This paper will explore the life and art of Andy Warhol (1928-1987), one of the most celebrated and iconic artists of his time and Pittsburgh’s most famous native son, in the context of the cultural preoccupations of the Instagram era. An astute and prescient observer of American society, Warhol has been having a cultural moment, heightening his own star presence: Burger King is encouraging us to #EatLikeAndy, broadcasting an original clip of Andy Warhol eating a Whopper in their 2019 Superbowl ad; during the past few months, the Andy Warhol Foundation has posted some 70 rarely seen “everyday” photographs under the hashtag #IntimateAndy; the Whitney Museum launched a major retrospective of his work, Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again (2018-19), the first Warhol retrospective organized by a U.S. institution since 1989; in 2017, Sixty Last Suppers sold at Christie’s for more than $60 million and last year Six Self Portraits sold for $29.3 million. It was Warhol who enabled us to “see” the culture of display, consumption, and celebrity obsession that now defines our world. With a former reality TV star in the White House, people watching over one billion hours of YouTube videos a day, and the Kardashians established as America’s royal family, the world becomes more Warholian by the moment. Through tracing the line of influence and dialogue between art, popular culture, and everyday life, this paper will elaborate and redefine our thinking about the pleasures of Warhol’s way of looking.
About the presenterElisa Glick
Elisa Glick is Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri, where she teaches courses on modern literary and visual culture, queer literature, and theories of gender and sexuality. She has published articles in Cultural Critique, Feminist Review, GLQ, and Modern Fiction Studies. She is the author of Materializing Queer Desire: Oscar Wilde to Andy Warhol (SUNY University Press).