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Andrew Warhola was born on 6 August 1928 in Forest City, Pennsylvania, USA, a small town northeast of Scranton. His father, Ondrej, came from Czechsolvakia in 1912, and sent for his mother, Julia Zavacky Warhola, in 1921. His father worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. Around some time, the family moves to Pittsburgh, PA. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns. Overcoming this, he graduates from Schenley High School in Pittsburgh in 1945, and enrolls in the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie-Mellon University graduating in June 1949. During college, he meets Phillip Pearlstein, a fellow student. After graduation, he moved to New York City, and shared an apartment with Pearlstein at St.Mark's Place off of Avenue A for a couple months. During this time, he moved in and out of several Manhattan apartments, and he changed the spelling of his surname to Warhol. In New York, he meets Tina Fredericks, art editor of Glamour Magazine. His early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York, and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, Harper's Bazzar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards. During the 1950s, he moves to an apartment on East 75th Street. His mother moves in with him, and Fritizie Miller becomes his agent. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at Hugo Gallery, New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote. Starts illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. Around 1953-1955, he works for a theatre group on the Lower East Side, and designs sets. It is around this time that he dyes his hair silver. Publishes several books, including Twenty Five Cats Named Sam, and One Blue Pussy. In 1956, he travels around the world with Charles Lisanby, a television-set designer. In April of this year, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Begins receiving accolades for his work, with the 35th Annual Art Directors Club Award for Distinctive Merit, for an I.Miller shoe advertisement. Publishes In The Bottom Of My Garden later that year. In 1957, receives 36th Annual Art Directors Club Medal and Award of Distinctive Merit, for the I.Miller show advertisements, and Life Magazine publishes his illustrations for an article, "Crazy Golden Slippers". In 1960, he began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips, Dick Tracy, Popeye, Superman, and two of Coca-Cola bottles. In 1961, using the Dick Tracy comic strip, he designs a window display for Lord & Taylor, at this time, major art galleries around the nation begin noticing his work. In 1962, he makes paintings of dollar bills and Campbell soup cans, and his work is included in an important exhibition of pop art, The New Realists, held at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York. In November of this year, Elanor Ward shows his paintings at Stable Gallery, and the exhibition begins a sensation. In 1963, he rents a studio in a firehouse on East 87th Street. Meets his assistant, Gerald Malanga, and starts making his first film, Tarzan and Jane Regained - sort of... Later, he drives to Los Angeles for his second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery. In November of this year, he finds a loft at 231 East 47th Street, which becomes his main studio, The Factory. In December he begins production of Red Jackie, the first of the Jackie series. In 1964, his first solo exhibition in Europe, held at the Galerie Ileana Sonnebend in Paris, features the Flower series. He receives a commission from architect Philip Johnson to make a mural, entitled Thirteen Most Wanted Men for the New York State Pavilion in the New York World's Fair. In April he receives an Independent Film Award from Film Culture magazine. In November, his first solo exhibition in the US is held at Leo Castelli Gallery. And at this time, he begins his self portrait series. In the summer of 1965, he meets Paul Morrisey, who becomes his advisor and collaborator. His first solo museum exhibition is held at the Institute of Contempary Art, at the University of Pennsylvania. During this year, he makes a surprise announcement of his retirement from painting, but it was to be short lived. He would resume painting again in 1972. It was around this time that he met Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker, and a German-born model turned chanteuse called Nico. This group was known as The Velvet Underground, and they developed a close bond with Warhol. This was an alliance that forever changed the face of world culture. Warhol produced the groups first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, which has been called "the most influential record ever" by many critics. Later, a multimedia show developed, managed, and produced by Warhol, featuring the Velvet Underground. It's title was The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which is the inspiration for the title of this web site. (Also, music clips from The Velvet Underground and Nico provide the soundtrack for this web site) What follows is a description of The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, from Diana Clapton's biography on Lou Reed: Its beauty, savagery and talent has never been matched by even the light/laser shows of heavy Metal. The grand opening was in the early spring of 1966 at the Dom, the old Polish National Social Hall, on St. Mark's Place. It looked like the foyer of hell -- well documented by the back cover photo on the first album. In musical and visual ferocity it was an update of the Gotterdammerung, complete with warriors and Valkyries dancing in derangement on and off stage. The Velvets were center stage, with Gerard Manlanga in black leather performing his reptilian, mesmerizing whip dance. Ingrid Superstar or Mary Waronov, in splendid disarray, writhed nearby. All around the room Warhol's films, as "Vinyl", were projected, while the coloured lights of the images fell over the band. The experience was like an acid trip, a hallucination with the power of a dream. The blue light played over Nico's shimmering blonde hair, and Cale's viola was all but an aural mugging. Tinseltown was agog at the Exploding Plastic Inevitable's assault on their jaded senses. The group was booked at the Trip, yet audience reaction was mixed. After one performance Cher, flouncing out, remarked that "It will replace nothing -- except maybe suicide". Andy was delighted, and included the comment in their publicity. The relationship between the two ended when Reed replaced Warhol as the group's manager. In the summer of 1966, his film Chelsea Girls, becomes the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theater. In 1967, Chelsea Girls opened in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and six of his Self Portraits were shown at Expo 67 in Montreal. In August of this year, he gives a lecture at various colleges in the Los Angeles area, his persona is so popular that some colleges hire Allen Midgette to impersonate Warhol for lectures. Later, he moves The Factory to 33 Union Square West, and meets Fred Hughes, who later becomes President of Enterprises, and Interview Magazine. In 1968, his first solo European museum exhibition is held at Moderna Musset, Stockholm. In June 3, he is shot by Valerie Solanis, an ultra-radical and member of the entourage surrounding Warhol. Solanis was the founder of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Fortunately, Warhol survived, after spending two months in the hospital. This incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol. (The webmaster has not seen this film, by the way, so I can't delve any details) During the 1970s and 80s, his status as a media icon skyrocketed, and Warhol used his influence to back many younger artists. He began publishing of Interview magazine, with the first issue being released in Fall 1969. In 1971, his play, entitled Pork, opens at London at the Round House Theatre. He resumes painting in 1972, although it is primarily celebrity portraits. The Factory is moved to 860 Broadway, and in 1975, he buys a house on Lexington Street. A major retrospective of his work is held in Zurich. In 1976, he does the Skulls, and Hammer and Sickle series. Throughout the late 70s and 80s, a retrospective exhibition is held, as Warhol begins work on the Reversals, Retrospectives, and Shadows series. The Myths series, Endangered Species series, and Ads series followed through the early and mid 1980s. On 22 February 1987, a "day of medical imfamy", as quoted by one biographer, Andy Warhol died following complications from gall bladder surgery. He was fifty eight.