what he saw. The earliest piece by him in the show dates to 1823. It's an ink drawing of a single tree, but no ordinary tree: although naturalistically detailed, it looks bizarrely animated, like some half-human creature in torment, thrashing its armlike branches and yanking its roots from the earth. It's the product of a distinctive and unplacid sensibility.

Hanging out at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he familiarized with new American and European work. Within a few years, he felt ready to head to New York City, where he assiduously networked the still small art world, sold some things and made lasting contacts.

And on an 1825 jaunt up the Hudson River, he fixed on the subject that he would make his own, the landscape; and more than that, a particular brand, the American landscape, which he approached the same way he did his treatment of trees: as a mirror of reality and an object of fantasy. Market-wise, the approach worked. Early landscapes, like " View of the Round-Top in the Catskill Mountains (Sunny Morning in the Hudson) " (1827), were a hit. A self-made New York gentry snapped them up.

Encouraged, Cole resolved to head for Europe, a move that would not only enhance his pedigree, but let him see firsthand art he had known mostly in reproduction. In terms of sales, London, the first stop, was a bust. Basically, no one noticed him. But he noticed a lot. He saw an England racked by economic tumult, with old social hierarchies seriously shaken. And he saw artists responding to that.

On a visit to the studio of Joseph Mallord William Turner, he encountered the painter's great " Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps," which melds landscape and history painting in a scene from the ancient past that held lessons for the present. At the Royal Academy of Art, he found John Constable's "Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames - Morning After a Stormy Night," a soot-gray rural vista that reads like a groan of despair at England's urbanization. Both pictures are in the Met show.

From England he went on to Italy, and a cheerier stay, though one with grave lessons of its own. Outside Rome he saw, and painted, countryside bathed in the hazy sunset light that he knew and loved in Claude Lorrain's 17th-century landscapes. But what does that dreamy light fall on in Cole's scenes? Not on pastoral bliss but on ruins, the crumbling remains of a civilization dead from internal decay.

In foregrounding and illustrating this phase of Cole's career the exhibition finds its signal purpose. Seeing grand paintings Cole savored in London - by Constable, Turner and Lorrain (" Seaport With the Embarkation of Saint Ursula," from 1641) - alongside his own pictures of ruins we understand a crucial lesson he was learning: that art was, or could be, a vehicle for critical commentary, political and ethical. And we get an instructive preview of how this will play out in work to come.

When Cole returned to America in 1832 he found it disorienting and spirit-crushing. A striver who had worked hard to leave his rough beginnings behind through identification with a cultural elite, Cole found Jacksonian America: competitive, commercial and uncivil, a land of uncontrolled and destructive appetites. He was committed to the place - he became a citizen in 1834 - but left New York City for an upstate home, in Catskill, where he stayed, with his growing family.

What most disturbed him, and seemed symptomatic of a larger malaise, was the government-fueled drive toward land-grabbing and wilderness-taming at any cost. Virtually from his Catskill front porch he could see forests being rapidly and randomly leveled. For Cole, who identified personally, emotionally, with every living element in a landscape, such sights were an assault.

Increasingly, he used painting to argue against these developments, to resist them. And art he had seen abroad - Constable, Turner, archaeological remains - gave him a new language and conceptual perspective to work with. He put both to use in the 1834-36 salon production called "The Course of Empire," which, in five separate paintings, narrates the life-cycle of an unnamed civilization: from forest origins, to rural innocence, to pr ideful florescence, to destruction, to vanishing.

For all its moral seriousness and formal ingenuity, "Course of Empire" never really rises above being a didactic machine. (And the otherwise splendid Met installation does it no favors by crowding it into a corner.) Dramatizing a similar message far more effectively is the single large 1836 painting titled " View From Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow)." From a God's-eye height we look down at the spot where the Connecticut River, flowing around an island-like land mass, creates a question-mark shape known as the "Oxbow."

The painting divides vertically into two atmospheric halves. To the left is a wild storm-soaked tangle of old trees and dense vegetation; to the right, far below, a flat terrain of treeless, square-cut fields running back to distant hills scarred by clear-cutting. The wilderness looks unkept and threatening, but seethes with life. The flat land, though cultivated and presumably fertile, feels as bare and bland as a tract-house town. And in the foreground of the picture is a tiny self-portrait of Cole at his easel. He turns away from his canvas and looks right at us, as if to say: Here are the alternatives; you choose.

Cole chose wilderness, and in doing so disappeared himself for more than a century. When he died suddenly, at 47, in 1848, he was widely mourned; pictorial tributes from fellow artists piled up, the most famous being Asher Brown Durand's 1849 "Kindred Spirits," which shows Cole and the nature-poet William Cullen Bryant sharing thoughts in a paradisal Catskill Mountain glen. (The picture is back in town for the first time since it was sold by the New York Public Library to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas in 2005.)

Yet within a few years, Cole was all but forgotten. And the colonizing of Nature he so hated - hyped as Manifest Destiny - was being cheered on by artists who claimed to revere him, Durand among them.

Politically, Cole's art is conservative, but it's also work that challenges and complicates that term. And the Met show - organized by Elizabeth Kornhauser, curator of American painting and sculpture at the Met, and Tim Barringer, professor of art history at Yale University, with Chris Riopelle, a curator at the National Gallery, London - is precisely about complication. And just as Cole is most realistically and revealingly seen and judged against the background of his time, so is the exhibition, coming as it does in this confounding MAGA moment.

Correction: March 16, 2018

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art's new show, "Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings" is gorgeous, politically right for right now, and a lesson in the mutability of art history. In the 1960s, pioneering scholarship in American art confirmed that Cole (1801-1848) was the nation's first major landscape artist and progenitor of what would be called (though not by him) the Hudson River School.

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Thomas Cole. "Aqueduct near Rome," 1832. Oil on canvas. (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum/Washington University)

NEW YORK - If you despair of what's happening to the world today - from political discord to environmental degradation - then you may also feel serious misgivings about democracy. Is government up to the task of tackling problems so grave that they threaten the planet? Can a system designed to be deliberative and cumbersome muster the vigor necessary to avert catastrophe?

An exhibition of paintings by Thomas Cole and his contemporaries at the Metropolitan Museum situates the early-19th-century American painter in a moment of high anxiety - about the natural world and the nascent American Republic - not dissimilar to our own. Cole was the father of American landscape painting and often cited as the founder of the Hudson River School, though he played little role in organizing what was a loose collection of painters who followed him through the middle of the 19th century. Often, his work is remembered as pretty, appealing, occasionally sublime and sometimes a bit sentimental (Washingtonians who know the second of his "Voyage of Life" cycles at the National Gallery of Art may think of him primarily as a spinner of romantic cotton candy).

But "Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings" connects some of Cole's greatest work to his childhood in an industrial part of England, where workers were being displaced by automation and the landscape despoiled by railroads, factories and other dark satanic mills. He grew up amid the rebellious Luddite movement, and attended a school that, from his biographer's descriptions, sounds like one of Dickens's juvenile penal colonies. He didn't arrive in the United States until he was 17, and he returned to England after his first flush of success to survey the work of established figures such as John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. He spent time in Italy improving his technical skills and painting the landscape, a period he remembered with fondness. He returned to the United States, became a citizen and is remembered as the quintessential American painter, but he wasn't temperamentally suited for the country that awaited him, torn apart by the rough and tumble of Jacksonian democracy.

With the planet in peril, can the arts afford the Koch brothers' money?

By focusing on two major works, one a cycle of five paintings called "The Course of Empire" (1833-1836) and the other an ambitious landscape called "View From Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm - the Oxbow" (1836), the curators argue that Cole was deeply uneasy about his adopted country, seeing it as prone to greed, self-interest and expansionism, with dire consequences for the primeval forests and virgin land. "The Course of Empire," commissioned for a wealthy dry-goods merchant to decorate his New York City townhouse, shows an imaginary civilization first in its "savage" state, then as an Arcadian idyll, followed by its apex of luxury and power, its destruction, and finally a new landscape of ruins and emptiness. The United States, Cole believed, was sliding perilously from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3, from the quiet dignity of Arcadia into the pomp and decadence of imperial power.

The other key work, known as the Oxbow, shows a placid river in Massachusetts, curving sharply around a spit of land, with thick, unmolested forests on one side of the canvas, and a landscape of farms, fields and small houses on the other. The sharp division in the picture, roughly corresponding to east and west on a map, dramatizes the march of cultivation and the loss of wilderness. It was also painted six years after the country passed the consummately evil Indian Removal Act of 1830, a little more than a decade after the opening of the Erie Canal, and in the first great age of American railroad building.

The painter depicted himself as a small, dapper figure, in the lower margin of the picture, looking out at the viewer, not at the landscape he is supposedly limning. That detail, and the curious question-mark shape of the river, leads curator Tim Barringer (who organized the show with co-curator Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser) to sum up Cole's work in a query put directly to the American people: "Is it possible to balance the pursuit of wealth with the preservation of the God-given wilderness, to temper the material with the spiritual, industry with art?"

That question is connected to a larger, more ominous one: If the answer is no, as surely it seems to have been, can the United States avoid the cycle of rise and ruin the artist depicted in "The Course of Empire"?

So Thomas Cole is certainly a more complicated and darker artist than we often assume him to be. Part of the problem is the Hudson River School artists who followed him, who to different degrees embraced the "progress" Cole feared, and moved West to where the landscape still seemed fresh and free of the strain of cultivation. For them, the sublime was intact, or at least they represented it that way. And today we project their vision of unsullied vistas back onto the more nuanced anxieties of Cole.

But it would be a mistake to think of Cole as an environmentalist in any contemporary sense. As this exhibition demonstrates but doesn't underscore, his view of nature was fundamentally romantic, as was his pessimism about the sustenance of republican government. His cycles-of-civilization conceit was just that, a historically received way of thinking about the world that he projected onto his sense of America. In paintings of the Catskills he made late in his too-short life (he died 1848 at age 47), one senses that he was most pained by the loss of his personal landscape, his preferred places to commune with nature, his internalized fantasy of the Arcadian golden moment. Politically, he was in some ways reactionary: "It appears to me that the moral principle of the nation is much lower than formerly," he lamented, as power shifted from the elite republican class of the revolutionary years to the rabble of the city mobs.

A vision of the East, depleted and forlorn, before the West was "won"

Even his vision of environmental destruction seems anodyne. The last of the five empire paintings is "Desolation," which is a Byronic landscape of picturesque ruins and encroaching greenery, ready for a solitary walker. The settled and cultivated land seen in the "east" half of his Oxbow painting doesn't seem terribly ominous by contemporary standards. To see the real environmental damage that was already underway, look to the photographs made in the 1850s that were on view in the National Gallery's "East of the Mississippi" exhibition last spring: This is the barren, haphazard landscape of wanton greed that Cole could never really bring himself to paint.

There is a peculiarly American sense of regret about the world that one finds fully developed in Cole. It is a sense of sadness and futility that work together to appease the conscience: Something beautiful is being lost and we can do nothing about it. Having that feeling seems somehow to absolve you for your passivity, your acceptance of the destruction. This is how Americans made peace with the loss of native people and cultures (Cole never rises above making their genocide seem picturesque) during the same years that Cole was fretting about the loss of unsullied green places. Cole could be a great artist, but as a voice for his age, he raised little more than a genteel whimper of loss.

Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through May 13. For more information, visit metmuseum.org.

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Review | Did America's great landscape painter fear progress and hate democracy?

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A new exhibition discovers the anxieties of Thomas Cole.

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An oxbow wetland is a meander of a stream, river or creek that has become separated from the flow of water. Oxbows help prevent flooding and preserve clean water.

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Summary of Edward Hopper

No one captured the isolation of the individual within the modern city like Edward Hopper. His imagery of figures within urban settings go well beyond their role as modern cityscapes, exposing the underbelly of the human experience. So while his oeuvre officially falls within the rubric of Realism, it offers a far more evocative look at life between the World Wars. Indeed, by providing a minimum of action, stripping away almost any sign of life or mobility, and adding dramatic means of representation with striking lighting schemes in claustrophobic spaces, Hopper suggests something of the psychological inner life of his subjects, leading the way towards Abstract Expressionism. He injected significance, and the weight of the individual's existential being in the modern metropolis or in country life, into what otherwise might appear to be straight-forward images of everyday life.

Accomplishments

Hopper's imagery is consistently restrained, presenting part of a story or one suggestive aspect. By leaving many clues but no specific answers, he forces the viewer to complete the narrative. This element of his art would have major repercussions for the development of postmodernism wherein the viewer has a major role in the understanding of the artwork.

Hopper's individuals, usually depicted isolated and disconnected from their environments either literally by glass windows or metaphorically through formal means, are manifestations of the artist's focus on the solitude of modern life. The starkness of detail and unmodulated revelatory light in many works builds a tension, drawing the viewer's attention away from the given subject, and suggesting much about his emotional experience. In this way, the artist's work acts as a bridge between the interest in everyday life exhibited by the contemporary Ashcan School and the exploration of mood by later existential artists.

Many of the houses depicted by Hopper, animated through artistic means, set apart from their environs, lit with a blanching light which dramatically highlights and casts into shadow, viewed from evocative angles, have provided inspiration to the film making industry.

Important Art by Edward Hopper

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

Biography of Edward Hopper

Childhood

Edward Hopper was born into a comfortable, middle-class family in Nyack, New York, in 1882. His parents introduced Edward, and his older sister Marion, to the arts early in life; they attended the theatre, concerts and other cultural events, and visited museums. His father owned a dry goods store where Hopper sometimes worked as a teen. Hopper described him as "an incipient intellectual... less at home with his books of accounts than with Montaigne's essays." Both his parents were supportive of his artistic inclinations.

As a boy, Hopper was quiet and reserved. He was over six feet tall by his early teens, had few friends, and spent much of his time alone with his books and art. His home in Nyack stood on a hill overlooking the Hudson River, just north of New York City. At the time Nyack was a vibrant hub of transit and industry. There was an active train station, three shipbuilding companies, a port for steamboats, and the cross-Hudson ferry. Young Edward spent his days by the river, sketchpad in hand, observing and drawing the rigging and building of boats. This early period is documented in numerous drawings of boats and ships as well as several handmade wooden model boats. As a teen he built a full-sized catboat and briefly considered pursuing a career in naval architecture. The seriousness with which the artist approached his artistic ambitions had already revealed itself by age 10 when he began to sign and date his drawings.

Early Period

After graduating high school in 1899, Hopper's parents encouraged him to study commercial illustration instead of fine art. Accordingly, he spent a year at the New York School of Illustration in Manhattan before transferring to the more serious New York School of Art to realize his dream. His teachers there included the American Impressionist William Merritt Chase (who founded the school) and Robert Henri, a leading figure of the Ashcan school, whose proponents advocated depicting the grittier side of urban life. Hopper's classmates at the school included George Bellows, Guy Pene du Bois, and Rockwell Kent.

In 1905, Hopper began working as an illustrator for a New York City advertising agency but never really liked illustrating and longed for the freedom to paint from his imagination. Unfortunately, success was slow in coming and he was forced to earn his living as an illustrator for nearly 20 more years until his painting career took off.

Hopper travelled to Europe three times between 1906 and 1910, enjoying two extended stays in Paris. The influence of the Impressionists led him to the streets to draw and paint en plein air, or, as Hopper described it, "from the fact." Years later he would call his work from this period, a form of "modified impressionism." He was especially attracted to Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas's unusual compositional arrangements in their depictions of modern urban life. During a visit to Amsterdam, Hopper also admired Rembrandt's Nightwatch, which called "the most wonderful thing of his I have seen, it's past belief in its reality - it almost amounts to deception."

After returning from his final trip abroad in 1910, Hopper moved permanently to New York City and, in 1913, settled at 3 Washington Square North. This would be his home and studio for the rest of his life. That same year he sold his first painting, Sailing (1911), for $250 at the Armory show in New York. Though he never stopped painting, it would be 11 years before he sold another painting. During that time he continued to earn his living illustrating and, in 1915, he took up printmaking, producing some 70 etchings and dry points over the next decade. Like the paintings for which he would later become renowned, Hopper's etchings embody a sense alienation and melancholy. One of his better known etchings, Night Shadows (1921) features the birds'-eye viewpoint, the dramatic use of light and shadow, and the air of mystery which would serve as inspiration for many film noir movies of the 1940s. Hopper continued to receive great acclaim for his etchings over the years and considered them an essential part of his artistic development. As he wrote, "After I took up etching, my painting seemed to crystallize."

Mature Period

In 1923, Hopper visited Gloucester, Massachusetts. There he became reacquainted with Josephine (Jo) Nivison, whom he had met years earlier as an art student of Robert Henri. He worked in watercolor that summer and it was Jo who encouraged him later that year to join her in participating in a show at the Brooklyn Museum. He exhibited six watercolors there, including The Mansard Roof (1923), which the museum purchased for $100.

In 1924, Hopper married Jo. From that time on she became his primary model and most ardent supporter. In that same year he had a solo exhibition of watercolors at the Frank K. M. Rehn Gallery in New York. The show sold out and the Rehn Gallery continued to represent him for the rest of his life. This success enabled Hopper to finally give up illustrating.

Over the next several years, Hopper's painting style matured and his signature iconography emerged--from isolated figures in public or private interiors, to sun-soaked architecture, silent streets, and coastal scenes with lighthouses. In 1930, House by the Railroad (1925) became the first painting accessioned to the permanent collection of the newly founded Museum of Modern Art. The early 1930s were, indeed, a period of great success for Hopper, with sales to major museums and in 1933, a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Despite his commercial success, Hopper and Jo lived a frugal lifestyle, only allowing themselves the indulgence of attending theatre and films. Hopper particularly loved going to movies. His first documented visit to one was in Paris in 1909. As he explained, "When I don't feel in the mood for painting, I go to the movies for a week or more. I go on a regular movie binge."

Early in their marriage the Hoppers spent summers painting in New England, mostly Gloucester and coastal Maine. They also travelled across the country and to Mexico, where they painted watercolors side by side. From 1934, they began spending summers at the house and studio Hopper designed for them in South Truro, Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

Late Period

Hopper continued to be productive during the war years and remained unperturbed by the potential threats following the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was precisely during this period that he worked on his most well known painting, Nighthawks (1942). Through the 1950s and early 1960s, Hopper continued to see acclaim and success, despite the arrival of Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism to the New York art scene. The universal appeal of his subjects continued to find an avid audience.

Hopper was not a prolific painter. He often found it hard to settle on a subject to paint and then spent a great deal of time working out the details of the composition through numerous studies. By the end of his life he averaged just two oils a year. Hopper died on May 15, 1967 and Jo Hopper died just 10 months later, bequeathing their artistic estate to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Hopper is buried, along with Jo, his sister and his parents, in Nyack's Oak Hill Cemetery.

The Legacy of Edward Hopper

Hopper has inspired countless painters, photographers, filmmakers, set designers, dancers, writers, and musicians and the term "Hopperesque" is now widely used to connote images reminiscent of Hopper's moods and subjects. In the visual arts, Hopper's influence has touched artists in a range of media including Mark Rothko, George Segal, Banksy, Ed Ruscha, and Tony Oursler. The painter Eric Fischl remarked, "You can tell how great an artist is by how long it takes you to get through his territory...I'm still in the territory that he opened up." Richard Diebenkorn recalled the importance of Hopper's influence on his work when he was a student stating, "I embraced Hopper completely ... It was his use of light and shade and the atmosphere ... kind of drenched, saturated with mood, and its kind of austerity ... It was the kind of work that just seemed made for me. I looked at it and it was mine." In the exhibition and catalogue, Edward Hopper & Company: Hopper's Influence on Photography (2009), Jeffrey Fraenkel examines how Edward Hopper inspired a whole school of photographers including Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and Stephen Shore. Fraenkel writes, "More than almost any American artist, Hopper has had a pervasive impact on the way we see the world--so pervasive as to be almost invisible."

Hopper has had no less of an impact on cinema. Generations of filmmakers have drawn inspiration from Hopper's dramatic viewpoints, lighting, and overall moods, among them, Sam Mendes, David Lynch, Robert Siodmak, Orson Welles, Wim Wenders, and Billy Wilder. His painting, House by the Railroad (1925) inspired Alfred Hitchcock's house in Psycho (1960) as well as that in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978).

Hopper's open-ended narratives have also appealed to writers and musicians. Tom Waits titled an album Nighthawks at the Diner and Madonna named a concert tour after the painting Girlie Show (1941). Joyce Carol Oates refers directly to Hopper in her poem, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks 1942. Many others have created whole collections of stories or poems using Hopper paintings as starting points. Hopper's Nighthawks has been appropriated and used hundreds of times in all forms of media within popular culture. An image of the painting or a facsimile of it can be found in an episode of the Simpsons, as the backdrop for a Peeps marshmallows ad, or featuring Marilyn Monroe and James Dean (in Gottfried Helnwein's Boulevard of Broken Dreams (1984)), morphed into a Starbucks, a space station, and in a variety of cartoons in The New Yorker.

The artist and writer Victor Burgin properly summed up Hopper's pervasive impact when he said, "We need not look for Hopper in order to find him. We may encounter him by chance at random places where his world intersects our own. We might ask whether or not this photograph by the American documentary photographer Larry Sultan was taken with Edward Hopper's paintings consciously in mind. But the question is irrelevant. To know Hopper's work is to be predisposed to see the world in his terms, consciously or not."

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Edward Hopper

Similar Art

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Hopper's figures within urban settings expose the underbelly of the modern human experience and his work is a powerful blend of nostalgia and decadence.

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Robert Beverly Hale. "American Painting 1754-1954." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 12 (March 1954), ill. p. 188.

Robert Beverly Hale. "The American Moderns." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16 (Summer 1957), ill. p. 22.

Henry Geldzahler. "Edward Hopper." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 21 (November 1962), p. 115.

Henry Geldzahler. American Painting in the Twentieth Century. New York, 1965, pp. 79-80, ill.

Lloyd Goodrich. Edward Hopper. New York, [1971], ill. p. 279 (color).

Edward F. Weeks. "American Masters, 1872-1972." Birmingham Museum of Art Bulletin (1972), unpaginated, no. 31, ill.

Henry Geldzahler. Arte del Siglo Veinte: EE.UU. del Museo Metropolitano de Arte/ Twentieth-Century Art: U.S.A. from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., El Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. San Juan, 1974, p. 24, fig. 7.

Helen A. Harrison. Twentieth Century American Paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., Parrish Art Museum. Southampton, N. Y., 1977, p. 19, no. 10, ill.

E[lena]. M[ikhatovna]. Matusovskaia. Ėdvard Khopper. Moscow, 1977, p. 15, colorpl. 24.

Helen A. Harrison in La Peinture Américaine au 20e Siècle de la Collection du Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Brussels, 1978, unpaginated, no. 10, ill., reprints Ref. Harrison 1977.

Alfred Kazin. "Hopper's Vision of New York." New York Times Magazine (September 7, 1980), p. 56, notes that with this work the artist demonstrates his unique ability to evoke silence amidst dense urban architecture.

Jerry William McRoberts. "The Conservative Realists' Image of America in the 1920s: Modernism, Traditionalism and Nationalism." PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1980, p. 83 n. 2.

Ronald Paulson. "Edward Hopper and Some Precursors." Bennington Review (December 1980), p. 70.

Larry Rosing. "The Met's American Wing Raises a Lot of Questions." Artworkers News 10 (December 1980), p. 16, ill. (installation photo).

Gail Levin. Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 1980, pp. 58, 70 n. 40, colorpl. 363.

Bernd Weyergraf in Amerika: Traum und Depression, 1920/40. Exh. cat., Akademie der Künste. Berlin, 1980, p. 147, ill. p. 148.

J. Bernlef. "Edward Hopper: In Dienst Van Het Licht." Kunstbeeld 5 (March 1981), ill. p. 21.

Peter Conrad. "Art." Harpers & Queen (February 1981), p. 124.

Alfred Kazin in Edward Hopper, 1882-1967. Exh. cat., Hayward Gallery. London, 1981, pp. 25, 27.

Erika L. Doss. "Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, and Film Noir." Post Script 2 (Winter 1983), pp. 20, 32, fig. 10.

Lowery Stokes Sims. The Figure in 20th Century American Art: Selections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., Jacksonville Art Museum. New York, 1984, pp. 71, 90-91, ill. (color), notes that this work was painted in August and September 1953.

Peter Conrad. The Art of the City: Views and Versions of New York. New York, 1984, p. 105.

Gail Levin in L'Empire du Bureau, 1990-2000. Exh. cat., Centre national des arts plastiques. Paris, 1984, p. 129, ill. p. 128, calls it "Bureau d'une petite ville".

Wynne Delacoma. "Challenge of the Human Figure: Terra Museum Exhibit Traces a Form Through Modern American Art." Chicago Sun-Times (October 13, 1985), p. 20.

Mark M. Johnson. "The Figure in Twentieth-Century American Art." Arts and Activities 98 (November 1985), pp. 24-25, ill. (color).

John Brandenburg. "Museum's Offerings Tell Story of 20th Century America." Daily Oklahoman/Times (May 30, 1985), p. 15.

Michael Brenson. "Back in the City, a Display of the Figure in Modern Art." New York Times (August 2, 1985), p. C21.

Robert Hobbs. Edward Hopper. New York, 1987, pp. 45-46.

Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle. "Hopper ou la raréfaction de la Vie." Revue française d'études américaines no. 46 (November 1990), p. 260.

Heinz Liesbrock in Edward Hopper und die Fotografie: Die Wahrheit des Sichtbaren. Exh. cat., Museum Folkwang. Essen, 1992, pp. 25-26, 188, ill. p. 55 (color).

Edward Lucie-Smith. American Realism. New York, 1994, p. 124, pl. 112.

Joseph Stanton. "On Edge: Edward Hopper's Narrative Stillness." Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 77 (Spring-Summer 1994), p. 26.

Gail Levin Whitney Museum of American Art. Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné. Vol. 3, Oils. New York, 1995, p. 346-47, no. O-349, ill. (color).

John Loughery. "Just Deserts." Hudson Review 48 (Autumn 1995), p. 473, notes that this work is not about alienation because the human life depicted in it appears more staged than real.

Gail Levin in Edward Hopper and the American Imagination. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 1995, pp. 117, 123, colorpl. 10.

William A. Camfield. More Than a Constructive Hobby: The Paintings of Frank Freed. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Houston, 1996, p. 40, ill., compares this work to Frank Freed's "& Co." (1967, Collection of Lesley and Pierre M. Schlumberger).

Gerd Gemünden. Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization, and the Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1998, p. 10.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg with Margaret Lynne Ausfeld. Edward Hopper: The Watercolors. Exh. cat., National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D.C., 1999, p. 163.

Stella Paul. Twentieth-Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Resource for Educators. New York, 1999, pp. 99-101, ill. and ill. p. 98 (color).

Lucy Fischer. "The Savage Eye: Edward Hopper and the Cinema." A Modern Mosaic: Art and Modernism in the United States. Ed. Townsend Ludington. Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000, pp. 337-38.

Merlin James. "Edward Hopper: London." Burlington Magazine 146 (September 2004), p. 633, fig. 43, suggests that the depicted figure represents the artist.

Sheena Wagstaff in Edward Hopper. Ed. Sheena Wagstaff. Exh. cat., Tate Modern, London. London, 2004, pp. 26, 248, ill. pp. 204-5 (color).

Peter Wollen in Edward Hopper. Ed. Sheena Wagstaff. Exh. cat., Tate Modern, London. London, 2004, p. 72.

Roberto Pasini. Forme del Novecento: Occhio Corpo Libertà. Bologna, 2005, pp. 49-51, fig. 24 (color).

Gail Levin. Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography. 2nd rev. ed. [1st ed., 1995]. New York, 2007, pp. 470, 472, notes that this work was started in Cape Cod in the summer and finished in New York in October 1953.

Rosalind Ormiston. Edward Hopper Masterpieces. London, 2012, p. 23, ill. p. 137 (color).

Caroline Hancock in Hopper. Exh. cat., Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid, 2012, p. 345.

Mark W. Turner in Hopper Drawing. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 2013, pp. 167, 170, fig. 310 (color).

Carter E. Foster in Hopper Drawing. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 2013, p. 207, connects this painting to a drawing of a hand holding a cigarette from a study for "Nighthawks" (1942; Art Institute of Chicago).

Sarin Marchetti. Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James. New York, 2015, pp. 2-5, compares the figure in this work to the concept of a contemplative Jamesian philosopher.

Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 530, ill. (color), colorpl. 468.

Kim Conaty. Edward Hopper's New York. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 2022, pp. 31, 35 n. 87, p. 250, colorpl. 145.

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Edward Hopper | Office in a Small City | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Robert Beverly Hale. "American Painting 1754-1954." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 12 (March 1954), ill. p. 188. Robert Beverly Hale. "The American Moderns." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16 (Summer 1957), ill. p. 22. Henry Geldzahler. "Edward Hopper." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 21 (November 1962), p. 115. Henry Geldzahler.

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Edward Hopper and his wife first rented a cottage in Truro, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1930, and they would return there regularly through the 1950s. Hopper began while he was staying in Truro in the summer of 1953, and he finished it in his New York studio in the fall. Rather than depicting the Cape Cod landscape, however, Office in a Small City is a scene that could have taken place in any American town in the mid-twentieth century. Hopper's explanation of his earlier work Office at Night (1940; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis) also applies to this painting: "My aim was to try to give the sense of an isolated and lonely office interior rather high in the air, with the office furniture which has a very definite meaning to me."

The solitary office worker in this scene is isolated both physically and emotionally. There is no indication of his particular profession, as he sits in his shirtsleeves; he appears, in fact, to be daydreaming rather than working. The postwar culture of American business is evident in the mass-produced office furniture, the impersonal atmosphere of the office itself, and the man's detachment from his unseen coworkers. Despite the light and air afforded by his corner office, he appears trapped in place. He is framed by the office window, and his head is profiled against another window and the wall of the building beyond, in a manner that suggests his containment within his environment. The solitude of the man, and the contrast between the stark, utilitarian upper story of the building and its decorative false front, visible at the lower right, suggest Hopper's own ambivalence toward modern urban life.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired this painting very shortly after its completion, and included it in the opening of its new galleries for American art in December 1953.

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Office in a Small City, 1953 by Edward Hopper

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Edward Hopper and his wife first rented a cottage in Truro, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1930, and they would return there regularly through the 1950s. Hopper began while he was staying in Truro in the summer of 1953, and he finished it in his New York studio in the fall.

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Pandemic or not, the artist's masterly paintings explore conditions of aloneness as proof of belonging, Peter Schjeldahl writes.

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Painting did not come easily to Edward Hopper. Each canvas represented a long, morose gestation spent in solitary thought. There were no sweeping brushstrokes from a fevered hand, no electrifying eurekas. He considered, discarded and pared down ideas for months before he squeezed even a drop of paint onto his palette. In the early 1960s, the artist Raphael Soyer visited Hopper and his wife, Josephine, in their summer house on a bluff above the sea in Cape Cod. Soyer found Hopper sitting in front gazing at the hills and Jo, as everyone called her, in back, staring in the opposite direction. "That's what we do," she said to Soyer. "He sits in his spot and looks at the hills all day, and I look at the ocean, and when we meet there's controversy, controversy, controversy." Expressed with Jo's characteristic flash (an artist herself and once an aspiring actress, she knew how to deliver a line), the vignette summarizes both Hopper's creative process and the couple's fractious yet enduring relationship. Similarly, Hopper's close friend, American painter and critic Guy Pène du Bois, once wrote that Hopper "told me...that it had taken him years to bring himself into the painting of a cloud in the sky."

For all his cautious deliberation, Hopper created more than 800 known paintings, watercolors and prints, as well as numerous drawings and illustrations. The best of them are uncanny distillations of New England towns and New York City architecture, with exact time and place arrested. His stark yet intimate interpretations of American life, sunk in shadow or broiling in the sun, are minimal dramas suffused with maximum power. Hopper had a remarkable ability to invest the most ordinary scene-whether at a roadside gas pump, a nondescript diner or a bleak hotel room-with intense mystery, creating narratives that no viewer can ever quite unravel. His frozen and isolated figures often seem awkwardly drawn and posed, but he eschewed making them appear too graceful or showy, which he felt would be false to the mood he sought to establish. Hopper's fidelity to his own vision, which lingered on the imperfections of human beings and their concerns, made his work a byword for honesty and emotional depth. Critic Clement Greenberg, the leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism, saw the paradox. Hopper, he wrote in 1946, "is not a painter in the full sense; his means are second-hand, shabby, and impersonal." Yet Greenberg was discerning enough to add: "Hopper simply happens to be a bad painter. But if he were a better painter, he would, most likely, not be so superior an artist."

Hopper was as pensive as the people he put on canvas. Indeed, the enigmatic quality of the paintings was enhanced by the artist's public persona. Tall and solidly built with a massive balding head, he reminded observers of a piece of granite-and was about as forthcoming. He was unhelpful to journalists seeking details or anecdotes. "The whole answer is there on the canvas," he would stubbornly reply. But he also said, "The man's the work. Something doesn't come out of nothing." The art historian Lloyd Goodrich, who championed Hopper in the 1920s, thought that the artist and his work coalesced. "Hopper had no small talk," Goodrich wrote. "He was famous for his monumental silences; but like the spaces in his pictures, they were not empty. When he did speak, his words were the product of long meditation. About the things that interested him, especially art...he had perceptive things to say, expressed tersely but with weight and exactness, and uttered in a slow reluctant monotone."

As to controversy, there is little left anymore. Hopper's star has long blazed brightly. He is arguably the supreme American realist of the 20th century, encapsulating aspects of our experience so authentically that we can hardly see a tumbledown house near a deserted road or a shadow slipping across a brownstone facade except through his eyes. Given Hopper's iconic status, it is surprising to learn that no comprehensive survey of his work has been seen in American museums outside New York City in more than 25 years. This drought has been remedied by "Edward Hopper," a retrospective currently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through August 19 and continuing on to Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art (Sept. 16, 2007-Jan. 21, 2008) and the Art Institute of Chicago (Feb. 16-May 11, 2008). Consisting of more than 100 paintings, watercolors and prints, most of them dating from roughly 1925 to 1950, the period of the artist's greatest achievement, the show spotlights Hopper's most compelling compositions.

"The emphasis is on connoisseurship, an old-fashioned term, but we selected rigorously," says Carol Troyen, a curator of American painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and one of the organizers-along with the Art Institute's Judith Barter and the National Gallery's Franklin Kelly-of the exhibition. "Hopper is recognized as a brilliant creator of images, but we also wanted to present him as an artist dedicated to the craft of painting whose work must be seen in person. His art is far more subtle than any reproduction reveals."

Edward Hopper was born July 22, 1882, in Nyack, New York, 25 miles north of New York City, into a family of English, Dutch, French and Welsh ancestry. His maternal grandfather built the house-preserved today as a landmark and community art center-where he and his sister, Marion, who was two years older, grew up. Hopper's father, Garrett Henry Hopper, was a dry goods merchant. His mother, Elizabeth Griffiths Smith Hopper, enjoyed drawing, and both his parents encouraged their son's artistic inclinations and preserved his early sketches of himself, his family and the local countryside. Gangling and self-effacing, Edward, who was over six feet tall at age 12, was teased by his classmates. His differentness probably reinforced solitary pursuits-he gravitated to the river, to sketching, to sailing and to painting. Even as a child, Hopper recalled, he noticed "that the light on the upper part of a house was different than that on the lower part. There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house."

Although Hopper's parents recognized their son's gifts and let him study art, they were prudent enough to require that he specialize in illustration as a way to make a living. After graduating from high school in 1899, Hopper enrolled in a commercial art school in New York City and stayed there about a year, after which he transferred to the New York School of Art, founded in 1896 by the American Impressionist William Merritt Chase. Hopper continued to study illustration but also learned to paint from the most influential teachers of the day, including Chase, Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Both Chase and Henri had been influenced by Frans Hals, Velázquez and French Impressionism, particularly as exemplified by Édouard Manet. Henri encouraged his students to emancipate themselves from tired academic formulas, espousing a realism that plunged into the seamier aspects of American cities for its subject matter. As a successful artist looking back, Hopper had reservations about Henri as a painter, but he always granted that his teacher was a vigorous advocate for an enlightened way of seeing. Inspired by Henri's motivating force, the youthful Hopper stayed on at the school for six years, drawing from life and painting portraits and genre scenes. To support himself, he taught art there and also worked as a commercial artist. Hopper and his friend Rockwell Kent were both in Miller's class, and some of their early debates turned on painterly problems that remained of paramount fascination for Hopper. "I've always been intrigued by an empty room," he remembered. "When we were at school...[we] debated what a room looked like when there was nobody to see it, nobody looking in, even." In an empty room absence could suggest presence. This idea preoccupied Hopper for his entire life, from his 20s through his last years, as is evident in Rooms by the Sea and Sun in an Empty Room, two majestic pictures from the 1950s and '60s.

Another essential part of a budding artist's education was to go abroad. By saving money from his commercial assignments, Hopper was able to make three trips to Europe between 1906 and 1910. He lived primarily in Paris, and in letters home he rhapsodized about the beauty of the city and its citizens' appreciation of art.

Despite Hopper's enjoyment of the French capital, he registered little of the innovation or ferment that engaged other resident American artists. At the time of Hopper's first visit to Paris, the Fauves and the Expressionists had already made their debuts, and Picasso was moving toward Cubism. Hopper saw memorable retrospectives of Courbet, whom he admired, and Cézanne, about whom he complained. "Many Cézannes are very thin," he later told writer and artist Brian O'Doherty. "They don't have weight." In any case, Hopper's own Parisian pictures gave intimations of the painter he was to become. It was there that he put aside the portrait studies and dark palette of the Henri years to concentrate on architecture, depicting bridges and buildings glowing in the soft French light.

After returning to the United States in 1910, Hopper never visited Europe again. He was set on finding his way as an American, and a transition toward a more individual style can be detected in New York Corner, painted in 1913. In that canvas, he introduces the motif of red-brick buildings and the rhythmic fugue of opened and closed windows that he would bring to a sensational pitch in the late 1920s with The City, From Williamsburg Bridge and Early Sunday Morning. But New York Corner is transitional; the weather is misty rather than sunny, and a throng uncharacteristically congregates in front of a stoop. When asked years later what he thought of a 1964 exhibition of artist Reginald Marsh's work, the master of pregnant, empty spaces replied, "He has more people in one picture than I have in all my paintings."

In December 1913, Hopper moved from Midtown to Greenwich Village, where he rented a high-ceilinged, top-floor apartment at 3 Washington Square North, a brick town house overlooking the storied square. The combined living and work space was heated by a potbellied stove, the bathroom was in the hall, and Hopper had to climb four flights of stairs to fetch coal for the stove or pick up the paper. But it suited him perfectly.

Hopper sold one painting in 1913 but didn't make another major sale for a decade. To support himself, he continued to illustrate business and trade journals, assignments he mostly detested. In 1915 he took up printmaking as a way to remain engaged as an artist. His etchings and drypoints found greater acceptance than his paintings; and at $10 to $20 each, they occasionally sold. Along with the bridges, buildings, trains and elevated railroads that already were familiar elements in his work, the prints feature a bold development: Hopper began portraying women as part of the passing scene and as the focus of male longing. The etching Night on the El Train is a snapshot of a pair of lovers oblivious to everyone else. In Evening Wind, a curvaceous nude climbs onto a bed on whose other side the artist seems to be sitting as he scratches a lovely chiaroscuro moment into a metal plate. In these etchings, New York is a nexus of romantic possibilities, overflowing with fantasies tantalizingly on the brink of fulfillment.

Between 1923 and 1928, Hopper often spent time during the summer in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a fishing village and art colony on Cape Ann. There he devoted himself to watercolor, a less cumbersome medium that allowed him to work outdoors, painting humble shacks as well as the grand mansions built by merchants and sea captains. The watercolors marked the beginning of Hopper's real professional recognition. He entered six of them in a show at the Brooklyn Museum in November 1923. The museum bought one, The Mansard Roof, a view of an 1873 house that showcases not only the structure's solidity, but the light, air and breeze playing over the building. A year later, Hopper sent a fresh batch of Gloucester watercolors to New York dealer Frank Rehn, whose Fifth Avenue gallery was devoted to prominent American painters. After Rehn mounted a Hopper watercolor show in October 1924 that was a critical and financial smash, the artist quit all commercial work and lived by his art for the rest of his life.

Hopper's career as a watercolorist had been jump-started by the encouragement of Josephine Verstille Nivison, an artist whom Hopper had first courted in 1923 in Gloucester. The two wed in July 1924. As both were over 40, with established living habits, adjusting to each other took some effort. Their marriage was close-Josephine moved into her husband's Washington Square quarters and did not have a separate work space for many years-and turbulent, for they were physical and temperamental opposites. Towering over her, he was stiff-necked and slow-moving; she was small, snappy and birdlike, quick to act and quicker to speak, which some said was constantly. Accounts of Jo Hopper's chattering are legion, but her vivacity and conversational ease must have charmed her future husband, at least initially, for these were traits he lacked. "Sometimes talking with Eddie is just like dropping a stone in a well," Jo quipped, "except that it doesn't thump when it hits bottom." As time passed, he tended to disregard her; she resented him. But Hopper probably could not have tolerated a more conventional wife. "Marriage is difficult," Jo told a friend. "But the thing has to be gone through." To which Hopper retorted, "Living with one woman is like living with two or three tigers." Jo kept her husband's art ledgers, guarded against too many guests, put up with his creative dry spells and put her own life on hold when he roused himself into working. She posed for nearly every female figure in his canvases, both for his convenience and her peace of mind. They formed a bond that only Edward's death, at age 84, in 1967 would break. Jo survived him by just ten months, dying 12 days before her 85th birthday.

Jo Hopper's availability as a model likely spurred her husband toward some of the more contemporary scenes of women and couples that became prominent in his oils of the mid- and late 1920s and gave several of them a Jazz Age edge. In Automat and Chop Suey, smartly clothed independent women, symbols of the flapper era, animate a heady cosmopolitan milieu. Chop Suey had an especially personal meaning for the Hoppers-the scene and the place derive from a Columbus Circle Chinese restaurant where they often ate during their courtship.

Hopper ignored much of the city's hurly-burly; he avoided its tourist attractions and landmarks, including the skyscraper, in favor of the homely chimney pots rising on the roofs of commonplace houses and industrial lofts. He painted a number of New York's bridges, though not the most famous, the Brooklyn Bridge. He reserved his greatest affection for unexceptional 19th- and early 20th-century structures. Echoing his Gloucester watercolors (and decades ahead of the historic preservation movement), he treasured vernacular buildings, drawing satisfaction from things that stayed as they were.

By the late 1920s, Hopper was in full command of a powerful urban vision. He had completed several extraordinary paintings that seemed almost carved out of the materials they were depicting, brick by brick and rivet by rivet. Manhattan Bridge Loop (1928) and Early Sunday Morning (1930) match the monumental scale of New York itself, whereas Night Windows (1928) acknowledges in an almost cinematic way the strange nonchalance that results from lives lived in such close proximity: even when you think you are alone, you are observed-and accept the fact. The unsettling nature of Night Windows derives from the position of the viewer-directly across from a half-dressed woman's derrière. The painting suggests that Hopper may have affected movies as much as they affected him. When German director Wim Wenders, a Hopper fan, was asked why the artist appeals to so many filmmakers, he said: "You can always tell where the camera is."

With the creation of such distinctive paintings, Hopper's reputation soared. Two on the Aisle sold in 1927 for $1,500, and Manhattan Bridge Loop brought $2,500 in 1928. That same year, Frank Rehn took in more than $8,000 for Hopper's oils and watercolors, which yielded the artist about $5,300 (more than $64,000 today). In January 1930, House by the Railroad became the first painting by any artist to enter the permanent collection of New York's newly established Museum of Modern Art. Later that year, the Whitney Museum of American Art bought Early Sunday Morning for $2,000; it would become a cornerstone of that new institution's permanent collection. The august Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased Tables for Ladies for $4,500 in 1931, and in November 1933, the Museum of Modern Art gave Hopper a retrospective exhibition, an honor rarely bestowed on living American artists. He was 51.

Since 1930, the Hoppers had spent summer vacations in South Truro, Massachusetts, near the tip of Cape Cod. A small town situated between Wellfleet and Provincetown, Truro had kept its local character. In 1933 Jo received an inheritance, which the couple used to build a house there; it was completed the next year. The Hoppers would spend nearly every summer and early autumn in Truro for the remainder of their lives.

By the end of the 1930s, Hopper had changed his working methods. More and more, instead of painting outside, he stayed in his studio and relied on synthesizing remembered images. He pieced together Cape Cod Evening (1939) from sketches and recollected impressions of the Truro vicinity-a nearby grove of locust trees, the doorway of a house miles away, figures done from imagination, dry grass growing outside his studio. In the painting, a man and woman seem separated by their own introspection. Hopper's "equivocal human figures engaged in uncertain relationships mark his paintings as modern" as strongly as his gas pumps and telephone poles, writes art historian Ellen E. Roberts in the current show's catalog.

The notions of disconnection and inaccessiblity are most fully realized in Nighthawks (1942), Hopper's most famous painting. Like the Mona Lisa or Whistler's Mother or American Gothic, it has taken on a life of its own in popular culture, with its film-noir sensibility sparking scores of parodies. The figures, customers at a late-night eatery, flooded by an eerie greenish light, look like specimens preserved in a jar. Hopper has banished every superfluous detail: the huge plate-glass window is seamless, and there is no visible entrance to the restaurant. Like characters in a crime movie or existential novel, the figures seem trapped in a world that offers no escape.

As Hopper aged, he found it increasingly difficult to work, and as his output decreased in the late 1940s, some critics labeled him as passé. But younger artists knew better. Richard Diebenkorn, Ed Ruscha, George Segal, Roy Lichtenstein and Eric Fischl appropriated Hopper's world and made it their own. Eight decades after his most evocative canvases were painted, those silent spaces and uneasy encounters still touch us where we are most vulnerable. Edward Hopper, matchless at capturing the play of light, continues to cast a very long shadow.

Avis Berman is the author of Edward Hopper's New York and the editor of My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator by Katharine Kuh (2006).

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Hopper: The Supreme American Realist of the 20th-Century

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Mystery. Longing. A whole new way of seeing. A stunning retrospective reminds us why the enigmatic American artist retains his power

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I am graduated in Graphic Design, but even before starting the college, I was already directing my studies for humor illustrations, especially to caricatures. ...

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Saint Anthony has been presented in the visual arts for centuries, especially his temptation in the desert. This article will explore and discuss this subject in the version painted by the famous Surrealist Salvador Dalí titled The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946).
Artist Abstract: Who Was Salvador Dalí?

Salvador Dalí was born in the town of Figueres in Catalonia, Spain. His date of birth is May 11, 1904, and his date of death is January 23, 1989. He worked in various art styles like Impressionism, Cubism, and Pointillism, but became popular within the Surrealist art movement. His education included studies at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, but did complete his studies there.

He became a "celebrity" artist throughout his career, known for his divergent approaches and style and collaboration with numerous significant artists. Some of his famous artworks include The Great Masturbator (1929), The Persistence of Memory (1931), The Burning Giraffe (1937), and, of course, The Temptation of St Anthony (1946).

Salvador Dalí in 1939; Carl Van Vechten, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Temptation of St Anthony (1946) by Salvador Dalí in Context

In the article below we will look at Salvador Dalí's The Temptation of St Anthony analysis, starting with the history of why he painted it and a look at how he painted it in terms of the elements of art.

Contextual Analysis: A Brief Socio-Historical Overview

The Temptation of St Anthony by Salvador Dalí was painted in 1946, which was when he lived in New York, where he and his wife Gala moved to in 1940 because of World War II. However, he traveled to New York on previous occasions and stayed there for just under a decade.

Named the Bel Ami International Art Competition, 12 artists were called to create a painting that was based on the Temptation of St Anthony as part of the drama The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), which was directed by Albert Lewin and Produced by David L. Loew and based on the novel by Guy de Maupassant Bel-Ami (1885).

Salvador Dalí created his version of The Temptation of St Anthony painting, but he did not win the competition. The winner was the Dadaist Max Ernst and his painting titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1945).

The Story of the Temptation of Saint Anthony

The Temptation of St Anthony by Salvador Dalí can be better understood with a knowledge of the story around the temptation of Saint Anthony, who was also known as Anthony the Great, who was born in the year 251 and died in 356. He was born in Egypt and became a Christian monk famous for traveling into the Egyptian desert.

Some other artistic renditions include The Temptation of Saint Anthony (c. 1487) by the famous Renaissance artist Michelangelo, the Triptych of Temptation of St Anthony (c. 1501) by the Netherlandish Hieronymus Bosch, and The Temptation of Saint Anthony (c. 1650) by the Flemish artist Joos van Craesbeeck. The post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne also painted several versions of the theme, such as The Temptation of St Anthony (1887), as well as more modern depictions like the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington's The Temptation of St Anthony (1974).

Space Elephant (1980), based on the 1946 painting by Dalí, The Temptation of St Anthony. This statue depicts one of Dalí's elephants with long spider legs (signifying desire) and carrying an obelisk on its back, which is a symbol of power, desire, and domination. Dalí suggests that St Anthony was visited by such desires; Jim Linwood from London, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Formal Analysis: A Brief Compositional Overview

Below, we will discuss The Temptation of St Anthony by Salvador Dalí in more detail, looking at the subject matter - what did the artist portray exactly? - and the stylistic composition, which will be categorized around the visual art elements (color, texture, line, shape, form, and space).

Subject Matter: Visual Description

In The Temptation of St Anthony painting, Salvador Dalí depicts a desertscape; about one-third of the composition is the desert land, which is barren and sandy except for several objects that we will discuss further below. Around two-thirds of the composition is made up of the blue sky with clouds. This composition is described as having a "low horizon" line.

There appears to be a mountainous region far into the distance just off-center to the left. The nude and half-kneeling figure of St Anthony is positioned in the bottom left corner of the foreground; he is kneeling on his left leg while his right leg is bent at the knee holding him steady.

His left hand is slightly behind him on what appears to be a gray rock formation, supporting him as he kneels and slightly leans back. Saint Anthony's hair appears disheveled, and he has a beard. There also appears to be a halo above his head, which indicates his identity as a saintly figure. In front of him, to the left of his right foot, is a skull, which appears to be a human skull.

In front of Saint Anthony are various figures and animals, and in the middleground, there are four human-like figures, one of whom appears to be a child walking with an adult. The other two appear to be in an altercation of sorts.

The figure on the right holds up what appears to be a cross and the other figure to the left appears hostile in his stance as if he wants to attack the figure holding up the cross. Behind the figure holding up the cross is a white angelic figure, floating just above the ground.

In front of the elephants is a giant white horse, also with elongated legs. The horse is in a rearing position and appears aggressive. It is also right in front of the figure of Saint Anthony, who is holding the cross up as if to ward off the evil rearing itself toward him.

There are various figures and structures on top of the elephants; on the elephant behind the horse is a nude female figure standing on a golden plinth object, and behind that elephant is an obelisk with spherical forms in it. The last two elephants have a building-like structure on top with a female's nude upper torso inside and are shown through the open window. On top of this structure are two statuesque figures with their arms open and extended, and their postures appear fluid as if they are dancing, although this is questionable.

There are formations of clouds to the right and they appear dark as if a storm is brewing. Nestled in the whiter clouds is another building structure, which has been described as the "El Escorial", which is a monastery in Spain.

The various nude figures on the elephants are believed to symbolize Saint Anthony's temptation, notably sexual temptation. Some have also described the large structures as possibly being material temptations, and the horse as possibly symbolizing ideas of power.

The color scheme in The Temptation of St Anthony by Salvador Dalí is harmonious because it is in soft hues of whites, browns, golds or yellows, blues, and grays. There are no stark colors that create contrast, but there is shading that highlights certain areas and creates depth. For example, the shadows on the ground from the various figures indicate a light source, which possibly comes from the sun in the sky of the composition, located slightly off-center to the right.

The Temptation of St Anthony depicts implied texture on the two-dimensional canvas, as seen in the muscular, but lean figure of Saint Anthony, the musculature of the rearing horse, the smooth skin tones of the women symbolizing temptation, the soft and downy texture of the clouds, and the rougher, craggy, texture of the rock formation in the bottom left corner.

Vertical linearity is implied by the elongated legs from the horse and elephants, which in turn appears to be created by various diagonal lines. The vertical structures on the elephants' backs also create an upward movement. This is subtly contrasted with the visible horizontal linearity implied by the horizon.

There are all sorts of different lines along with the dominant vertical and horizontal lines and layout. From straight lines on the towering structures to various curvy lines that create depth and implies texture, notably the array of lines implied through the musculature on the horse's and Saint Anthony's bodies.

Shape and Form

Salvador Dalí incorporated numerous types of shapes and forms in The Temptation of St Anthony painting, from the more organic/naturalistic forms of the figures and animals such as Saint Anthony's musculature, the voluptuous figure of the nude woman, and the horse and elephants, although they are more fantastical in nature, part of their form still appears close to nature.

Geometric shapes and forms can be found in the obelisk structure on one of the elephants - it appears more pyramidal with spherical shapes on it, including the tower on the far elephant's back, which appears cylindrical.

Three-dimensionality is created through scale, in other words, the subject matter appears in various sizes, which provides perspective. For example, the smaller figure of Saint Anthony compared to the giant figures of the horse and elephants, where the latter are further emphasized by the even smaller figures places in between them.

Dalí's Temptations

In this article we explored Salvador Dalí's painting The Temptation of St Anthony analysis, which he created as part of a competition for a film around the theme of Saint Anthony's temptations in the desert, but his subject matter goes well beyond what it was originally painted for. In other words, it is a testament of his inner creative genius and the boundaries he pushed that, at times, caused the world to recoil.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Salvador Dalí Paint The Temptation of St Anthony?

Salvador Dalí painted The Temptation of St Anthony (1946), but there have been numerous other versions of the subject of the temptation of Saint Anthony painted throughout art history.

Where Is The Temptation of St Anthony by Salvador Dalí?

The Temptation of St Anthony (1946) is housed at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, but was reportedly acquired through a purchase from Mrs. Anne-Marie Robiliart in 1965; the exact price is uncertain.

Who Did Salvador Dalí Paint The Temptation of St Anthony For?

The Temptation of St Anthony (1946) by Salvador Dalí was painted for the Bel Ami International Art Competition for the film The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947). However, Max Ernst's painting won the prize.

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"The Temptation of St Anthony" by Salvador Dalí - An Analysis

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Who Was Salvador Dalí? ✔ "The Temptation of St Anthony" (1946) by Salvador Dalí in Context ✔ Formal Analysis: A Compositional Overview ✔

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Salvador Dali | Biography, Art, Paintings, Surrealism, & Facts

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Salvador Dali, Spanish Surrealist painter and printmaker, influential for his explorations of subconscious imagery. He depicted with realistic detail a dreamworld where commonplace objects are often metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. His most famous of these works is The Persistence of Memory (1931).

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The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early '20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious. Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and critic André Breton (1896-1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement. Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897-1982), Paul Éluard (1895-1952), and Philippe Soupault (1897-1990), were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818-1883). Using Freudian methods of free association, their poetry and prose drew upon the private world of the mind, traditionally restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce surprising, unexpected imagery. The cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier.

Surrealist poets were at first reluctant to align themselves with visual artists because they believed that the laborious processes of painting, drawing, and sculpting were at odds with the spontaneity of uninhibited expression. However, Breton and his followers did not altogether ignore visual art. They held high regard for artists such as Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Francis Picabia (1879-1953), and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) because of the analytic, provocative, and erotic qualities of their work. For example, Duchamp's conceptually complex Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915-23; Philadelphia Museum of Art) was admired by Surrealists and is considered a precursor to the movement because of its bizarrely juxtaposed and erotically charged objects. In 1925, Breton substantiated his support for visual expression by reproducing the works of artists such as Picasso in the journal La Révolution Surréaliste and organizing exhibitions that prominently featured painting and drawing.

The visual artists who first worked with Surrealist techniques and imagery were the German Max Ernst (1891-1976), the Frenchman André Masson (1896-1987), the Spaniard Joan Miró (1893-1983), and the American Man Ray (1890-1976). Masson's free-association drawings of 1924 are curving, continuous lines out of which emerge strange and symbolic figures that are products of an uninhibited mind. Breton considered Masson's drawings akin to his automatism in poetry. Miró's Potato ( 1999.363.50) of 1928 uses comparable organic forms and twisted lines to create an imaginative world of fantastic figures.

About 1937, Ernst, a former Dadaist, began to experiment with two unpredictable processes called decalcomania and grattage. Decalcomania is the technique of pressing a sheet of paper onto a painted surface and peeling it off again, while grattage is the process of scraping pigment across a canvas that is laid on top of a textured surface. Ernst used a combination of these techniques in The Barbarians ( 1999.363.21) of 1937, a composition of sparring anthropomorphic figures in a deserted postapocalyptic landscape that exemplifies the recurrent themes of violence and annihilation found in Surrealist art.

In 1927, the Belgian artist René Magritte (1898-1967) moved from Brussels to Paris and became a leading figure in the visual Surrealist movement. Influenced by de Chirico's paintings between 1910 and 1920, Magritte painted erotically explicit objects juxtaposed in dreamlike surroundings. His work defined a split between the visual automatism fostered by Masson and Miró (and originally with words by Breton) and a new form of illusionistic Surrealism practiced by the Spaniard Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), the Belgian Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), and the French-American Yves Tanguy (1900-1955). In The Eternally Obvious ( 2002.456.12a-e), Magritte's artistic display of a dismembered female nude is emotionally shocking. In The Satin Tuning Fork ( 1999.363.80), Tanguy filled an illusionistic space with unidentifiable, yet sexually suggestive, objects rendered with great precision. The painting's mysterious lighting, long shadows, deep receding space, and sense of loneliness also recall the ominous settings of de Chirico.

In 1929, Dalí moved from Spain to Paris and made his first Surrealist paintings. He expanded on Magritte's dream imagery with his own erotically charged, hallucinatory visions. In The Accommodations of Desire ( 1999.363.16) of 1929, Dalí employed Freudian symbols, such as ants, to symbolize his overwhelming sexual desire. In 1930, Breton praised Dalí's representations of the unconscious in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism. They became the main collaborators on the review Minotaure (1933-39), a primarily Surrealist-oriented publication founded in Paris.

The organized Surrealist movement in Europe dissolved with the onset of World War II. Breton, Dalí, Ernst, Masson, and others, including the Chilean artist Matta (1911-2002), who first joined the Surrealists in 1937, left Europe for New York. The movement found renewal in the United States at Peggy Guggenheim's gallery, Art of This Century, and the Julien Levy Gallery. In 1940, Breton organized the fourth International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City, which included the Mexicans Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957) (although neither artist officially joined the movement). Surrealism's surprising imagery, deep symbolism, refined painting techniques, and disdain for convention influenced later generations of artists, including Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) and Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), the latter whose work formed a continuum between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

Voorhies, James. "Surrealism." In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm (October 2004)

Ades, Dawn. Dada and Surrealism Reviewed. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978.

Alexandrian, Sarane. Surrealist Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985.

Brandon, Ruth. Surreal Lives: The Surrealists, 1917-1945. London: Macmillan, 1999.

Breton, André. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969.

Krauss, Rosalind E., and Jane Livingston. L'Amour Fou: Photography & Surrealism. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Abbeville, 1985.

Mundy, Jennifer, ed. Surrealism: Desire Unbound. Exhibition catalogue. London: Tate Publishing, 2001.

Rubin, William S. Dada and Surrealist Art. New York: Abrams, 1968.

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Surrealism | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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The cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier.

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The Temptation of St. Anthony, David Teniers, the Younger ^ Minneapolis Institute of Art

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Saint Anthony was a hermit in the 300s, rarely emerging from the cave where he lived in the Egyptian desert. But even there, according to legend, his faith in God was fought by the devil. The devil sent demons to beat him and alluring women to distract him from his prayers.

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Behind the Many Interpretations of The Temptation of St Anthony | Widewalls

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The Temptation of St Anthony is one of the most celebrated religious paintings. An often-repeated subject, the painting was interpreted by Dalí, Hieronymus Bosch and Max Ernst.

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The Temptation of St. Anthony

Catalogue raisonné: Lehrs V.243.54

State: II/II

Did you know?

Prints of Saint Anthony like this one were believed to function as protective tools against ergotism (also called St. Anthony's Fire), a disease causing painful putrefaction of the limbs cased by fungus found on rye.

Description

Saint Anthony (c. AD 251-356) was an Egyptian hermit known for having established the ideal of monasticism, seclusion, and meditation in Christianity. According to the Life of Saint Anthony written by the 20th bishop of Alexandria Athanasius (c. AD 360), Anthony was assaulted by several demons and tormented by erotic visions during his retreat to the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Martin Schongauer's print marks the very moment in which a highly animated demonic attack took place in the sky. Nine whimsical monsters-composed of reptilian, mammalian, and fish- and bird-like parts-flap, blow, and grasp a stiff and indifferent Saint Anthony. With his firm discipline, the saint epitomizes the Christian's struggle to resist evil temptations.

Artist biography

Martin Schongauer

Martin Schongauer (ca. 1450-53, Colmar - 2 February 1491, Breisach) was one of the most skilled and influential graphic artists of Europe in the last quarter of the 15h century. Trained both as an engraver and as a painter, Schongauer started his apprenticeship under his father Caspar Schongauer, a goldsmith from Augsburg. In 1465, he matriculated at the University of Leipzig. After one year, he left his studies, and came back to Colmar. There, he was trained under the painter Caspar Isenmann, between 1466 and 1469. Schongauer later traveled down to the Rhine, Cologne, Burgundy, the Netherlands, and he likely visited Spain. In 1489, he became a citizen of Breisach, where he died probably of the plague in 1491. Only a few of Schongauer's paintings survive. Among these is the Madonna in the Rose Garden for the Church of Saint Martin in Colmar (1473), which betrays Schongauer's admiration for the works by the Netherlandish painter Roger Van der Weyden. The bulk of Schongauer's engravings is more conspicuous: 116 prints, none of them dated, but all marked by his monogram M+S. Characterized by exquisite cross-hatching and impeccable craftsmanship, Schongauer's engravings were widely imitated by the German printmakers Ishrael van Meckenem and Albrecht Durer, as well as by Italian artists, such as Cristoforo Robetta and Nicoletto da Modena.

"St. Anthony Tormented by the Devils." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 10, no. 7 (July, 1923): 123-130. Mentioned: P. 123; Reproduced on the cover

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925. Mentioned and Reproduced: 39 archive.org

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928. Reproduced: p. 47 archive.org

Mikolic, Amanda. A Field Guide to Medieval Monsters. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019. Reproduced: p. 6

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Catalogue raisonné: Lehrs V.243.54 State: II/II Prints of Saint Anthony like this one were believed to function as protective tools against ergotism (also called St. Anthony's Fire), a disease causing painful putrefaction of the limbs cased by fungus found on rye. Saint Anthony (c.

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Helen of Troy may have been the beauty whose face famously "launched a thousand ships," but when it comes to moving merchandise, inspiring artists and spilling ink, she can't hold a candle to Marilyn Monroe, whose presence can be felt in almost every corner of popular culture. What follows is a selected list of products that carry her imprint.
-Adam Tschorn
Advertising

The actress' name and image

have been used to sell a mind-boggling array of products from khakis andCoca-Colato cars and cosmetics, but one of the more memorable ads to leverage the legend didn't use her likeness at all. In a 1995 print ad, a vodka bottle sits atop a subway grate as the lettering from its label billows about the same way Monroe's dress does in that iconic scene from "The Seven Year Itch." The ad copy read: "Absolut Marilyn."

Art

The best-known artwork bearing her likeness are the silk-screened images created by Andy Warhol within a month of her death in 1962. Warhol's Marilyns were based on a publicity photo of the actress used for the 1953 release of the movie "Niagara."

Coffee shops

Toronto-based Marilyn Monroe Cafe Franchise Inc. has plans for a global chain of 750- to 1,500-square-foot coffee shops with coffee drinks, fruit smoothies and pastries on the menu and Monroe quotes and photographs on the walls. The first one is set to open its doors in the Toronto suburb of Oakville in early September.

Cosmetics

Monroe has been an obvious choice to be the face of beauty products over the decades. The most recent effort, due to hit retail in October, is a limited-edition, 30-piece beauty collection from MAC Cosmetics, which will include nail lacquers, eyeliners, eye shadow and lipstick.

Fashion

In the past, Dolce & Gabbana has offered Monroe-motif dresses and T-shirts, Betsey Johnson has created "Mary-Lynn" tote bags, and Gerard Darel has sold replicas of the cable-knit sweater Monroe wore in "Let's Make Love." More recently, the film "Niagara" inspired the spring 2011 men's and women's Gant by Michael Bastian collection. And Italian luxury label Salvatore Ferragamo is rolling out a capsule collection of shoes that re-creates Ferragamo footwear once worn by Monroe.

Jewelry

A 60- to 100-piece jewelry collection that includes rings, necklaces and earrings is scheduled to go on sale in mid-October, says Tim Engle, chief strategy officer of Knoxville, Tenn.-based Jewelry Television. He says the collection will have actual pieces that Monroe owned and reproductions, as well as pieces inspired by Monroe's style. The debut collection, priced from $40 to $125, will be sold on JTV's website and its cable TV channel.

Nail salons

Marilyn Monroe Spas, which expects to open its first nail salon in Orlando, Fla., by the end of the year, aims to offer manicures, pedicures and a range of other salon services inspired by and themed around the late actress.

Magazines

Channeling your inner Marilyn for a magazine cover or the glossy pages in between is practically a rite of passage for the celebrity set. Among those who have done so to memorable effect are Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Rihanna, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, the latter of whom went full Marilyn by re-creating Monroe's famous 1962 Bert Stern photo shoot known as "the last sitting." Stern even photographed Lohan for the 2008 New York magazine cover spread.

Movies and television

Where to begin? Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino portrayed younger and older versions, respectively, in the 1996 TV movie "Norma Jean & Marilyn," Charlotte Sullivan played Monroe in the 2011 Reelz Channel miniseries "The Kennedys," the same year Michelle Williams earned an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe for "My Week With Marilyn," and James Franco made an ill-advised appearance in Marilyn Monroe drag during a co-hosting stint of the Academy Awards. Then there are the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of DVDs of her film appearances.

Music

Monroe's short life was the inspiration for Elton John and Bernie Taupin's song "Candle in the Wind," which first appeared on Elton's 1973 album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."

Music videos

Madonna pays homage to (and essentially strip mines) Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" dance number from the 1953 film "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" for her "Material Girl" music video - right down to the pink dress, nearly shoulder-length pink opera gloves, jewelry and a chorus of tuxedo-clad gentlemen.

Postage stamps

In 1995, Monroe officially became first class - postage, that is - when theU.S. Postal Serviceunveiled a 32-cent stamp bearing her likeness. It went on to become that year's bestselling U.S. postage stamp.

Sculpture

Designer William Travilla's iconic "subway dress" is immortalized in "Forever Marilyn," Seward Johnson's 26-foot-tall sculpture depicting Monroe's subway grate pose from "The Seven Year Itch." The piece is scheduled to remain at the corner of Palm Canyon and Tahquitz Canyon Drive in Palm Springs until June 2013.

Wine

Napa Valley-based Nova Wines Inc. has been making Monroe-themed wines and packaging them in bottles bearing her likeness since 1985. Products include Marilyn Merlot ($40 to $3,800 depending on the year), Sauvignon Blonde ($16) and Norma Jean ($12 to $160).
adam.tschorn@latimes.com

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Andy Warhol. Campbell’s Soup Cans. 1962 | MoMA

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Andy Warhol. Campbell’s Soup Cans. 1962. Acrylic with metallic enamel paint on canvas, 32 panels. Each canvas 20 x 16″ (50.8 x 40.6 cm). Overall installation with 3″ between each panel is 97″ high x 163″ wide. Partial gift of Irving Blum Additional funding provided by Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest, gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund, gift of Nina and Gordon Bunshaft, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, Philip Johnson Fund, Frances R. Keech Bequest, gift of Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, and Florence B. Wesley Bequest (all by exchange). 476.1996.1-32. © 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation / ARS, NY / TM Licensed by Campbell’s Soup Co. All rights reserved. Painting & Sculpture

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Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary artist, activist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. In 1989, he designed the " Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Fairey designed the Barack Obama "Hope" poster for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, has described him as one of the best known and most influential street artists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Shepard Fairey was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. His father, Strait Fairey, is a doctor, and his mother, Charlotte, a realtor. He attended Porter-Gaud School in Charleston and transferred to high school at Idyllwild Arts Academy in Idyllwild, California, from which he graduated in 1988.

Fairey became involved with art in 1984, when he started to place his drawings on skateboards and T-shirts. He moved to Rhode Island in 1988 to attend the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). In 1992, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration from RISD.

Fairey created the " Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign in 1989, while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). This later evolved into the "Obey Giant" campaign, which has grown via an international network of collaborators replicating Fairey's original designs. Fairey intended the Obey Giant to inspire curiosity and cause people to question their relationship with their surroundings. According to the Obey Giant website, "The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker". The website also says, by contrast, that those who are familiar with the sticker find humor and enjoyment from it and that those who try to analyze its meaning only burden themselves and may condemn the art as an act of vandalism from an evil, underground cult.

Originally intending the sticker campaign to gain fame among his classmates and college peers, Fairey says:

In a manifesto he wrote in 1990 to 1991, and since posted on his website, he links his work with Heidegger's concept of phenomenology. His "Obey" Campaign is from the John Carpenter movie which starred pro wrestler Roddy Piper, taking a number of its slogans, including the "Obey" slogan, as well as the "This is Your God" slogan. Fairey has spun off the OBEY clothing line from the original sticker campaign. He also uses the slogan " The Medium is the Message" borrowed from Marshall McLuhan. Shepard Fairey has stated in an interview that part of his work is inspired by other street artists.

After graduation, he founded a small printing business in Providence, Rhode Island, called Alternate Graphics, specializing in T-shirt and sticker silkscreens, which afforded Fairey the ability to continue pursuing his own artwork. While residing in Providence in 1994, Fairey met American filmmaker Helen Stickler, who had also attended RISD and graduated with a film degree. The following spring, Stickler completed a short documentary film about Shepard and his work, titled " Andre the Giant Has a Posse". The film premiered in the 1995 New York Underground Film Festival and went on to play at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. It has been seen in more than 70 festivals and museums internationally.

"From the late '90s until about 2001," writes Ken Leighton in The San Diego Reader, Fairey lived in East Village, San Diego, where, according to a friend quoted in the article, he co-founded a "guerrilla marketing company called Black Market Design." According to John Goff, a former member of the San Diego-based "tribal post-punk" industrial-noise performance art band Crash Worship, Fairey began appropriating the Russian Constructivist style utilized in Soviet-era propaganda during his time in San Diego. "'I think he became an art icon when he started focusing on Communist imagery,' Goff says. 'He was still in San Diego then. I first met him when he was working above Hooter's in the Gaslamp.'"

Mozilla's former logo, as designed by Shepard Fairey in 1998

Fairey was a founding partner, along with Dave Kinsey and Phillip DeWolff, of the design studio BLK/MRKT Inc. from 1997 to 2003, which specialized in guerrilla marketing, and "the development of high-impact marketing campaigns". Clients included Pepsi, Hasbro and Netscape (for whom Fairey designed the red dinosaur version of mozilla.org's logo and mascot).

In 2003, he founded the Studio Number One design agency with his wife, Amanda Fairey. The agency produced the cover work for The Black Eyed Peas' album Monkey Business and the poster for the film Walk the Line. Fairey has also designed the covers for The Smashing Pumpkins' album , Flogging Molly's CD/DVD Whiskey on a Sunday, Led Zeppelin's compilation Mothership and movie Celebration Day, and Anthrax's The Greater Of Two Evils. Along with Banksy, Dmote, and others, Fairey created work at a warehouse exhibition in Alexandria, Sydney, for Semi-Permanent in 2003. Approximately 1,500 people attended.

In 2004, Fairey joined artists Robbie Conal and Mear One to create a series of " anti-war, anti- Bush" posters for a street art campaign called "Be the Revolution" for the art collective "Post Gen". "Be the Revolution" kicked off with a night of performances featuring Z-Trip, Ozomatli and David J at the Avalon in Hollywood. Fairey also co-founded Swindle Magazine along with Roger Gastman.

Remote Fairey Andre In Barstow California Desert

In 2005, he collaborated for a second time with Z-Trip on a limited edition 12-inch featuring Chuck D entitled "Shock and Awe". In 2005 Fairey also collaborated with DJ Shadow on a box set, with T-shirts, stickers, prints, and a mix CD by Shadow. In 2005 he showed abroad, for instance in Paris at the Magda Danysz Gallery, and was a resident artist at the Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House (formerly known as The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu). Also in 2005, Fairey contributed the artwork for the posters, cover art, and graphics for Walk The Line the Johnny Cash biopic. In 2006, Fairey contributed eight vinyl etchings to a limited-edition series of 12" singles by post-punk band Mission of Burma and has also done work for the musical group Interpol.

In 2006, Fairey joined NYC based Ad agency Project 2050 as founding Creative Director and was featured on the cover of Advertising Age magazine. While at Project 2050 Shepard developed creative work for Virgin Mega Store and Boost Mobile. The book Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey was released in 2006. In 2008, Philosophy of Obey (Obey Giant): The Formative Years (1989-2008), edited by Sarah Jaye Williams, was published by Nerve Books UK, and praised by Fairey.

In June 2007, Fairey opened his one-man show entitled "E Pluribus Venom", at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. The show made the arts section front page in the New York Times.

Fairey donated original cover art to the 2008 album Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq War Veteran, produced for Iraq War documentary . Proceeds from the album benefit non-profit organization Iraq Veterans Against the War.

In 2008, Fairey teamed up again with Z-Trip to do a series of shows in support of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama entitled Party For Change. Fairey also designed posters for the British goth band Bauhaus.

OBEY Giant clothing, 2008
Nordstrom department store

Fairey was arrested on February 7, 2009, on his way to the premiere of his show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts, on two outstanding warrants related to graffiti. He was charged with damage to property for having postered two Boston area locations with graffiti, a Boston Police Department spokesman said. His arrest was announced to party goers by longtime friend Z-Trip who had been performing at the ICA premiere at Shepard Fairey's request.

On April 27, 2009, Fairey put three signed copies of his Obama inauguration posters up on eBay, with the proceeds of the auction going to the One Love For Chi foundation, founded by the family of Deftones bassist Chi Cheng following a car accident in November 2008 that nearly claimed Cheng's life.

Fairey's first art museum exhibition, titled Supply & Demand (as was his earlier book), was held in Boston at the Institute of Contemporary Art during the summer of 2009. The exhibition featured more than 250 works in a wide variety of media: screen prints, stencils, stickers, rubylith illustrations, collages, and works on wood, metal and canvas. As a complement to the ICA exhibition, Fairey created public art works around Boston. The artist explains his driving motivation: "The real message behind most of my work is 'question everything'."

In 2011, Time Magazine commissioned Fairey to design its cover to honor "The Protester" as Person of the Year in the wake of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and other social movements around the world. This was Fairey's second Person of the Year cover for Time, his first being of Barack Obama in 2008.

In January 2015, Shepard Fairey made a cameo appearance on Portlandia. In July 2015, Fairey was arrested and detained at Los Angeles International Airport, after passing through customs, on a warrant for allegedly vandalizing 14 buildings in Detroit. He subsequently turned himself in to Detroit Police.

Life Is Beautiful Fremont East District, Las Vegas Mural Project 2016.

Barack Obama "Hope" poster

Fairey created a series of posters supporting Barack Obama's 2008 candidacy for President of the United States, including the iconic "HOPE" portrait. The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl called the poster "the most efficacious American political illustration since ' Uncle Sam Wants You'". Fairey also created an exclusive design for Rock the Vote. Because the Hope poster had been "perpetuated illegally" and independently by the street artist, the Obama campaign declined to have any direct affiliation with it. Although the campaign officially disavowed any involvement in the creation or popularization of the poster, Fairey has commented in interviews that he was in communication with campaign officials during the period immediately following the poster's release. Fairey has stated that the original version featured the word "PROGRESS" instead of the word "HOPE", and that within weeks of its release, the campaign requested that he issue (and legally disseminate) a new version, keeping the powerful image of Obama's face but captioning it with the word "HOPE". The campaign openly embraced the revised poster along with two additional Fairey posters that featured the words "CHANGE" and "VOTE".

Fairey created a similar but new image of Barack Obama for Time magazine, which was used as the cover art for the 2008 Person of the Year issue. The original iconic "HOPE" portrait was featured on the cover of Esquire Magazine's February 2009 issue, this time with a caption reading, "WHAT NOW?" Shepard Fairey's influence throughout the presidential election was a factor in the artist himself having been named a Person of the Year for 2008 by .

Shepard Fairey, Obama Hope Gold (from the Artists for Obama portfolio) 2008, serigraph, edition of 300, 14" × 10¼" (36 × 26 cm)

In October 2008, Fairey created a small edition of serigraphs entitled Obama Hope Gold (from Artists for Obama). This portfolio was produced through a partnership between Gemini G.E.L. printing studio and the Democratic National Committee. The project supported the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. The Gold serigraphs were released just after Obama's inauguration, and are the third and final edition of Fairey's Hope prints of the president. The edition was released shortly after the Inauguration. An example of this work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

In January 2009, the "HOPE" portrait was acquired by the U.S. National Portrait Gallery and made part of its permanent collection. It was unveiled and put on display on January 17, 2009.

Also in January 2009, photographer and blogger Tom Gralish discovered that the poster was based on an Associated Press photograph by freelance photographer Mannie Garcia. Fairey subsequently filed suit in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the Associated Press, seeking a declaratory judgment that his use of the AP photograph was protected by the fair use doctrine. Fairey subsequently admitted that he had based the poster on the AP photograph and had fabricated and destroyed evidence to hide the fact. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein urged a settlement, stating that AP would win the case. The AP and Shepard Fairey settled out of court in January 2011. In 2012, Fairey pleaded guilty to one count of criminal contempt of court for his destruction of evidence and submission of false images to the court, and was sentenced by U.S. magistrate judge Frank Maas of the Southern District of New York to two years' probation and a $25,000 fine.

In 2009, Fairey's Obama portrait was featured in the book Art For Obama: Designing Manifest Hope and the Campaign for Change, which Fairey also edited.

In his December 8, 2010, appearance on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert asked Fairey how he felt about having done the "HOPE" portrait of Obama and how "that hope was working out for him now?" to which Fairey replied: "You know, I'm proud of it as a piece of grassroots activism, but I'll just leave it at that".

In an interview with Esquire in 2015, Fairey said that Obama had not lived up to his expectations, "not even close". He continued, "Obama has had a really tough time, but there have been a lot of things that he's compromised on that I never would have expected. I mean, drones and domestic spying are the last things I would have thought [he'd support]."

Fairey created a mutt version of the red, white, and blue poster, donating it to help support pet adoptions, from an image of a rescued shaggy dog taken by photographer Clay Myers. Four hundred limited edition prints were offered by Adopt-A-Pet.com, a nonprofit organization that helps shelters, humane societies and rescue groups advertise their homeless pets to potential adopters. The poster, which was also offered as a free download, was featured on the cover of the spring 2009 edition of Dog's Life magazine.

In 2014, Fairey painted a towering mural, 9 stories high, paying tribute to Nelson Mandela and the 25th anniversary of the Purple Rain Protest. It is a public artwork on Juta Street in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, overlooking the Nelson Mandela Bridge.

Honest Gil Fulbright SOLD Poster

Fairey created an adaptation of the Obama HOPE poster for satirical Kentucky politician Honest Gil Fulbright. Frank L. Ridley, the actor who portrays Fulbright, is featured on the poster, along with the word "SOLD", which refers to Fulbright's "honest" political message: " I'm only in this thing for the money, but at least I'm honest about it."

As a tribute to the victims of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Fairey created a poster representing Marianne, the French national icon, surrounded by the national motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité. In June 2016, this design was painted as a mural on 186 rue Nationale, Paris. Fairey made a gift of the poster to Emmanuel Macron, who hung it in his office upon assuming the presidency of France.
In the night of the 13th December 2020, an anonymous group tagged over the mural in an act of protest against the state. The motto was crossed out with white paint and replaced by the tag Marianne pleure (Marianne cries), and red tears were added to the face of Marianne. Fairey reacted to the act by declaring his support for all who protest against injustice and that he understood the goals of the action.

This series was made during the 2016 presidential campaign as a protest on Donald Trump's declarations and policies. This work aims to promote gender equality and fights discrimination against minorities. This work stands out to many as it provokes people to respect their common humanity. The title of the work comes from a line in the Constitution and features portraits of Native Americans, African Americans, Muslims, and Latinas, aiming to defend their dignity.

Kamala Harris "Forward" poster

Fairey created a poster supporting Kamala Harris' 2024 candidacy for President of the United States. Writing on Instagram, he said, "We have a very real opportunity to move forward," citing a desire for "a healthy planet, for corporate accountability, toward equality and away from racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia, for equitable access to opportunity, for full access to the medical care we want or need, for fair and just immigration policies." Like his previous work on the Barack Obama HOPE poster, he was not paid to create this work.

Major public murals, commissions

Purple Project (2014), Johannesburg, South Africa

A 2016 poster by Fairey, shown during the 2017 Women's March, depicts a Muslim-American woman

In the early 2000s, Fairey began donating to organizations such as Chiapas Relief Fund, the ACLU, Feeding America, and the Art of Elysium. Following the Obama campaign, Fairey donated proceeds from these poster sales to the ACLU and Feeding America. In September 2010, Fairey created a poster for the ACLU with actress Olivia Wilde as the Statue of Liberty holding a megaphone and a clipboard, the ACLU's weapons of choice.

The Obey Awareness Program, operated by Obey Clothing, was founded in 2007 as an extension of Fairey's humanitarian efforts. This program allows Fairey to support causes he believes in by selling specially designed merchandise and donating 100% of the profits raised to handpicked organizations and their causes. Past non-profit organizations benefiting from this program include Hope for Darfur, 11th Hour Action, Feed America, earthquake relief in Haiti, Dark Wave / Rising Sun for Japan relief, and Adopt-a-Pet.com. Environmentally related non-profit organizations such as the Surfrider Foundation, Urban Roots, the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge and more also received donations. The latest Obey Awareness T-shirts benefitted the Go Campaign, an organization that improves the lives of orphans and vulnerable children around the world by partnering with local heroes to deliver local solutions.

Fairey sits on the advisory board of Reaching to Embrace the Arts, a nonprofit organization that provides art supplies to disadvantaged schools and students. In 2007, Fairey was commissioned to create a logo for "Music Is Revolution Foundation" and became a board member of the Music Is Revolution Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports music education for students in public schools.

As a type 1 diabetic, Fairey often contributes to non-profit organizations assisting in medical research. He is one of the earliest supporters of Give to Cure, a non-profit organization devoted to accelerating the process of finding cures for human diseases. Fairey created the first Give To Cure sticker series with 20 distinct designs. In addition, he created three special edition prints to commemorate the inaugural Give To Cure campaign. In January 2012, Fairey created an exclusive print called "The Cure" for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the leading global organization funding type 1 diabetes research. All proceeds from the sale went toward the JDRF. In June 2013, a feature documentary called The Human Trial about the quest to cure type 1 diabetes caught the attention of Fairey who then created the movie poster in order to raise funds for the film.

In June 2009, Fairey created a poster in support of the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi to bring awareness to the human rights cause in Burma. The proceeds from this print benefitted the Human Rights Action Center and the U.S. Campaign for Burma.

In 2009, Fairey teamed up with artist and activist Ernesto Yerena, activist Marco Amador and musician Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, to create, distribute, and sell posters countering dehumanizing and anti-immigrant rhetoric for the We Are Human Campaign. A majority of the proceeds went to the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON) and Puente, a grassroots community group that fights for human dignity.

Fairey has also created artwork to benefit the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace (DLF). In April 2009, Fairey created a poster for the David Lynch Foundation's "Change Begins Within" benefit concert. In April 2011, Fairey donated unique collector's items to the foundation's "Download for Good" campaign. In April 2015, Fairey created a commemorative poster for the 10-year anniversary of the music of David Lynch, with all proceeds from poster sales going to the foundation.

In November 2009, Fairey partnered with LGBT grassroots organization FAIR to auction "Defend Equality Love Unites" posters to raise awareness and funds for the fight for gay and lesbian marriage equality.

Fairey is a supporter of artist movements such as The Art of Elysium, an organization aiming to affect social change by making art available to striving artists and young people battling serious illnesses. In August 2010, Fairey donated one original Burmese Monk fine art piece as well as an opportunity for a live portrait sitting for Art of Elysium. In September 2014, Fairey curated The Art of Elysium's GENESIS showcase of emerging L.A. artists, creatives, tastemakers, and social leaders.

In May 2010, Fairey partnered with Feeding America and The Advertising Council to create an outdoor public service advertisement to raise awareness about domestic hunger.

In 2011, Fairey was named honorary chair of the Young Literati, a philanthropic group of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. Fairey has created artwork and curated several Young Literati Annual Toast events benefitting the Library Foundation. Fairey's wife Amanda has held the position of chair of the Library Foundation since 2013.

In December 2011, Fairey contributed to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation's inaugural "Artist as Activist" print project to benefit the Coalition for the Homeless. Fairey created an original print called "The Future is Unwritten" to commemorate Rauschenburg's dedication to important social issues and the mission of the Coalition for the Homeless. The print was sold on Artnet to raise over $150,000 to support the Coalition's life-saving programs.

In March 2014, Fairey created a portrait of Ai Weiwei with "Friends of Ai Weiwei", a group of Ai supporters who were trying to promote awareness of the artists' legal status in China where authorities had confiscated his passport. Proceeds from the posters went toward Friends of Ai Weiwei's efforts to help the artist and to promote free speech. The following year Ai Weiwei was granted a visa, reversing a decision not to grant him the travel document.

Shepard Fairey has also created works to support school safety, and posters with his art were seen at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2018.

Fairey has been criticized for failing to obtain permission and to provide attribution for works he used. Fairey has threatened to sue artists for the same technique. Austin, Texas-based graphic designer Baxter Orr did his own take on Fairey's work in a piece called Protect, with the iconic Obey Giant face covered by a SARS respiratory mask. Orr marketed the prints as his own work. On April 23, 2008, Orr received a cease-and-desist order from Fairey's attorneys, telling him to stop selling Protect because it violated Fairey's trademark. Fairey threatened to sue, calling the designer a "parasite".

Originally, Fairey had claimed his HOPE poster was based on a 2006 copyrighted photo of then-Senator Barack Obama seated next to actor George Clooney, taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia on assignment for the Associated Press, which wanted credit and compensation for the work. Garcia believes that he personally owns the copyright for the photo, and has said, "If you put all the legal stuff away, I'm so proud of the photograph and that Fairey did what he did artistically with it, and the effect it's had". Fairey said his use of the photograph fell within the legal definition of fair use. Fairey claims he used pieces of the photo as raw material to create a heroic and inspirational political portrait, the aesthetic of which was fundamentally different from the original photo. Lawyers for both sides tried to reach an amicable agreement.

In February 2009, Fairey filed a federal lawsuit against the Associated Press, seeking a declaratory judgment that his use of the AP photograph was protected by the fair use doctrine and so did not infringe their copyright. At first, Fairey claimed that he used the photo of Clooney and Obama, cropped the actor out of the shot, and made other changes. In October 2009, Shepard Fairey admitted he had tried to deceive the Court by destroying evidence that he had instead used the photograph alleged by the AP. Fairey admitted he had used a close-up shot of Obama, also taken by Mannie Garcia, as the AP had long alleged. The solo photo appears much more similar to the final HOPE poster than the photo of Clooney and Obama. Fairey's lawyers announced they were no longer representing him, and Laurence Pulgram, an intellectual property lawyer, stated that the revelation put Mr. Fairey's case in trouble.

In 2024, Shepard Fairey wrote the afterword to Iggy and The Stooges: The Authorized Biography by authorized Alice Cooper biographer Jeffrey Morgan.

Shepard Fairey at a book signing for Supply & Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey

Liam O'Donoghue interviewed Fairey for Mother Jones and questioned the artist about criticism related to his use of images from social movements, specifically images created by black artists. O'Donoghue later posted an article, titled "Shepard Fairey's Image Problem", on several independent media sites. O' Donoghue explored Fairey's use of copyright-protected images while defending his own copyright-protected works from being used by other artists and corporations. Fairey cited his collaboration with Public Enemy, his funding of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and his six-figure charitable contributions for Darfur assistance as responses to charges of exploitation:

Erick Lyle has accused Fairey of cynically turning graffiti culture into a self-promoting advertising campaign. On the other hand, San Diego Union-Tribune art critic Robert L. Pincus says Fairey's work "is political art with a strong sense of visual style and emotional authenticity. Even in times when political art has ebbed, Fairey's has just the right balance of seriousness, irony and wit to fit the mood of the moment". contributor Nick Mount wrote "Following the example set by gallery art, some street art is more about the concept than the art. 'Fuck Bush' isn't an aesthetic; it's an ethic. Shepard Fairey's Obey Giant stickers and Akay's Akayism posters are clever children of Duchamp, ironic conceptual art." But Stephen Heller of The New York Times suggested that Fairey's political art has similarities to political art from the past, for instance to political art created by Andy Warhol.

In a New York Times review of "E Pluribus Venom" at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, art critic Benjamin Genocchio described Fairey's art as "generic" despite the range of mediums and styles used by the artist. Genocchio went on to say that it was tempting to see Fairey's art as just another luxury commodity.

Artists Mark Vallen, Lincoln Cushing, Josh MacPhee, and Favianna Rodriguez have documented that Fairey has appropriated work by Koloman Moser, Ralph Chaplin, Pirkle Jones, Rupert Garcia, Rene Mederos, Félix Beltrán, and Gary Grimshaw, among others. In his critique, "Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey", Vallen dissects various works by Fairey, demonstrating them to be plagiarized from the work of other artists. Jamie O'Shea criticizes Vallen's approach for a "nearly ubiquitous lack of understanding of the artist's use of appropriated imagery in his work and the longstanding historical precedent for this mode of creative expression," in addition to being masked in a thin "veneer of obvious envy in most cases".

Fairey in 2023

Art critic Brian Sherwin lashed out at O'Shea's criticism of Mark Vallen by saying that O'Shea's SUPERTOUCH article was nothing more than "damage control". Sherwin questioned O'Shea's defense of Fairey, noting that Fairey is a SUPERTOUCH author and business associate of O'Shea. Sherwin suggests that O'Shea has a "vested" interest in making sure that Fairey is viewed positively by the public since he has curated art exhibits involving Fairey and has written extensively about the artist. Sherwin wrote that O'Shea once served as editor in chief for and has worked as a creative director hired by corporate art collections as a corporate liaison for acquisitions. Sherwin concluded that the public will "question the artist who says to question everything," regardless of O'Shea's Mark Vallen "damage control" on SUPERTOUCH. Sherwin implied that O'Shea's critique of Vallen was selective because key negative facts about Fairey's history were left out in the article. The dispute between Sherwin and O'Shea was cited by Dan Wasserman on The Boston Globe's "Out of Line".

Bloggers have criticized Fairey for accepting commissions from corporations such as Saks Fifth Avenue, for which his design agency produced illustrations inspired by Constructivism and Alexander Rodchenko. Fairey defends his corporate commissions by saying that clients such as Saks Fifth Avenue help him to keep his studio operational and his assistants employed. Fairey has acknowledged the irony of being a street artist exploring themes of free speech while at the same time being an artist hired by corporations for consumer campaigns. He says simply that designers and artists have to make money to survive:

In August 2011, Fairey received a black eye and a bruised rib after being attacked outside of the Kodboderne 18 nightclub in Copenhagen, Denmark. Fairey claims the two assailants called him "Obama illuminati" and ordered him to "go back to America". He believes the attack was the result of a misunderstanding over his artwork, which commemorated the demolition of the legendary Ungdomshuset (youth house) at Jagtvej 69. His mural showed a peace dove in flight surrounded by a circle of Tønder lace above the word "Peace"; it was vandalized within 24 hours of its unveiling with graffiti slogans "no peace" and "go home, Yankee hipster".

The media reported that the artwork was commissioned by the Copenhagen Municipality, but the original mural was organized by Fairey's Copenhagen gallery, V1. It was not a government-sponsored work.

2000: Obey Giant, Anno Domini Gallery, San Jose, CA

2002: Overnight Delivery, BLK/MRKT Gallery, Culver City, CA

2002: Shepard Fairey, Kinsey/DesForges Gallery, Culver City, CA

2004: Obey, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen

2004: Supply and Demand, Merry Karnowsky Gallery - LA, Los Angeles, CA

2005: Manufacturing Dissent, Merry Karnowsky Gallery - LA, Los Angeles, CA

2005: Shepard Fairey, Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI

2006: Obey, Magda Danysz Gallery, Paris, France

2006: Rise Above, Merry Karnowsky Gallery - LA, Los Angeles, CA

2007: E Pluribus Venom, Jonathan LeVine Gallery, New York, NY

2007: Ninteeneightyfouria, Stolenspace Gallery, London

2007: Imperfect Union, Merry Karnowsky Gallery - LA, Los Angeles, CA

2009: Shepard Fairey, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, ACT

2009: Supply & Demand, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA

2010: Supply and Demand, CAC - Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH

2010: May Day, Deitch Projects - 76 Grand Street, New York, NY

2011: Revolutions - The Album Cover Art Of Shepard Fairey, Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2012: Sound & Vision, Stolenspace Gallery, London

2015: On Our Hands, Jacob Lewis Gallery, New York, NY

2015: Sid Superman is Dead : Shepard Fairey et Denis Morris, Magda Danysz Gallery, Paris, France

2015: Your Eyes Here, CAC Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Málaga

2016: Victory is Peace - Shepard Fairey x NoNÅME, Positive-Propaganda Artspace, Munich, Germany

2017: Shepard Fairey: Work Against The Clampdown, Art Museum of West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV

2019: Retrospective Shepard Fairey, (600 works for Grenoble Street Art Fest), Grenoble, France

2021: Future Mosaic, Opera Gallery, Dubai

2022: New Clear Power, Amuseum of Contemporary Art, Munich

2023: Backward Forward , Dallas Contemporary, Texas

1999: Sticker Shock: Artists, ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art - University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

2003: Beautiful Losers, CAC - Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH

2004: Backjumps - The Live Issue #1, Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Berlin

2008: Under a Red Sky, Stolenspace Gallery, London

2009: The Art of Rebellion, Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2009: Urban Art - Werke aus der Sammlung Reinking, Weserburg | Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen

2009: Viva la Revolucion: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego - MCASD Downtown, San Diego, CA

2013: At home I'm a tourist' Colección de Selim Varol, CAC Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Málaga

2014: The Insistent Image: Recurrent Motifs in the Art of Shepard Fairey and Jasper John, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC

2015: Sleeping Beauty, Magda Danysz Gallery, Paris, France

2019: POW! WOW!, Honolulu, Hawaii

Promotional work by Fairey for the album and film Celebration Day served as a backdrop for a 2012 Led Zeppelin press conference

Fairey designed the album artwork for Flogging Molly's Whiskey on a Sunday.

Appears in the 2006 videogame, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, as himself.

Fairey provided the design for the Obey Giant room at The Creek South Beach.

Fairey designed the cover for the books Woodstock Experience by Michael Lang, Dan Garson, Henry Diltz (Genesis Publications, 2009)), A Heartbeat and A Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears. (Basic Books/Nation Books, 2009) by Antonino D'Ambrosio and the cover of the Smashing Pumpkins album Zeitgeist, Led Zeppelin's Mothership & Celebration Day, Sage Francis's Li(f)e, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' The Live Anthology and, in 2010, Stone Temple Pilots's eponymous album.

He designed the album cover for will.i.am's second solo album Must B 21 (Soundtrack to Get Things Started).

On January 19, 2009, Fairey created a Google Doodle for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Fairey's iconic Obey logo appears in several levels of the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2. It also appears briefly in part two of the anime Afro Samurai.

The "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" is also a stock spray image in the video game Counter-Strike.

Fairey designed the cover for Russell Brand's second autobiography Booky Wook 2.

Fairey contributed a drawing to the Police Brutality Coloring Book in 2011.

Fairey designed the album artwork for Stone Temple Pilots' 2010 self-titled album.

Fairey has released several watches with Swiss watchmaking company Hublot

TV, radio and movies

Rash, Video Documentary 2005. 17-minute interview conducted in April 2003 with Shepard Fairey in Sydney, Australia. Includes footage of Shepard and partner Barbara installing a paste-up wall in a gallery side event at Semi Permanent conference in Sydney.

On January 20, 2009, Fairey made a radio appearance on the Fresh Air program from WHYY, an NPR affiliate, discussing his "Hope" poster, the official Obama inauguration poster and his many arrests (14 times) in connection with the installation of his "street" works. On February 26, 2009, he was again a guest on Fresh Air discussing the Associated Press lawsuit over the Obama Hope poster.

On February 11, 2010, Stephen Colbert debuted a poster on The Colbert Report that was designed in collaboration with Fairey. The poster, created for Colbert's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics, depicts Colbert wearing a laurel wreath crown, carrying an Olympic Flame and riding an eagle, with the catchphrase, "Vancouver 2010: Defeat the World".

Along with artists Frank Stella and Andres Serrano, Fairey appeared on The Colbert Report on December 8, 2010. As part of a segment with comedian Steve Martin, Fairey sprayed his Obey logo on a portrait of Colbert.

Fairey features heavily in the Banksy movie Exit Through the Gift Shop, which documents the birth of Mr. Brainwash.

On the September 13, 2011, episode of The Young and the Restless, an American television soap opera, character Devon Hamilton purchased a Shepard Fairey original, Commanda, as the first piece of art for his new office.

On the March 4, 2012, episode of The Simpsons, "Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart", Fairey appeared as himself.

Fairey appeared in the 2012 film Bones Brigade: An Autobiography as himself.

In 2013, a short narrative film based on the story of Shepard Fairey was released called Obey the Giant.

In the 2013 comedy film This Is the End, actor James Franco is depicted as having an "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" in his home and claiming it to be his favorite painting.

In 2017, Obey Giant, a documentary based on Shepard Fairey and distributed by Hulu, was released.

In 2018, he appeared in Bad Reputation, a documentary about Joan Jett's career.

Fairey performing a DJ set in 2009.

Fairey now lives in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles with his wife Amanda and daughters Vivienne and Madeline. In addition to his successful graphic design career, Fairey also DJs at many clubs under the names DJ Diabetic and Emcee Insulin, as he has Type 1 diabetes.

#Obey Sherpard Fairey (2014) Drago Publishing.

Shepard Fairey Inc. Artist/Professional/Vandal by James Daichendt, Cameron + Company;(December, 2013)

Mayday: The Art of Shepard Fairey, Gingko Press; First edition (December 10, 2010)

E Pluribus Venom by Shepard Fairey (2008) Gingko Press.

Philosophy of Obey (Obey Giant): The Formative Years (1989-2008), edited by Sarah Jaye Williams (2008), Nerve Books UK.

Obey: Supply & Demand, The Art of Shepard Fairey by Shepard Fairey (2006), Gingko Press.

"Shepard Fairey in arte Obey. La vita e le opere del re della poster art" di Sabina de Gregori, Castelvecchi editore, 2011

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Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary artist, activist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. In 1989, he designed the " Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

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Icons of Rebellion: The Enduring Power of Shepard Fairey’s OBEY | MyArtBroker | Article

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Explore the rebellious roots and impact of Shepard Fairey’s OBEY campaign, from its origins in street art to its role as a powerful symbol of social activism.

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AKA Andre the Giant Has a Posse. A street art project and an experiment in phenomenology by artist and skateboarder Shepard Fairey.

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In 1954, Jasper Johns began painting what would become one of his signature emblems: the American flag. As an iconic image--comparable to the targets, maps, and letters that he also has depicted--Johns realized that the flag was “seen and not looked at, not examined.” The execution and composition of Three Flags elicit close inspection by the viewer. The painting draws attention to the process of its making through Johns’s use of encaustic, a mixture of pigment suspended in warm wax that congeals as each stroke is applied; the resulting accumulation of discrete marks creates a sensuous, almost sculptural surface. The work’s structural arrangement adds to its complexity. The trio of flags—each successively diminished in scale by about twenty-five percent—projects outward, contradicting classical perspective, in which objects appear to recede from the viewer’s vantage point. By shifting the visual emphasis from the flag’s emblematic meaning to the geometric patterns and variegated texture of the picture surface and the canvas structure, Johns explores the boundary between abstraction and representation. As he remarked, this painting allowed him to “go beyond the limits of the flag, and to have different canvas space.”

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Jasper Johns has been a central figure in contemporary art since the late 1950s, when he first exhibited his paintings of targets, numerals, and the US flag. Since then, Johns has continued to use commonplace and appropriated imagery in paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints that explore the nature of perception, art-making, and memory. His early works have become icons of American art that provide the bridge from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art, while his layered, complex works of the 2000s have been celebrated as meditations on ambiguity and mortality.

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Jasper Johns (born 1930) - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Throughout his career, Johns has included in most of his art certain marks and shapes that clearly display their derivation from factual, unimagined things in the world, including handprints and footprints, casts of parts of the body, or stamps made from objects found in his studio, such as the rim of a tin can.

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Jasper Johns initiated a dialogue with the viewer and their cultural context through his artistic exploration of how people see the things around them.

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Jasper Johns holds a significant place in the trajectory of modern art. Often praised for his remarkable ability to merge abstract expressionism with pop art, Johns transformed everyday symbols into intricate visual narratives. By employing familiar imagery-flags, numbers, maps-and recontextualising them through innovative techniques, he linked the abstract and the representational, encouraging viewers to question the boundaries of perception and meaning. His art embodies the fusion of intellect and intuition, solidifying his impact on contemporary artistic practices.

Born on May 15, 1930, in Augusta, Georgia, and raised in South Carolina, Johns' cultural upbringing reflected a region steeped in tradition. His artistic aspirations flourished during his early years at the University of South Carolina. However, it was not until his move to New York in the early 1950s that he discovered fertile ground for his creative evolution. A pivotal meeting in 1954 with Robert Rauschenberg, another champion of innovation in post-war art, fostered a dynamic collaboration that expanded the boundaries of their respective practices.

Transforming ordinary symbols

John's ability to elevate ordinary subjects into significant artistic explorations began with his groundbreaking work Flag (1954-55). The painting was inspired by a dream of the American flag and used encaustic wax-a medium of melted wax mixed with pigment-to create textured layers, blurring the lines between object and representation. This piece broke dramatically from the prevailing gestural abstraction of his time, unveiling a more contemplative approach that still resonates in today's art discourse.

Beyond flags, Johns' interest in recurring motifs such as numbers, alphabets, and maps further expands his language of symbolism. Numbers in Colour (1958-59) exemplifies his ongoing exploration of layered meaning and materials. Here, he arranges numerical sequences with an intricate interplay of colours and textures, compelling audiences to reconsider the simplicity of numerical systems. These works resist immediate interpretation, engaging the viewer in a deeper investigation of surface and structure.

Career-defining exhibitions

John's prominence in the art world was solidified during his first solo exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1958. This pivotal moment introduced his unique voice to the wider public. The reception was nothing short of sensational, with major institutions like the Museum of Modern Art acquiring his work. Over the following decades, his art became a fixture in international exhibitions, showcasing his versatility as a painter, sculptor, and printmaker.

His career reached a crescendo with Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, organised by MoMA in 1996. This exhibition encompassed his vast repertoire, from his iconic early works to later ventures into abstraction. A more recent dual retrospective, Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror (2021), simultaneously showcased at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, reflected on themes of duality in his work and offered profound insights into his six-decades-long artistic inquiry.

The significance of materials and process

Few artists have shaped the conversation around materials and methods as impactfully as Jasper Johns. Early in his practice, he introduced layered collages, integrating materials such as newspaper, fabric, and even found objects into his works. Pieces like Savarin, which depicts a coffee tin filled with paintbrushes, reaffirmed his ability to infuse seemingly mundane items with profound resonance. His use of encaustic imparted a tactile quality to his works, emphasising the physicality of the painted surface.

John's printmaking ventures further enhanced his artistic vocabulary. Collaborating with revered print studios such as ULAE, he explored lithography, intaglio, and screen printing, addressing themes of repetition and duality. His meticulous control of this medium created a bridge between his paintings and an audience eager to engage with his intellectual complexities in a more reproducible form.

Context and collaboration

Jasper Johns' artistry was shaped not only by his environment but also by collaborations and interactions. His relationship with Robert Rauschenberg fostered creativity and redefined the American avant-garde during a transformative period. Furthermore, his dialogues with influential critics like Leo Steinberg and patrons such as curator Leo Castelli helped place his works within a broader intellectual framework.

The cultural context of mid-20th-century America provided key inspirations. Emerging during an era shaped by geopolitical tensions and societal upheaval, Johns' explorations of national symbols carried subtle yet pointed reflections on identity and unity. As an artist deeply conscious of tradition, he was influenced by sources ranging from Dadaist icon Marcel Duchamp to Renaissance masters, underscoring his timeless and cross-generational appeal.

Awards and indelible impact

The scope of Jasper Johns' contributions has been widely acknowledged through awards and institutional recognition. In 1988, he received the International Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale, the art world's most prestigious honour. Further accolades include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, bestowed in 2011, underscoring his prominence not only as an artist but as an enduring cultural force.

Critics and historians credit Johns with reinvigorating representational art at a time when abstraction reigned supreme. By merging intellectual inquiry with emotional depth, his paintings, sculptures, and prints continue to serve as conduits for discourse. From the conceptual rigour of his approach to his innovative material techniques, his art remains foundational for understanding the trajectory of contemporary creativity.

The enduring relevance of repetition

Even as he approaches his mid-90s, Jasper Johns' relevance in modern and postmodern art circles endures. His works, which continually revisit symbols to explore various meanings, have inspired younger artists to consider repetition as a tool for both reflection and reinvention. Exhibitions featuring his pieces reinforce discussions about modernism's legacy and the innovations to come.

John's intellectual engagement with icons and systems has created a vast body of work that is as much about discovery as it is about the viewer's participation. By transforming everyday subjects into intricate puzzles of perception, he ensures his art retains its capacity to surprise, provoke, and inspire.

For further information

Would you like to explore Jasper Johns' artistic philosophy or gain access to his works? Feel free to contact us for more insights into his rich legacy. Whether you're a collector or admirer, we're here to guide you through the unparalleled contributions of this celebrated artist. For further information, contact us. Call us today at +971 58 593 5523, email contact@zurani.com, or visit our website at www.zurani.com.
THIS ARTICLE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE FINANCIAL, TAX OR LEGAL ADVICE AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS SUCH. TAX TREATMENT DEPENDS ON THE INDIVIDUAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF EACH CLIENT AND MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE IN THE FUTURE. FOR GUIDANCE, SEEK PROFESSIONAL ADVICE.

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Decoding Jasper Johns: The Hidden Meanings in His Art - Zurani

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Jasper Johns shaped modern art by blending abstract expressionism with pop art, turning everyday symbols into complex visual narratives.

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The Right to Know - Norman Rockwell - Google Arts & Culture

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As with many Americans in the mid 1960s, the Vietnam War was on Norman Rockwell’s mind. In 1966, he spent a week at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia taking…

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Illustrator. A prolific artist, Rockwell created more than 300 covers for The Saturday Evening Post in addition to illustrating calendars, books, posters and advertisements.

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Say you're at your grandparents house, and you're in the bathroom washing your hands, and you notice a framed print on the wall. Maybe this one. It's sentimental; it's comic in a grandparent-y way; it's goofy. It's well-executed and instantly recognizable, even without the signature, as a Norman Rockwell painting. When you see a Norman Rockwell print, what's your first reaction? Do you shed a tear for a lost America? Or roll your eyes at borderline propaganda?
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Rockwell's Evolving Perspective

A prolific and talented commercial illustrator, Rockwell was probably America's most popular artist in the middle of the 20th century, painting over 300 covers for the weekly Saturday Evening Post. His style was an exaggerated realism-real-looking people and situations but with a hint of caricature. Rockwell specialized in vignettes and characters familiar and comfortable for the Post 's audience: white, middle class America. Mischievous children, buzzcuts and pigtails; handsome husbands and rosy-cheeked wives; kindly elders, adorable dogs. Often caught just before or just after a decisive moment: a sporting event, an argument, a hard day's work, some sort of pratfall.

At this point, and maybe even at the time, Rockwell's illustrations for the Post border on cliche or kitsch, although many are redeemed by Rockwell's undeniable talent and keen eye, and a real sense of humor. Even as the body of work can be discounted as representing itself as slice-of-life America, while excluding large swaths of the American experience.

Later in life, Rockwell left his 50-year position at the Post (which by then was in decline) and did some work for Look Magazine. Vox had a great story a week or so ago on his political awakening at this point, when Rockwell, who had done many portraits of powerful people but focused largely on fictional or allegorical scenes, shifted gears and depicted powerful scenes from the civil rights movement. Maybe most notable is The Problem We All Live With, depicting a young girl being escorted by U.S. marshals to school during integration.

Painterly Denim Fades and Artist Style

Reading that piece, I realized I didn't know much about Rockwell, including what he looked like, although I'd seen his well-known self portrait. Maybe it's not surprising, considering that the clothes in his work were very specific and realistic, that he seems to have been something of a jawnz enthusiast.

His own clothing doesn't fit neatly into our usual midcentury boxes of trad or prep, workwear or more dramatic, big-lapelled Hollywood tailoring. Truthfully, his own life predated a lot of those styles; at the outset of the 60s, he was already 66 years old. Rockwell was a Northeast guy, born in New York and spending his adult life in New England, and he seemed to combine some of the idea of northeast propriety - wear a jacket, cover your neck - with the workwear of a practical artist: denim, aprons, boots. In contemporary photos of the artist at work, he wears patch pocket sportcoats with plimsols, has his cuffs folded back at the button. He wears sack suits and bowties. He even naps in tailoring.

The clothes in his work receive the attention to detail anything in-focus in his art did; i.e., painstaking recreation. You could design an RRL collection off the references in his work, down to the pocket fades on the denim and the creases on the engineer boots. (Maybe it's been done.) Having pretty much ignored Rockwell's work as an adult in favor of art that seemed to say more or be more exciting, I really enjoyed browsing a few hundred Rockwell works looking for details - like the trousers on a piano tuner or the cap on a lineman - that wouldn't necessarily have caught my eye in my grandparents' bathroom.
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Say you're at your grandparents house, and you're in the bathroom washing your hands, and you notice a framed print...

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Norman Rockwell in the age of the Civil Rights Movement - Google Arts & Culture

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Facing Hard Realities - Norman Rockwell's hope for a compassionate society

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Display caption

In the 1960s there was a deliberate attempt by artists and print publishers to reach a bigger audience for art through the production of that were released in large editions. This objective was facilitated by screenprinting , a process which yielded many more examples than the more traditional printmaking methods of or lithography . This print is from a entitled 'X + X(Ten Works by Ten Painters)' which was produced in an of 500 prints in 1964. Printed on plastic, this is one of Lichtenstein's first Pop prints, and the first to be made on a surface other than . Lichtenstein's printmaking is distinguished by the artist's use of technical innovations and experimental materials.
Gallery label, September 2004 Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

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'Sandwich and Soda', Roy Lichtenstein, 1964 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'Sandwich and Soda', Roy Lichtenstein, 1964 In the 1960s there was a deliberate attempt by artists and print publishers to reach a bigger audience for art through the production of prints that were released in large editions.

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Avis Berman

Roy Lichtenstein was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is preeminently identified with Pop Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. Lichtenstein's success was matched by his focus and energy, and after his initial triumph in the early 1960s, he went on to create an oeuvre of more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention.

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923, in New York City, the first of two children born to Milton and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein. Milton Lichtenstein (1893-1946) was a successful real estate broker, and Beatrice Lichtenstein (1896-1991), a homemaker, had trained as a pianist, and she exposed Roy and his sister Rénee to museums, concerts and other aspects of New York culture. Roy showed artistic and musical ability early on: he drew, painted and sculpted as a teenager, and spent many hours in the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art. He played piano and clarinet, and developed an enduring love of jazz, frequenting the nightspots in Midtown to hear it.

Lichtenstein attended the Franklin School for Boys, a private junior high and high school, and was graduated in 1940. That summer he studied painting and drawing from the model at the Art Students League of New York with Reginald Marsh. In September he entered Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus in the College of Education. His early artistic idols were Rembrandt, Daumier and Picasso, and he often said that Guernica (1937; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), then on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art, was his favorite painting. Even as an undergraduate, Lichtenstein objected to the notion that one set of lines (one person's drawings) "was considered brilliant, and somebody's else's, that may have looked better to you, was considered nothing by almost everyone." i Lichtenstein's questioning of accepted canons of taste was encouraged by Hoyt L. Sherman, a teacher whom he maintained was the person who showed him how to see and whose perception-based approach to art shaped his own.

In February 1943, Lichtenstein was drafted, and he was sent to Europe in 1945. As part of the infantry, he saw action in France, Belgium and Germany. He made sketches throughout his time in Europe and, after peace was declared there, he intended to study at the Sorbonne. Lichtenstein arrived in Paris in October 1945 and enrolled in classes in French language and civilization, but soon learned that his father was gravely ill. He returned to New York in January 1946, a few weeks before Milton Lichtenstein died. In the spring of that year, Lichtenstein went back to OSU to complete his BFA and in the fall he was invited to join the faculty as an instructor. In June 1949, he married Isabel Wilson Sarisky (1921-80), who worked in a cooperative art gallery in Cleveland where Lichtenstein had exhibited his work. While he was teaching, Lichtenstein worked on his master's degree, which he received in 1949. During his second stint at OSU, Lichtenstein became closer to Sherman, and began teaching his method on how to organize and unify a composition. Lichtenstein remained appreciative of Sherman's impact on him. He gave his first son the middle name of "Hoyt," and in 1994 he donated funds to endow the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center at OSU.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lichtenstein began working in series and his iconography was drawn from printed images. His first sustained theme, intimate paintings and prints in the vein of Paul Klee that poked lyrical fun at medieval knights, castles and maidens, may well have been inspired by a book about the Bayeux Tapestry. Lichtenstein then took an ironic look at nineteenth-century American genre paintings he saw in history books, creating Cubist interpretations of cowboys and Indians spiked with a faux-primitive whimsy.

As with his most celebrated Pop paintings of the 1960s, Lichtenstein gravitated toward what he would characterize as the "dumbest" or "worst" visual item he could find and then went on to alter or improve it. In the 1960s, commercial art was considered beneath contempt by the art world; in the early 1950s, with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, nineteenth-century American narrative and genre paintings were at the nadir of their reputation among critics and collectors. Paraphrasing, particularly the paraphrasing of despised images, became a paramount feature of Lichtenstein's art. Well before finding his signature mode of expression in 1961, Lichtenstein called attention to the artifice of conventions and taste that permeated art and society. What others dismissed as trivial fascinated him as classic and idealized-in his words, "a purely American mythological subject matter." ii

Lichtenstein's teaching contract at OSU was not renewed for the 1951-52 academic year, and in the autumn of 1951 he and Isabel moved to Cleveland. Isabel Lichtenstein became an interior decorator specializing in modern design, with a clientele drawn from wealthy Cleveland families. Whereas her career blossomed, Lichtenstein did not continue to teach at the university level. He had a series of part-time jobs, including industrial draftsman, furniture designer, window dresser and rendering mechanical dials for an electrical instrument company. In response to these experiences, he introduced quirkily rendered motors, valves and other mechanical elements into his paintings and prints. In 1954, the Lichtensteins' first son, David, was born; two years later, their second child, Mitchell, followed. Despite the relative lack of interest in his work in Cleveland, Lichtenstein did place his work with New York dealers, which always mattered immensely to him. He had his first solo show at the Carlebach Gallery in New York in 1951, followed by representation with the John Heller Gallery from 1952 to 1957.

To reclaim his academic career and get closer to New York, Lichtenstein accepted a position as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, in the northern reaches of the state. He was hired to teach industrial design, beginning in September 1957. Oswego turned out to be more geographically and aesthetically isolated than Cleveland ever was, but the move was propitious, for both his art and his career. Lichtenstein broke away from representation to a fully abstract style, applying broad swaths of pigment to the canvas by dragging the paint across its surface with a rag wrapped around his arm. At the same time, Lichtenstein was embedding comic-book characters figures such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in brushy, expressionistic backgrounds. None of the proto-cartoon paintings from this period survive, but several pencil and pastel studies from that time, which he kept, document his intentions. Finally, when he was in Oswego, Lichtenstein met Reginald Neal, the new head of the art department at Douglass College, the women's college of Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The school was strengthening and expanding its studio art program, and when Neal needed to add a faculty member to his department, Lichtenstein was invited to apply for the job. Lichtenstein was offered the position of assistant professor, and he began teaching at Douglass in September 1960.

At Douglass, Lichtenstein was thrown into a maelstrom of artistic ferment. With New York museums and galleries an hour away, and colleagues Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts at Douglass and Allan Kaprow and George Segal at Rutgers, the environment could not help but galvanize him. In June 1961, Lichtenstein returned to the idea he had fooled around with in Oswego, which was to combine cartoon characters from comic books with abstract backgrounds. But, as Lichtenstein said, "[I]t occurred to me to do it by mimicking the cartoon style without the paint texture, calligraphic line, modulation-all the things involved in expressionism." Most famously, Lichtenstein appropriated the Benday dots, the minute mechanical patterning used in commercial engraving, to convey texture and gradations of color-a stylistic language synonymous with his subject matter. The dots became a trademark device forever identified with Lichtenstein and Pop Art. Lichtenstein may not have calibrated the depth of his breakthrough immediately but he did realize that the flat affect and deadpan presentation of the comic-strip panel blown up and reorganized in the Sherman-inflected way "was just so much more compelling" iv than the gestural abstraction he had been practicing.

Among the first extant paintings in this new mode-based on comic strips and illustrations from advertisements-were Popeye and Look Mickey, which were swiftly followed by The Engagement Ring, Girl with Ball and Step-on Can with Leg. Kaprow recognized the energy and radicalism of these canvases and arranged for Lichtenstein to show them to Ivan Karp, director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Castelli was New York's leading dealer in contemporary art, and he had staged landmark exhibitions of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in 1958 and Frank Stella in 1960. Karp was immediately attracted to Lichtenstein's paintings, but Castelli was slower to make a decision, partly on account of the paintings' plebeian roots in commercial art, but also because, unknown to Lichtenstein, two other artists had recently come to his attention-Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist-and Castelli was only ready for one of them. After some deliberation, Castelli chose to represent Lichtenstein, and the first exhibition of the comic-book paintings was held at the gallery from February 10 to March 3, 1962. The show sold out and made Lichtenstein notorious. By the time of Lichtenstein's second solo exhibition at Castelli in September 1963, his work had been showcased in museums and galleries around the country. He was usually grouped with Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Rosenquist, Segal, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana and Tom Wesselmann. Taken together, their work was viewed as a slap in the face to Abstract Expressionism and, indeed, the Pop artists shifted attention away from many members of the New York School.

With the advent of critical and commercial success, Lichtenstein made significant changes in his life and continued to investigate new possibilities in his art. After separating from his wife, he moved from New Jersey to Manhattan in 1963; in 1964, he resigned from his teaching position at Douglass to concentrate exclusively on his work. The artist also ventured beyond comic book subjects, essaying paintings based on oils by Cézanne, Mondrian and Picasso, as well as still lifes and landscapes.

Lichtenstein became a prolific printmaker and expanded into sculpture, which he had not attempted since the mid-1950s, and in both two- and three-dimensional pieces, he employed a host of industrial or "non-art" materials, and designed mass-produced editioned objects that were less expensive than traditional paintings and sculpture. Participating in one such project-the American Supermarket show in 1964 at the Paul Bianchini Gallery, for which he designed a shopping bag-Lichtenstein met Dorothy Herzka (b. 1939), a gallery employee, whom he married in 1968. The late 1960s also saw Lichtenstein's first museum surveys: in 1967 the Pasadena Art Museum initiated a traveling retrospective, in 1968 the Stedelijk Musem in Amsterdam presented his first European retrospective, and in 1969 he had his first New York retrospective, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Wanting to grow, Lichtenstein turned away from the comic book subjects that had brought him prominence. In the late 1960s his work became less narrative and more abstract, as he continued to meditate on the nature of the art enterprise itself. He began to explore and deconstruct the notion of brushstrokes-the building blocks of Western painting. Brushstrokes are conventionally conceived as vehicles of expression, but Lichtenstein made them into a subject. Modern artists have typically maintained that the subject of a painting is painting itself. Lichtenstein took this idea one imaginative step further: a compositional element could serve as the subject matter of a work and make that bromide ring true.

The search for new forms and sources was even more emphatic after 1970, when Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein bought property in Southampton, New York, and made it their primary residence. During the fertile decade of the 1970s, Lichtenstein probed an aspect of perception that had steadily preoccupied him: how easily the unreal is validated as the real because viewers have accepted so many visual conceptions that they don't analyze what they see. In the Mirror series, he dealt with light and shadow upon glass, and in the Entablature series, he considered the same phenomena by abstracting such Beaux-Art architectural elements as cornices, dentils, capitals and columns. Similarly, Lichtenstein created pioneering painted bronze sculpture that subverted the medium's conventional three-dimensionality and permanence. The bronze forms were as flat and thin as possible, more related to line than volume, and they portrayed the most fugitive sensations-curls of steam, rays of light and reflections on glass. The steam, the reflections and the shadow were signs for themselves that would immediately be recognized as such by any viewer.

Another entire panoply of works produced during the 1970s were complex encounters with Cubism, Futurism, Purism, Surrealism and Expressionism. Lichtenstein expanded his palette beyond red, blue, yellow, black, white and green, and invented and combined forms. He was not merely isolating found images, but juxtaposing, overlapping, fragmenting and recomposing them. In the words of art historian Jack Cowart, Lichtenstein's virtuosic compositions were "a rich dialogue of forms-all intuitively modified and released from their nominal sources." v In the early 1980s, which coincided with re-establishing a studio in New York City, Lichtenstein was also at the apex of a busy mural career. In the 1960s and 1970s, he had completed four murals; between 1983 and 1990, he created five. He also completed major commissions for public sculptures in Miami Beach, Columbus, Minneapolis, Paris, Barcelona and Singapore.

Lichtenstein created three major series in the 1990s, each emblematic of his ongoing interest in solving pictorial problems. The Interiors, mural-sized canvases inspired by a miniscule advertisement in an Italian telephone book, delve again into the perceptual ambiguities of reflections from windows and mirrors. The Nudes reprise the theme of women in a romance-comic mode, which Lichtenstein had introduced in the 1960s and amplified in lush Surrealist-inspired beach scenes in the 1970s. As with the Interiors, there is ample quotation of elements from earlier canvases, the furniture of Lichtenstein's painted world. He also used the series to investigate mixing chiaroscuro (which he devised with dots and shading) with flat areas of color. This effect was brought to an ultimate pitch in his Chinese Landscapes, Lichtenstein's final encounter with a monumental art tradition-and one of his most subtle. Configurations of land, water, mountains and air found in Song dynasty paintings and scrolls are simulated by softly drifting fields of graduated dots. None of Lichtenstein's usual black outlines define the monochromatic forms, which heightens the contemplative and abstract quality of the series.

In August 1997, Lichtenstein fell ill with pneumonia. He died unexpectedly of complications from the disease on September 29, 1997, at the age of 73, in New York City.

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i. Alvin Katz, interview by the author, July 2, 2002, Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Archives, New York.

ii. John Coplans, "An Interview with Roy Lichtenstein," , Vol. 2, No. 4 (October 1963), p. 31.

iii. Milton Esterow, "Conversation: How Could You Be Much Luckier Than I Am?", ARTnews, Vol. 90, no. 1 (May 1991), p. 91.

v. Jack Cowart, Roy Lichtenstein 1970-1980 (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with the St. Louis Art Museum, 1981), p. 109.

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Avis Berman Roy Lichtenstein was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is preeminently identified with Pop Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction.

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Roy Lichtenstein, (born October 27, 1923, New York, New York, U.S.-died September 29, 1997, New York City), American painter who was a founder and foremost practitioner of Pop art, a movement that countered the techniques and concepts of Abstract Expressionism with images and techniques taken from popular culture.

As a teenager, Lichtenstein studied briefly with the painter Reginald Marsh. After serving in the military during World War II, he attended the Ohio State University, teaching there from 1946 to 1951 and receiving a masters degree in 1949. He also taught at New York State University College, Oswego (1957-60), and at Douglass College of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (1960-63).

At the start of his artistic career, Lichtenstein painted themes from the American West in a variety of modern art styles; he dabbled in 1957 even in Abstract Expressionism, a style he later reacted against. His interest in the comic-strip cartoon as an art theme probably began with a painting of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck he made in 1960 for his children. Although he was initially dissatisfied with his technique and uncomfortable with direct appropriation, he took great pleasure in presenting well-known comic-strip figures in a fine art format. He increased the size of his canvases and began to manipulate to his own ends the graphic and linguistic conventions of comic strips dealing with such genres as romance, war, and science fiction. In the style of comic strips, he used words to express sound effects. He developed a detached, mass-produced effect by outlining areas of primary colour with thick black lines and by using a technique that simulated benday screening (a dot pattern used by engravers).

Lichtenstein's first one-man show, held in New York City in 1962, was a great commercial success, and his innovative work found an international audience. In 1966 he became the first American to exhibit at London's Tate Gallery.

Lichtenstein continued in this vein for much of his career, and his artworks are readily identifiable by their comic-strip characteristics. Nevertheless he extended these techniques into clever and thought-provoking meditations on art and popular culture. After the 1960s, Lichtenstein's works began to include still lifes and landscapes, and they were a dramatic departure from his earlier style in their use of brushstrokes as well as in their subject matter.

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Roy Lichtenstein | Biography, Artworks, & Facts

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Roy Lichtenstein, American painter who was a founder and foremost practitioner of Pop art, a movement that countered the techniques and concepts of Abstract Expressionism with images and techniques taken from popular culture. Learn more about his life and art in this article.

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What Is The Legacy of Roy Lichtenstein? | Article | Guy Hepner

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In our latest article, we explore how Roy Lichtenstein's legacy continues to inspire countless generations of artists through his iconic comic-book pop-art. Read now.

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Sandwich and Soda - Madison Museum of Contemporary Art