Andy Warhol Timeline

Andy Warhol 38

1928 Andy Warhol born in Pittsburgh Andrew Warhola, son of Rusyn immigrants His parents had emigrated from a village in what is now Slovakia. His father worked in construction and coal.
1936 – 1938 Sydenham's chorea Months in bed with a nervous disorder Bedridden as a child, Warhol collected film magazines and celebrity photographs and drew constantly. He called it the formative period of his life.
1942 His father dies He was fourteen Andrej Warhola had set aside savings specifically to pay for his son's education. Warhol was too frightened to attend the funeral and hid until it was over.
1945 – 1949 Carnegie Institute of Technology Pictorial design Nearly dismissed after his first year, he was kept on and graduated with a style already built on tracing, blotting and repetition.
1949 Moves to New York And loses the final a A Glamour magazine credit printed his name as Andy Warhol rather than Warhola. He kept the mistake.
1952 First solo exhibition Drawings based on Truman Capote Warhol had been writing to Capote persistently and made a show from his writing. Almost nothing sold.
1955 – 1959 The I. Miller shoe advertisements The most successful commercial artist in New York A weekly series of blotted-line shoe drawings for a Manhattan retailer that won awards and made him wealthy well before the Pop paintings.
1957 Has his nose reshaped He remained unhappy with his appearance Warhol was self-conscious about his skin and nose all his life, and later built a persona around wigs, glasses and deliberate blankness.
1960 First comic and Coca-Cola paintings Superman, Popeye, Dick Tracy Painted by hand with drips still showing. When he saw Lichtenstein's cleaner version of the same idea he abandoned comics entirely.
1961 The Bonwit Teller window Five paintings behind mannequins His first public showing of Pop work was a department store display on Fifth Avenue, used as a backdrop for spring dresses.
1962 Adopts photo-silkscreen The technique that removes the hand Warhol began transferring photographs directly onto canvas through silk mesh. He said he wanted to be a machine, and this was how.
1962 Campbell's Soup Cans exhibited 32 canvases — the birth of Pop Art Warhol exhibited Campbell's Soup Cans in July 1962 at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles — 32 canvases, one for each variety of soup. The show launched Pop Art and asked whether commercial imagery could be fine art.
1962 Marilyn Diptych painted After Marilyn Monroe's death Warhol created the Marilyn Diptych in 1962 shortly after Monroe's death in August. The 50 silkscreened images — half in vivid colour, half in fading black and white — comment on celebrity, death and mass reproduction.
1962 The Death and Disaster series Car crashes, electric chairs, race riots Made in the same months as the soup cans and rarely shown beside them. Warhol said that when you see a gruesome picture enough times it stops having any effect.
1963 Starts making films Sleep — five hours and twenty minutes A man sleeping, in near-static long takes. Of the nine people at the premiere, two stayed to the end.
1963 – 1968 The Factory era Silver-lined studio becomes the centre of New York cool Warhol opened his silver-lined Factory studio in New York in 1963. It became the cultural centre of 1960s New York, attracting celebrities, drag queens, musicians and socialites. Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground and Edie Sedgwick were regulars.
1964 Empire Eight hours of one building A single unmoving shot of the Empire State Building from dusk into night. Warhol said it was a way to see time go by.
1964 – 1966 The Screen Tests Nearly five hundred silent portraits Visitors to the Factory were sat before a camera and asked not to move for three minutes. Dylan, Sedgwick, Ginsberg and Reed all sat for one.
1964 The Silver Factory Billy Name lines it with foil A former hat factory on East 47th Street covered in silver foil and paint, open at all hours to a shifting cast of artists, addicts and hangers-on.
1964 Thirteen Most Wanted Men is painted over Removed from the World's Fair His mural of mugshots on the New York State Pavilion was covered in silver paint within days, on official orders.
1965 Announces he has stopped painting To concentrate on film The retirement lasted about three years. He returned to canvas after the shooting.
1966 – 1967 The Exploding Plastic Inevitable A travelling multimedia assault Films projected over the Velvet Underground playing live, with strobes, whips and dancers. Warhol managed the band and financed the shows.
1967 The banana cover The Velvet Underground & Nico A peelable sticker over a pink fruit, credited to Warhol rather than the band. The record sold poorly and changed everything that came after it.
1968 Warhol shot by Valerie Solanas Nearly killed at the Factory Radical feminist Valerie Solanas shot Warhol at the Factory on June 3, 1968. He was clinically dead for several minutes and required emergency surgery. The shooting profoundly changed him — he became more private and guarded.
1969 Founds Interview magazine Celebrities interviewing each other Transcripts printed almost unedited, with the pauses left in. It ran for nearly fifty years.
1972 His mother dies She had lived with him for twenty years Julia Warhola shared his New York houses from 1952. Warhol did not attend the funeral and told friends for years that she was fine.
1972 The Mao series Painted after Nixon went to China Hundreds of portraits of the world's most reproduced image, done in loud cosmetic colour — a communist leader treated exactly like a film star.
1974 – 1987 The Time Capsules Six hundred and twelve sealed boxes Warhol swept the contents of his desk into a cardboard box each month — letters, magazines, pizza dough, cash, a mummified foot — then taped and dated it.
1975 The Philosophy of Andy Warhol published "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" Warhol published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol in 1975, a witty collection of observations on fame, money, beauty and American culture. It crystallised his persona as the ultimate commentator on celebrity society.
1977 – 1979 Studio 54 Documented nightly in the diaries Warhol was there constantly, recording who arrived with whom into a tape recorder he called his wife.
1979 Portraits of the 70s is savaged Critics call him a society flatterer The Whitney show of commissioned portraits was widely read as proof he had become the court painter of the wealthy.
1980 – 1983 Andy Warhol's TV Cable television as a medium A series of half-hour programmes, later followed by Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes on MTV — he had wanted a television show since the sixties.
1982 – 1985 Working with Jean-Michel Basquiat Around a hundred and sixty joint canvases The older artist started painting by hand again for the first time in decades. Their 1985 joint show was badly reviewed and the friendship did not survive it.
1985 Demonstrates the Amiga Digitally painting Debbie Harry on stage Commissioned by Commodore for the computer's launch. The files he made were recovered from floppy disks nearly thirty years later.
1985 – 1987 Late works and death Camouflage series and unexpected death In his final years Warhol produced his Camouflage series and religious works. He died unexpectedly on February 22, 1987, following routine gallbladder surgery, aged 58. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh opened in 1994.
1986 The Last Supper series Around a hundred works from Leonardo His final and largest series, made for a Milan gallery opposite the actual mural. Warhol had attended church regularly all his life without telling almost anyone.
1988 The estate auction Ten days at Sotheby's His collections filled a sale that ran for over a week and raised more than twenty million dollars, funding the foundation that bears his name.
1994 The Andy Warhol Museum opens In Pittsburgh, where he was born Seven floors devoted to a single artist, including the Time Capsules, which archivists are still working through.