s the factual authenticates are not known, however his parents emigrated to the States from Czechoslovakia in 1909, his father came first to avoid national service and his mother nine years later. His father who worked as a coal minor in West Virginia didn’t play a big role in brining up Warhol, as he was away form home allot. After his death Andrew his mother and his brothers had a very poor existence, during school holidays Andrew sold fruit and helped as a window dresser. He had three nervous breakdowns while at school one at eight, nine and ten years old. He was first introduced to consumer advertising through a summer job in a department store, where he had to look for ‘ideas’ in fashion magazines. He continued his education at the Carnegie Institute in Pennsylvania graduating with a BA in Fine Art. Warhol moved to New York in 1948-49 where he started work as a graphic designer, creating adverts for fashion magazines such as Glamour, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Andy Warhol shot to fame and soon became highly respected as a commercial artist. ”Tina Fredrick, then art director of Glamour” says “She was thrilled by Andy’s drawings but could not find a commercial use for them. She told him his drawings were good, but Glamour could only use drawings of shoes at the moment. The next day Warhol came back with 50 drawings of shoes” footwear being an important part of his advertising career until the mid 1960s.In 1949 Harvey J Earl of General Motors pioneered ‘Planned Obsolescence’. He realised that by adding fashionable products when new trends come in older products would be discarded in favour of the latest fashion.This realisation changed consumerism forever and was the start of a consumer culture, which was to spread rapidly. In the 50s it was for the most part an American phenomenon due to the fact that they had the money and manufacturing productivity to make it possibl...
