There are several pieces from Andy Warhol’s “Gems” series in Swarovski Kristallwelten (Swarovski Crystal Worlds). Part of the artistic creation of the famous Pop Art artist was shaped through serial reproduction. Warhol was fascinated by the idea of copying and observing its consistent progression; he first drew pictures by hand and then reproduced them. He also applied this technique in his “Gems” series, which was inspired by precious gemstones. Like the centuplicated portraits of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, they are part of Warhol’s “lconography of Everyday Life.” In the work shown here, the artist used black diamond dust to refine his original work.
Andy Warhol was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; he was a film producer, publisher, and music producer, but first and foremost, he was the founder and the most important icon of American Pop Art. After his apprenticeship as a window dresser, he studied pictorial design, art history, sociology, and psychology. In 1962, Andy Warhol established his “Factory” studio, where his famous contemporaries worked on the “production” of art. His first serial presentations were “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and “Coca Cola Bottles”. Using the technology of photo screen printing, which had previously not been considered as artistic, Warhol produced images of commercial packaging and everday consumer goods. These works, however, are only ostensibly banal. In reality, Warhol was trying to portray the signs of decay in consumer society and the mass culture of his time. Andy Warhol died in 1987 in New York.
