Andy Warhol, explained

Andy Warhol's presence continues to persist in pop culture

Warhol produced iconic album art for The Rolling Stones and The Velvet Underground. He also inspired rappers Jay-Z and Tyler, the Creator. Warhol’s immense influence on art and pop culture elevated him to celebrity status, and his identity and style continue to be referenced in sometimes unexpected corners of cultural consciousness.

Andy Warhol’s 'Exploding Plastic Inevitable' shows were multimedia performance art

If you wandered into one of Andy Warhol’s "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" events in the 1960s, you might have encountered a Velvet Underground performance, go-go dancers, strobe lights, guerrilla filmmakers asking very personal questions, and mimes. Warhol was on the cutting edge of many art forms, and performance art was no exception.

Andy Warhol’s Catholic background influenced his art

Warhol’s life and work hold clear religious through lines, from his Byzantine Catholic upbringing to reexaminations of his catalog, including an unfinished work for the 1968 world’s fair commissioned for the Catholic Church through a local Catholic university.

Learn how to make a print like Andy Warhol

Warhol's signature printing style was a practiced balance of mass-production silk-screen techniques and deliberately introduced hand-painting and imperfections.

Pop art explored the concepts of mass production and consumerism

Consumerism emerged from industrial capitalism, promoting the idea that consuming goods was linked to personal success and happiness. Artists, especially pop artists, approached this cultural phenomenon through various perspectives, some supportive of consumerism and others against. Figures like Andy Warhol embraced mass media imagery and mimicked its style, while many artists rejected the “commodification” of things by creating art that couldn’t be sold or focusing on experiences rather than objects.

Basquiat and Warhol were friends and collaborators before a bitter falling out

The two men were tight, but they also offered what the other lacked in the art world: Basquiat inspired Warhol, and Warhol gave Basquiat art-world credibility. They began working together, producing 160 collaborative works between 1983 and 1985. A 1985 exhibition of their joint works was a massive flop, though, and the friendship never recovered.

The Velvet Underground is often considered a starting point for punk rock

The band blended Warhol’s Pop Art with Beat poetry, early rock ‘n’ roll and the European avant-garde, creating a sound that was often chaotic, noisy and abrasive. The band’s debut album, “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” sold poorly, but (supposedly) everyone who purchased a copy started a band.

Read an interview with Parton conducted by Andy Warhol

Both frequented Studio 54, the chic New York club, during the disco era, and Warhol admired the country singer for her bombshell image, which he emphasized with a 1984 cover story for his Interview magazine.

Banksy turned graffiti into high art

The anonymous artist is renowned for his puckish, often stenciled street art. He's also known for the eye-popping sales those works command once they're up for auction. This podcast dives into the history of the singular artist, exploring how a British graffiti artist became a cultural icon.

Gary Panter's punk art defined the '70s and '80s counterculture

The artist got his start providing fliers and logos for early Los Angeles punk bands, but later took his psychedelic, Pop Art-vision to designing on "Pee-Wee's Playhouse," for which he won three Emmy Awards.

​​Andy Warhol made a Coca-Cola perfume called 'You're In'

The 100 spray-painted bottles were filled with a cheap citrusy perfume, practically begging audiences to ask if they were indeed filled with urine. The Coca-Cola Company sent a cease-and-desist letter shortly after learning of the project. IN 2017, a Japanese fashion brand remade the works without mentioning Coca-Cola.

Norman Rockwell considered himself an 'illustrator' rather than a 'painter'

In this 1962 interview with folk singer Tom Glazer, Rockwell points to Pieter Bruegel's Peasant Dance hung on the wall in his office. "He was a great painter, one of the fine arts painters," he said. "See I'm not a fine arts painter, I'm an illustrator. I illustrate stories, do magazine covers. This is quite different from a painter."

Picasso’s legacy is often intertwined with his personal relationships

Family revelations and quotes show the legendary artist as both tender and cruel, and his fame and romantic advances sometimes had disastrous effects on those around him.

Was Dalí an artistic genius or a marketing whiz?

Punk poet John Cooper Clarke and art historian Professor Dawn Ades explore Dalí's enthralling life and decipher whether he was an artistic genius, a marketing genius, or both. Listen to the full podcast here.

How 'A Hard Day's Night' innovated popular culture

The Beatles' first film, "A Hard Day's Night," was groundbreaking, using innovative directorial techniques, the aesthetics of French New Wave, and slapstick class-based humor to effectively establish the model for the music video decades before the debut of MTV. This essay from a music educator breaks down how the film was received in 1964 and why it still resonates with new fans today.

Soap operas were especially popular in the '70s and '80s

Shows like "As the World Turns" and "Love of Life" attracted tens of millions of viewers and had many high-profile fans, including Andy Warhol, Sammy Davis Jr. and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. This Time cover story from 1976 explores the pop culture phenomenon.

The woman who made the Met Gala a pop culture phenomenon

The Met Gala began in 1948 to raise money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's fashion collection. But its current incarnation as an over-the-top media spectacle began with former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who shifted the event from a stuffy, high society fair into a celebrity-focused event aimed at garnering publicity. This history of the event and Vreeland’s influence explores how she made that happen.

Allen Ginsberg on how Walt Whitman changed poetry

In this 1992 appearance on "Charlie Rose," Beat Generation icon Ginsberg articulates why Whitman mattered not only to the Beats but to all of poetry, arguing that he forever changed the possibilities of the form.

Riveting artwork from the battlefields during World War I

During World War I, the United States government commissioned eight artists to accompany American Expeditionary Forces to Europe to sketch and document what they saw. Drawing tanks, soldiers, shattered villages, and even German prisoners of war, the artists preserved much of the war as a matter of historical record and to rally support back home.

How Walt Disney's life impacted his business

Walt Disney has a legacy of ingenious innovation and undying creativity. This podcast walks listeners chronologically through the major events of his life, as reported in Neal Gabler's biography "Walt Disney: the Triumph of the American Imagination," and explains how they led to his groundbreaking work in film, storytelling, and business.

Quotes by designer Gianni Versace

"You have to break a barrier every day. Fashion, to me, is born and dies every day."

A look at Sikh actor and designer Waris Ahluwalia

Waris Ahluwalia has acted in many films, including Wes Anderson's "Darjeeling Limited" and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," two classics from the cult favorite filmmaker. Read this brief inspiring piece on Ahluwalia's experience that defies...

'My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others' negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.'

-Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Meet Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space

In addition to being the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin was a charismatic propaganda icon and a diplomatic headache for the West. This article examines why his image—and legacy—endured long after he died in 1968.

Why mythologist Joseph Campbell loved 'Star Wars'

Joseph Campbell, the literature professor who wrote about the power of mythology, suggested that "Star Wars" was a powerful modern myth that used classic archetypes to communicate a universal message.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Venture capital is a form of funding provided to early-stage companies with high growth potential, typically in exchange for an equity (or ownership) stake

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.