Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film is a four-hour 2006 documentary by Ric Burns about pop artist Andy Warhol.
The film is Burns' cinematic argument that Warhol was the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th Century. (Picasso is credited with having that honor in the first half of the 20th Century.)
Laurie Anderson narrates the movie.
In one segment, Burns compares Warhol's portraits of such celebrities as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor with the icons of saints that Warhol saw in his boyhood Byzantine Catholic parish, where he spent many hours as a child.
Burns follows Warhol through his meteoric rise in New York's commercial art world during the 1950s. Burns cites 1962, the year Warhol first exhibited his soup can paintings in Los Angeles, as the turning point in Warhol's career.
Burns also describes in detail Valerie Solanas' near-fatal shooting of Warhol in 1968.
Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film debuted in early September 2006 with a two-week theatrical run in New York City at Film Forum that charged no admission. The movie was televised in the United States over two nights, September 20–21, 2006, on PBS as part of its American Masters series.
Famous quotes containing the words andy, documentary and/or film:
“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”
—Andy Warhol (c. 1928–1987)
“If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you’ve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you’re dumb and blind.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1948)
“To read a newspaper for the first time is like coming into a film that has been on for an hour. Newspapers are like serials. To understand them you have to take knowledge to them; the knowledge that serves best is the knowledge provided by the newspaper itself.”
—V.S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad)