I Want to be a Machine
Featuring everyday things like a Campbell soup can and a Brillo box, Andy Warhol¡¯s Pop art reconciles
the traditionally separate realms of art and life. Furthermore, he named his studio, ¡°Factory,¡± and produced
many works that reproduce same images repetitively through the silkscreen technique, applying the industrial method of mass production to artmaking.
The art made in Factory was one that eliminates the artist¡¯s originality, individuality, and emotions and mass-produces the same objects. It is in this light
that Warhol stated, ¡°I want to be a machine.¡±




I Love Stars
Stars are fantasies manufactured by the mass media. Warhol is said to have carried around a picture of
Marlon Brando, an evidence of his deep interest in popular cultural stars, and is now well known to the
public for his many portraits not only of Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Mao Tse-tung, but also of
wanted criminals. He also at times composed his portraits as grids of identically repeated images and,
removing the individuality of each subject, turned it into a sign. This unique method of Warhol¡¯s points to
the excessive production of images by the mass media and also symbolizes its unrivaled authority in society.




Shadow of Death
Warhol¡¯s ¡°Death and Disaster¡± series began with the image of an airplane crash that killed 129 passengers
that was reported in newspapers in 1962. Works in this series are found reportage photographs of
car accidents and scenes of death amplified and reproduced by means of silkscreen. Here, the originals
lose their reality and turn into mechanically reproduced, indifferent images. Lucidly addressing how even
terrible images of death can become simple objects of everyday consumption by being repeatedly shown
to viewers by the mass media, Warhol¡¯s ¡°Death and Disaster¡± series also reveals well the characteristics of the artist¡¯s 1960s Pop Art.




Unseen Warhol
With a series of notorious exhibitions work from 1962 on, Warhol became a celebrity, not unlike Hollywood
film stars. The artist started making self-portraits in 1964, and this reflects a desire to become a star
himself for the man who had always been infatuated with stars. Paradoxically, however, Warhol¡¯s self-portraits
dispense with details and show his visages in intense light-dark contrasts, simultaneously
revealing the artist like a star and completely concealing his self. Warhol never stopped strategizing to
become a star, and in the process, became a work of art.