When u buy a painting, you are buying...

Andy Warhol, pop artists..

“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.” —Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987), born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, PA, was an iconic and versatile Pop artist. After studying design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Warhol moved to New York City 

in 1949 to pursue a career as a commercial artist. Though successful, Warhol wanted to be an independent painter, and in the early 1960s began to create paintings based on advertisement imagery. Shocking in its embrace of “low art” and its detachment from emotion, his early work quickly brought him fame, as he produced the now infamous series of Campbell’s Soup Cans, Disasters, Electric Chairs, and celebrity portraits (Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Elvis Presley were among his subjects), with commercial techniques such as screen printing and stenciling. 

As his fame grew, Warhol built a studio called The Factory on 47th street, and collected a group of eccentrics he called the “Superstars,” with whom he created a number of experimental films, such as Sleep, Chelsea Girls, and Empire, which were often banned by the police for their vulgarity. 

In 1968, Valerie Solanas, a former member of Warhol’s entourage, attempted to kill the artist and others outside of The Factory. Narrowly surviving, Warhol withdrew from his bohemian circle and occupied himself in the 1970s creating celebrity portraits, which brought him considerable earnings, but weakened his critical approval. 

With Gerard Malanga, he also founded Interview magazine, which is still in print today. 

In the 1980s, however, Warhol’s work was revitalized by collaborations with younger artists, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring, and he produced renowned series of paintings such as The Last Supper. 

Warhol died in 1987 due to complications following an operation. As per his desire, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established after his death. 

extract from  http://www.artnet.com/artists/andy-warhol/

The Courage to Create

"Courage is not the absence of despair; it is rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair. … Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations." —Rollo May, The Courage to Create.

I can relate to that. Many people have a fear to go out of their comfort zone. And painting or crafting is one area many people would rather avoid. It's no help that many are 'traumatised' in art class because their still life drawing does not look like the still-life on display. .. and so is reprimanded or laughed at by their peers.... Aiyoh, havent they heard of Picasso???  So we get people who rather look and comment, than take the courage to DO IT.

I have not done much drawing or painting after school (accept when i enrolled for a fashion design course years ago). Always looking, always admiring but never the 'time' (another excuse) to sit and really do it. 

Instead, i prefer to talk to artists, to listen to their ideas, their stories... and feel inspired / empowered.. yet still the brush is in the drawer. Instead the fingers type and i blog and i organise events and i help others to connect to artists..  Not a bad thing to be doing as I find people and their experiences riveting.

I should start reading  this book - The Courage to Create...  lol!

I googled and found some quotes from this book -

“What genuine painters do is to reveal the underlying psychological and spiritual conditions of their relationship to their world; thus in the works of a great painter we have a reflection of the emotional and spiritual condition of human beings in that period of history. 

If you wish to understand the psychological and spiritual temper of any historical period, you can do no better than to look long and searchingly at its art. For in the art the underlying spiritual meaning of the period is expressed directly in symbols. This is not because artists are didactic or set out to teach or to make propaganda; to the extend that they do, their power of expression is broken; their direct relations to the inarticulate, or, if you will, 'unconscious' levels of the culture is destroyed. 

They have the power to reveal the underlying meaning of any period precisely because the essence of art is the powerful and alive encounter between the artist and his or her world." (pg 52)” 
― Rollo May, The Courage to Create

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. by Simonides