Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (2006)

Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film is a four-hour 2006 documentary by Ric Burns about pop artist Andy Warhol.

The film is Burns' cinematic argument that Warhol was the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th Century. (Picasso is credited with having that honor in the first half of the 20th Century.)

Laurie Anderson narrates the movie.

In one segment, Burns compares Warhol's portraits of such celebrities as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor with the icons of saints that Warhol saw in his boyhood Byzantine Catholic parish, where he spent many hours as a child.

Burns follows Warhol through his meteoric rise in New York's commercial art world during the 1950s. Burns cites 1962, the year Warhol first exhibited his soup can paintings in Los Angeles, as the turning point in Warhol's career.

Burns also describes in detail Valerie Solanas' near-fatal shooting of Warhol in 1968.

Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film debuted in early September 2006 with a two-week theatrical run in New York City at Film Forum that charged no admission. The movie was televised in the United States over two nights, September 20–21, 2006, on PBS as part of its American Masters series.

Synopsis

Andy Warhol fut l’un des artistes les plus importants – sinon le plus important – de la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle. Ce documentaire captivant et souvent émouvant, brosse un portrait de ce personnage aussi génial que décrié, qui sut capter les turbulences d’une époque marquée par le changement. Ce fi lm est le premier à exploiter les immenses archives du musée Andy Warhol de Pittsburgh.À travers quantité d’images et de séquences inédites complétées d’interviews, il explore la vie et l’œuvre de celui qui deviendra le pape du Pop Art – depuis son enfance solitaire et sa formation à Pittsburgh – jusqu’à l’explosion de sa carrière à New York et sa mort prématurée 1987.

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