Andy Warhol: Redesign

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ANDY WARHOL, 1928–1987, COMMERCE INTO ART
While studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology
in Pittsburgh, he met Philip Pearlstein, a well-known
American painter of nudes, and spent a lot of time with
him. His teachers do not remember anything remarkable
about the young student. Robert Lepper, who, according
to Pearlstein, was “the only really good teacher” at the
Carnegie Institute, recalls that Warhol was a skinny little
boy whom he did not know particularly well; but he said
Warhol did his work and some of it really was very good.
Though Pittsburgh was provincial, it enjoyed a lively
political and cultural scene. Philip Pearlstein remembers
Andy Warhol’s interest in dance, and in artists such as the
American dancer José Limón, who was a kind of hero in
the cultural scene back then; Pearlstein remembers that
he and Warhol always went to his performances. He also
remembers Martha Graham’s troupe, and her special
technique. He thought that in some ways Martha Graham
was like Bertolt Brecht; they had heard of Brecht’s theory
and technique of epic theatre and of the alienation effect.
Warhol finished his studies with a B.A. in Fine Arts and
soon after left Pittsburgh.
His move to New York marked the beginning of his
years of travelling. For Europeans, New York—the noisy
metropolis with its electrifying atmosphere and hectic
lifestyle—is synonymous with America. For Warhol, son
of immigrants from central Europe, New York became
the apotheosis of all his desires: Fifth Avenue with its
elegant shops, Madison Avenue, center of advertising and
the El Dorado of the commercial arts, Park Avenue with
its exclusive apartment blocks. Though he observed this