Warhol’s influence ‘still evident 20 years after death’

TWENTY years to the day after his death, pop art icon Andy Warhol is a seminal influence for contemporary artists and a collectors’ darling, even though what drove the man and his art remains a mystery.

“Everybody is influenced by him, in some way or another, because his creativity was so freewheeling,” said New York painter and critic Carol Diehl who worked with the American artist before his death on February 22, 1987.

Four decades after Warhol scandalised the fine art world with his tongue-in-cheek critique of consumer society — 32 silk-screen mass-produced canvases of Campbell’s Soup cans — his works are now highly sought after.

Hong Kong real estate tycoon Joseph Lau last year paid the highest price ever for a Warhol work buying his portrait of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong for €17.4 millionat an auction in New York.

“The Warhol market has just been growing exponentially over the last few years and with each season the prices seem to be going to a higher and higher level,” said Robert Manley, head of contemporary art evening sales at Christie’s.

It was in the 1960s that his artistic career began to take off with not just his paintings of common American household products but also celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe.

A whole generation of artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst owe Warhol a huge debt of gratitude for pushing back the boundaries of art, she maintained.