Publisher's Synopsis
Andy Warhol: The Mechanical Art highlights how Andy Warhol (1928-87) explored the cult of merchandise and consumerism, sensitively tracking how the mechanical had morphed from the industrial inventions of the 19th century into something new.
Always attentive to technical and industrial breakthroughs, Warhol used all types of techniques and machinery, from silk-screen printing to video recording, with production patterns that he himself defined as "pertaining to an assembly line." Deliberately seeking an impersonal, mechanical art in a creative subversion of traditional expectations for art and its makers, Warhol traded in transfers, copies, projections and repetitions.
This catalog brings together a selection of more than 250 works by Warhol, focusing on the technical and conceptual evolution of art in New York in the second half of the 20th century. It also includes portraits of the artist by photographers Alberto Schommer, Richard Avedon and Robert Mapplethorpe. Essays by Robert Rosenblum, Peter Schjeldahl, Rosalind Krauss and an interview conducted by Benjamin Buchloh delve into Warhol's creative and production processes.
