Early in 1968, artist Andy Warhol was shot and seriously wounded by a mentally disturbed woman. After a long convalescence, Warhol commented that, "When I got shot, two bullets went through my stomach, liver, spleen, esophagus, left lung and right lung. The doctors and everyone else, including me, were sure I was going to die, so we all got ready, and then I didn't do it. But I always wished that I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with" (Kroll 64). At age 58, in 1987, Warhol did die, and the impassioned leader of the pop tradition since the 1960s left a legacy of art, silkscreen, and philosophy that would forever change the art world.
As one of the acknowledged leaders of the modern "pop" tradition, Warhol brought new and interesting insights into the world of modern art. "Pop art refers not so much to the art as to the new attitudes that led to it, principally an acceptance of the prevalence of mass art media," asserted Lawrence Alloway, the critic generally credited with coining the term. In other words, the pop artist turns to his surroundings to find art all around him in the everyday images that he finds in magazines and on television. Andy Warhol was one of the most successful and memorable of all of the pop artists that sprung up magically at the same time. Warhol, born Andrew Warhola to Czech-born working-class parents, a man dedicated to building an "emotion detachment that was read by some as the ultimate cool and by others as a pathological hollowness," became himself a pop symbol (de la Croix and Tansey 871). So much so, that he made an artistic statement by having a look alike of himself, complete with silvery white wig and black leather, pretend to be him at certain public functions.
Warhol began his career in fine arts via commercial arts. He was very successful reproducing shoe drawings and designing window displays. Many critics believe that it was as ...