Andy Warhol and Success: From Campbell Soup to Marilyn Monroe
The success of an art movement through hardships, determination and extraordinary support
By Molly Korzenowski | Graphic Design and Journalism Major, Bethel University
Andy Warhol sits in front of his printed painting, Elvis Two Times, while a modest smirk plays on his lips. His hair gleams white-blonde and a pair of over-sized sunglasses perch on his rounded nose. His black collar flips upward around his neck and his stance emanates his confidence. A man with a groomed handlebar mustache attempts to ask profound questions about the painting, but Warhol will not give the man the answers he seeks.
“Why don’t you just tell me the words and they’ll just come out of my mouth,” Warhol said in response to the baffled interviewer’s question (Evans 0:3:00).
“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities”
— Gladwell, Outliers 155
Warhol grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to immigrant parents during the 1930s. With a loving mother, a workaholic father, and his two quarrelsome older brothers, life was no easy game (Bokris 9–10). Despite the pollution from the steel mills along the Monongahela River near his home, Warhol always found beauty in his drawings and the cinema. He knew what he enjoyed in life and was not scared to do his own thing, his own way.
During a time when people viewed abstract expressionism as true art, painting a can of Campbell soup or screen printing a portrait of Marilyn Monroe proved an unpopular choice. The enterprise Warhol created proved to be nothing short of extraordinary, but as author Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, every extraordinary story can be explained. “Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities” (Gladwell, Outliers 155). Through desirable disadvantages, 10,000 hours of practice, and extraordinary opportunity, Warhol received the ingredients he needed for success in the mid-nineteenth century art world.
In the book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, Gladwell wrote about a man named Warren Harding whose chiseled cheekbones resembled that of a Roman statue and whose hair could withstand a hurricane. But when it came to political knowledge or the intellect of a leader, Harding wasn’t the most qualified politician in the business. Despite this, he won his spot in the White House during the presidential election of 1921 (Gladwell, Blink 72–75). The simple fact of Harding’s appearance brought glory and fame to a man who barley deserved it. Obviously, relying on looks alone is not a proficient way to elect a president. It’s not fair that something so superficial moved Harding above people who had the correct qualifications to lead the country. Even so, Harding shows how a specific demeanor can increase the likelihood of success.
Sometimes, this logic can work backwards; sometimes, a strange appearance can lead to unforeseen advantages. Gladwell tells the story of a poor Jewish immigrant named Joe Flom who managed to start one of the most successful law firms in America. As much as this sounds like a classic underdog story, it turns out Flom had one thing Wall Street lawyers didn’t: he was chubby and Jewish. He doodled during meetings, mumbled his thoughts, and was even said to resemble a frog. Flom’s background and appearance made it almost impossible to get a job at any major law firm. Although that sounds like a disadvantage, unemployment pushed Flom to take more risks and jump into creating a new firm, something the current economy craved. He took on the hostile takeovers, cases high-end firms refused. This caused him to work harder with every case as he did something nobody else had wanted to do. Flom capitalized on his disadvantages, leading to remarkable success in a field he didn’t think he could succeed in (Gladwell, Outliers 116–119).
Just as Harding used his astounding good looks to win a presidency and Flom used his shortcomings to become a successful lawyer, Warhol wedged his place in the demanding art world with his own desirable disadvantage: a bizarre image and unique persona. Ever since he was a child, Warhol roamed outside the crowd. As the young artist floated through Homes Elementary at six years old, those who noticed him saw him as a target. His features were soft, pouty, his complexion chalky, and his reputation labeled him a momma’s boy; the perfect jest of a candy store corner gang on his route home from school. For the longest time, Warhol had almost no friends in school as he was outcaste as the strange albino immigrant boy by other students.
Despite this treatment, Warhol never lifted his finger against anyone. Instead, he clambered straight home and completed his assignments or, when he could afford it, Warhol went to the cinema after school. He loved the glamorous life and the attention given to super stars like Shirley Temple. Warhol hoped that one day he too could live such a life. But in most cases, the young artist drew happily throughout the afternoon. These were his ways of escaping the lonely reality of the life he lived the majority of his childhood (Bokris 16).
Most boys Warhol’s age would’ve played baseball or got into mischief with their friends. Being labeled an outcast by peers is perhaps one of the worst situations that a young boy could find himself in. However, without this label, Warhol would’ve spent less free time developing his artistic skills. Being friendless provided Warhol with the opportunity to get a head start at a practice he loved while everyone else played tag in the grass.
However, Warhol’s self-image became prominent during his years at Carnegie College. Although his personality never truly shifted, Warhol’s wardrobe exploded with turtlenecks which were “vital” to being an artist at the time, painted nails, fluffy white wigs, and a corduroy suit he bought with his first paycheck. This shift in his appearance started to get him recognized as a unique artist rather than an outcast, something that intrigued Tina Fredericks when she interviewed him at Glamour magazine, which landed Warhol his first job (Bockris 41–43, 51) . Without his mysterious and charming persona, Warhol would have just been another design student in the crowd. His appearance made him stand out from the others, landing him a firm start to his career at a high-end magazine right from the start. Harding’s good looks boosted him higher than men smarter than him. Flom’s Jewish heritage and unruly appearance wouldn’t let him get with the big guns at the law firm, causing him to work harder and find success elsewhere. Warhol used his strange persona to his advantage, creating a personal image.
Through his work in commercial design, Warhol’s name was spread everywhere enabling him to break away from magazines and start a career as a studio artist. Despite the abstract paintings that flooded the market, Warhol decided to focus on the popular culture of the time making paintings of Mickey Mouse or Coca-Cola, images he viewed daily in the commercial art world. As Warhol’s style rose to fame, his personal image emerged legendary. “Warhol had been working on himself, turning his defects, his shyness, his unnatural pallor, and his wigs into an image.” Warhol conducted many print-paintings using images of celebrity icons he adored from Marilyn Monroe to Elvis. In the mid-60s, Warhol created similar paintings, only this time he replaced the face of the stars with his own (Evans 0:14:00). This decision showcased the outcome Warhol always dreamed of; he was finally admitted into the world of the celebrities. Without his strange appearance and mysterious way of being, Warhol would not have charmed as many critics or intrigued as many viewers as he did. His cool demeanor ranked the whispery artist among the greats. What seemed like a disadvantage turned out to be a big part of Warhol’s success story.
An outlier puts aside other obligations in life to practice. Extra hours should be used to obsessively improve a skill set; they should not be used to lounge on the couch.
Appearance wasn’t the only unusual factor that helped Warhol on his road to success. He spent an unusually excessive number of hours perfecting his drawing techniques and taking in every pop culture experience he could. K. Anders Ericsson and a two other colleagues studied how practice played a part in expert achievement through observing the habits of a group of musicians. In their experiment, they placed violinists with common demographics into three groups: the “best” violinists, the “good” violinists, and the “music teachers” violinists who would take the teaching route instead of becoming an international soloist. The young musicians are asked to estimate how many weekly hours of violin practice they accumulated every year since they started. Knowing this information enabled Ericsson and his colleagues to calculate the average hours of practice needed to fit into the “best” group, the violinists good enough to go solo. It turns out that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert-level violinist (Ericsson 379). This study of the violinists works with almost every expert there is. From Wolfgang Mozart to Bill Joy, everyone has to put in 10,000 hours of practice; no one is just born with extraordinary talent. (Gladwell, Outliers 42–47). Just as the musicians needed 10,000 hours of rehearsal, artists need 10,000 hours of practice. This extraordinary amount of practice allowed Warhol to succeed; it can’t be credited to innate talent entirely.
There is only one problem with this excessive amount of practice; it’s hard to give up the amount of free time required. An outlier puts aside other obligations in life to practice. Extra hours should be used to obsessively improve a skill set; they should not be used to lounge on the couch. Only a special kind of person living with a special set of circumstances is able to pull together 10,000 hours of practice before graduating college. As it turns out, one of those circumstances came upon Warhol at only 8 years old.
Warhol laid in bed, his mother rarely leaving his side. The second grader, who had already broken a bone and fell victim to scarlet fever, had been plagued by a mild case of Sydenham Chorea, a movement disorder that causes prolonged fever (Potter). By the doctor’s order, Warhol stayed in bed for a whole month instead of attending school. Warhol’s mother and arguably his best friend pampered the young boy with comic books, movie magazines, and coloring books. During this period, Warhol created drawings, collages, and discovered the world of pop culture evident in all his later works. His older brother Paul Warhol even showed him how to transfer images onto paper, a lesson that became Warhol’s first encounter with printmaking (Bockris 19–20). Being bedridden granted Warhol an exceptional amount of time to gain practice and discover the art mediums he loved outside the normal amount of weekly practice most experts need. Warhol’s caring mother exposed him to huge amounts of pop culture he hadn’t been exposed to before, stirring in him a passion for pop culture that would only grow with time. With Chorea, his lone-wolf personality, and his outcast status, Warhol had plenty of time to focus on getting his 10,000 hours of practice in well before other child artists.
Even a unique personality and excessive practice aren’t enough to elevate a poor immigrant boy to fame right out of college. Gladwell wrote that every extraordinarily successful person was presented with extraordinary opportunities they decided to seize. It turns out that the Beatles weren’t exceptional from birth; they had the help of a little strip club in Hamburg, Germany called the Indra. Given the chance to play there by luck, the Beatles gained much more than 10,000 hours of practice. They were required to play for eight hours, seven days a week and performed an estimated twelve hundred times before they rose to fame. With this special opportunity, the Beatles stood out against the sea of aspiring musicians (Gladwell, Outliers 47–50). It’s amazing how much one seemingly insignificant event can alter the path to success. But, in order to rise among the greats, just one of these events won’t cut it; an outlier needs a series of extraordinary circumstances to really stand out. The Beatles are of no exception. If ambitious club owner Bruno hadn’t bumped into an entrepreneur from Liverpool, which happened to be the hometown of the Beatles, while in London, they never would’ve played in the Indra in the first place. The Beatles received many opportunities that allowed them to become internationally recognized pop stars. Similarly, starting a whole art movement isn’t something that can be done alone. Like the Beatles, Warhol was presented with many extraordinary opportunities most young artists didn’t have.
At age four, Paul, 10 at the time, tried to force Warhol to start school early. After one day in class, young Warhol threw such a fit that his mother decided he no longer had to go. Two years later, the family moved out of their poor neighborhood called the Hill, to Oakland, a working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh with a better education system (Bokris 14). Because his parents decided to move, Warhol had a better education than his older brothers, who received their schooling beforehand. Already, he had a better chance than anyone living in the dingy conditions of the Hill to make it big. When Warhol turned six years old and ready to start his first year of school, he progressed straight into the second grade. How can a young boy with no schooling skip a grade? The one day he went to school at four years old somehow translated to a full year of classes (Bokris 16). Already, Warhol was ahead of the game.
Growing up in 1945 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the most polluted cities in America did not appear the most desirable circumstance. But, as it turns out, Pittsburgh happened to be an art haven. Some of the leading art collectors in the world set up high-class museums in Pittsburgh, offering free Saturday morning art classes to talented children all over the city (Kossey). Due to an artistic mother, hours of practice, and the premium art program in his school, Warhol stood out with great potential among his peers. By a recommendation from an art teacher at Homes School district, the young artist became pupil to those special morning art classes. Right away, Warhol’s teacher, Joseph Fitzpatrick, saw potential in the strange boy. “A more talented person than Andy Warhol I never knew. I encouraged him to do whatever he wanted to do because he was so individualistic,” he said. Warhol turned out to be one of the poorest in the class, as many of the other pupils gained prior professional training, but that didn’t stop him from being a stand out (Bokris 28–30). The fact that a high school teacher went out of her way to favor the underprivileged Warhol for the art program proved special in its own. But, maybe even more extraordinarily, Warhol grew up in the right city and even the right neighborhood. He attended a school just privileged enough for a talented immigrant boy to be recognized and he just so happened to live in a city so overflowing with art that some of the most prestigious teachers offered free classes. Surprisingly, Warhol’s luck didn’t end there.
By the time Warhol matured to college age, he had his first year paid off upfront. His father had left a huge amount of postal saving bonds to a 13-year-old Warhol after he passed away from tuberculosis (Potter 1052). Because of his talent and academic success at an early age, Warhol’s father believed in him the most. With this money, Warhol became the first member of his family to go to college (Bokris 24). If Andrei Warhol hadn’t been a workaholic, if he hadn’t thought ahead and saved up all of that money, Warhol would’ve never made it into higher education.
During his freshman year at Carnegie University of Technology, Warhol’s academics suffered and many faculty saw him as least likely to succeed. However, Lorene Twiggs, the secretary chairman of the art department, grew close with pitiful Warhol. She saw his skills and recognized his potential. When Carnegie kicked Warhol out of college for low academic success, it was Twiggs who landed him a second chance through summer school, a program that could get him reinstated as a sophomore the next year. With this miracle and a summer job where he had time to create many sketches, Carnegie admitted Warhol back into school, even awarding him his own little art show (Bockris 35–38). The faith of Twiggs saved Warhol from defeat at his first year of school. Without her, his confidence as an artist and his whole ideal future, would’ve been shattered.
After graduation, Warhol decided not to become a studio artist; instead he became a commercial artist. During the early 1950’s, the nation’s spending on advertisement and promotions rose to nearly $9 billion. Jobs in the art of persuasive image making were in high demand, so even a boy with an immigrant upbringing had no trouble entering the economic world. Soon enough, Warhol thrived as a commercial artist, his graphics being seen by millions of magazine readers (Bockris 51).
Without his father, Warhol never would have made it to Carnegie. Without the help of Twiggs, Warhol may have never graduated college. Without his college degree, Warhol may have never gotten into Glamour magazine fresh out of school. If Warhol went straight into studio art, his name may have never reached so many people. The impact of extraordinary opportunities and the assistance of many people allowed Warhol to achieve his dreams. It’s pretty clear that Warhol needed plenty of help along his route to success. Even big names like the Beatles need help along the way. Like Gladwell wrote,” no one — -not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — -ever makes it alone (Gladwell, Outliers 115).”
Maria Callas belted opera ballads through a phonograph in Warhol’s studio, a place he called “The Factory.” A woman lay on a couch sketching in a notebook. A man named Gerard set up a desk and wrote poetry in the corner. People would run down to a place called Bickford’s to grab Warhol a milkshake or a hamburger. A silver payphone sat on the wall and an old silver freight elevator decorated the room. Warhol’s troupe picked up every piece of furniture off the streets with a rotten old couch with no springs as the room’s centerpiece. It was here that the artist made some of his most successful pieces, including his painting Elvis Two Times (Evans 0:18:00). But more importantly, it was here, among this bunch of glamorous and quirky people, Warhol finally found a place to fit in. He no longer felt like a lonely misfit, he became part of a world that celebrated both him and his art.
No matter how hard he tried, Warhol could not blend into the background. His ideas, appearance, and persona carried uniqueness and suave that could not be matched. The bizarre quality of his artwork summoned the attention of even the most merciless critics. As a person, Warhol demanded a double take and spoke so little that every word he uttered held importance. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself,” Warhol one said.
With a bit of help, Warhol succeeded in creating a world of his own, a place he thrived. “If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires,” Gladwell wrote (Outliers, 151). Sometimes, success isn’t found from world-wide fame or lots of money. In fact, even as his paintings gained tons of recognition, Warhol “retired” as a painter after less than 10 years to run his studio full time, renting it out to all sorts of oddities like himself (Evans 0:30:00). To Warhol, success meant finding out where he belonged in the puzzle. “The Factory” granted him a place to call home.
Works Cited
Bockris, Victor. The Life and Death of Andy Warhol. New York: Bantam, 1989. Print.
Dir. Kim Evans. Perf. Andy Warhol. Arthaus Musik, 1987. Kanopy. Bethel University. Web. Accessed 20 Apr. 2018.
Ericsson, K. Anders, & Others. (1993). The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.
— -. Outliers: the Story of Success. Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company, 2013. Print.
Kossey, P. (2015). Andy Warhol’s Pittsburgh. The Magazine Antiques, 182(6), 98.
Potter, Polyxeni. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” Emerging Infectious Diseases Magazine, June 2010, pp. 1052–1053.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Molly Korzenowski
Molly Korzenowski, a freshman from Somerset, Wisc., seeks an internship in a local newsroom to reach her dream of sharing and presenting untold stories. Korzenowski enjoys summer days, starry nights, and munching on celery lathered in peanut butter.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED
- In his TED talk, Malcolm Gladwell taught me that there needs to be diversity in tomato sauce just as there is diversity in people.
- Blink taught me that sometimes the package of the ice cream bucket tastes better than the product.
- Billy Beane showed me that the star player of a baseball team might not be on the field.
- I learned that innate talent doesn’t exist and that the underdog story is overrated; an outlier never makes it alone.
- Words should paint a story, not tell it.
- When I speak in front of a crowd I should not be afraid; I’m just sharing a good story to a group of friends.
- Scott Winter taught me that snapping for an accomplishment proves more exciting than clapping. Uniqueness fabricates an interesting day as well as an intriguing story.
- Malcolm Gladwell showed me that everyone can succeed with the right ingredients and loads of meaningful extra work.
- Sometimes the best work can be done when put on the spot.
- Collaboration with others develops the recipe for success.
- Earleen Warner showed me that good sources are not found on Wikipedia.
- Scott Winter educated me that “transcendentalist” is not only a good word, it serves as a good team name as well.
Defining moment
My group members and I walked over the the Psychology lounge to practice our hero speeches. Nick Banfield looked at me and I looked over at Emma Eidsvoog.
“We’re going to have to present today,” Banfield said.
We all laughed and agreed that we and a 99% chance of being picked to randomly give our speeches. We trooped into AC 323, one of the last groups to arrive back from our practice.
“Guess what, Mosquitoes?” Scott Winter said, using our team name. “You guys get to present your speeches today.”
We looked at each other and laughed, discovering our snap-decision was correct. It’s easy to prepare for a speech, but it’s much more difficult to prepare for a surprise. Through this class, I have learned to do that, welcoming every circumstance with open arms.
