Andy Warhol—
From A to B and 
Back Again

Warhol continued to use in his fine art some of the reproductive techniques and tools he had employed in his commercial work and painting of the 1950s: the blotted line, rubber stamps, and stencils, as well as an overhead projector and photostat machine. Using repetition, subtle surface variations, and different color combinations, he transformed quotidian subject matter such as dollar bills, self-improvement ads, instructional diagrams, soup cans, Coke bottles, and supermarket packaging into optically charged, painterly fields. Unlike in screenprinting's commercial application, in which the silkscreen creates exact duplicates, Warhol varied the pressure on the silkscreen while printing in order to produce a varied effect. As he reached beyond Abstract Expressionism’s quest to transcend ordinary life through the spiritual and mythic, Warhol found inspiration and even heroism in the everyday. He had an exceptional grasp of the parallels between contemporary painting and sculpture and the visual strategies of advertising, along with an intuitive understanding of what would read as serious art, even as he upended its hierarchies.