Andy Warhol was one of the founding members of the new art movement that began in the mid to late fifties, which was most commonly referred to as “Pop Art,” which was short for “Popular Culture.” “Pop Art” takes its subject matter from popular culture such as comic strips, motion pictures, and advertising, as well as ordinary everyday objects, which are portrayed by using various artistic technologies. Warhol’s art didn’t lack in meaning, but is, rather, full with it. It is correct that Andy’s paintings focused on the representations of recognizable subjects usually based on pictures from existing imagery. Andy Warhol’s artwork epitomized the prevailing cultural and moral spirit of the time. Through the examination of paintings such as Elvis I and II, this becomes clear. Also, he himself often said that he felt apart from life, yet he reflected and influenced it by being at its center.
The subject matter of Andy Warhol’s earliest artwork reflected numerous aspects of American Culture. Warhol did not only display his dollar bill paintings, composed of rows and rows of dollar bills, at his first show, but also displayed his famous Campbell’s Soup can paintings. Everyone was familiar with the reco

“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke” (David Bourdon, Warhol p.76).

Andy Warhol’s deep obsession with Hollywood icons, such as Marilyn Manroe, James Dean, and Elvis Presley, was manifested in much of his artwork throughout his career. It has been written about Warhol that he was “a lifelong, star-struck fan of Hollywood movies, and their influence upon him and his artwork was self evident” (Andy Warhol, The philosophy of Andy Warhol, p.205). This fixation mirrored society’s obsession with superficiality of Hollywood, indicating that the era of the 1960s was relatively devoid of intellectual and spiritual values. This was an era that was infatuated with stardom and looked upon celebrities as role models.

One of the Hollywood superstars that Warhol was most fascinated with was Marilyn Manroe. Not only was she constantly the center of the media’s attention, but her striking beauty served as a perfect subject for many of Warhol’s paintings. After her tragic death in 1962, Marilyn became one of the principal focuses of Warhol’s art. He bagan producing works which exhibited Marilyn repeatedly in symmetrical rows. Some examples of these works are “Marilyn Diptych,” “Nine Multicolored Marilyns,” and “Marilyn”. Furthermore, immediately following Marilyn’s death, the world seemed somber and depressed. Warhol was, too affected by her death, but was most captivated by another issue: he was justifiably impressed by the phenomenal amount of press coverage he death received.

Andy Warhol’s “Death and Disaster” series was, yet, another collection that offered an exact reflection of the societal values of American culture in the Sixties. In the summer of 1962, Warhol became obsessed with daily news events. It was not the actual event that interested Warhol, but was, rather, t