Pop Art Portraits: 12 Most Famous Celebrity Paintings by Andy Warhol

By the beginning of the 1960s, Andy Warhol had become a very successful commercial illustrator. His detailed and elegant drawings for I. Miller shoes were particularly popular. They consisted mainly of “blotted ink” drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in much of his early art. Although many artists of this period worked in commercial art, most did so discreetly. Warhol was so successful, however, that his profile as an illustrator seemed to undermine his efforts to be taken seriously as an artist.

He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the handmade from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.


1. Marilyn Monroe

2. The American Indian (Russell Means)

3. Queen Elizabeth II

4. Ingrid Bergman

5. Beethoven

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Marilyn Monroe on LIFE Magazine Covers, From 1952-1962

In the 1950s and early '60s, Marilyn Monroe appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine half a dozen times. Seen all these years later, those covers still say 'superstar.'

LIFE Magazine, April 7, 1952. Marilyn Monroe's debut on the magazine's cover, photographed by Philippe Halsman.

LIFE Magazine, May 25, 1953. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, photographed by Ed Clark.

LIFE Magazine, April 20, 1959. Marilyn Monroe photographed by Richard Avedon.

LIFE Magazine, November 9, 1959. Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Philippe Halsman.

LIFE Magazine, August 15, 1960. Marilyn Monroe, photographed by John Bryson.

LIFE Magazine, August 15, 1960. Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Lawrence Schiller.

LIFE Magazine, August 17, 1962. Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Lawrence Schiller.

Vintage Photos of School Girls in Uniform Miniskirt

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Pictures of Daily Life in Moscow in 1984-88

These photographs were taken by different foreign tourists who traveled to Moscow in 1984-88. This is how they saw the Russian capital and its people.

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20 Vintage Photographs Capture the Boom of Skateboarding New York City in the 1960s

Photojournalist Bill Eppridge captures skateboarding's humble beginnings in the urban setting of New York City. While the concept of the sport and makeshift models of the skateboard were introduced sometime in the 1940s or '50s, it was in the mid-1960s that skateboarding truly flourished and Eppridge was there to catch it in all its glory for a lifestyle spread in LIFE Magazine.

In his series titled Skateboarding in New York City, Eppridge exhibits the joy and excitement of zooming down a city street and playfully riding past pedestrians on a thin, wheeled board, as clearly evidenced through the skateboarders' beaming faces. The exhilarating rush that each child, teen, and adult is feeling as they sweep through the city translates through each photo, giving us all a sense of that cool and carefree fun from simpler times. Skateboarding was not yet an athletic career path or the subject of video gaming franchises. It was clearly just a fun thing to do with your friends in the streets of New York City.

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Everyday Life in the UK Through Kurt Hutton’s Camera Lens

Kurt Hutton, born Kurt Hübschmann (1893-1960), was a German-born photographer who pioneered photojournalism in England and was one of the most influential photographer’s in twentieth century Britain.

Hutton begun his career with the Dephot agency in Germany, before he moved to England in 1934 where he worked for Weekly Illustrated. Hutton was one of the founders of the most famous British pictorial weekly news magazine of the twentieth century, Picture Post. His early features for Picture Post over 1938-39 were a pioneering form of photographic story-telling, which would deeply impact post-war Picture Post photographers such as Bert Hardy, Thurston Hopkins and Grace Robertson.

He spent the last decade of his life living in Aldeburgh where he photographed for Benjamin Britten.

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20 Astonishing Then and Now Photos Blend Scenes From the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Present Day

It’s hard to imagine what the destruction of San Francisco via earthquake would look like today in modern San Francisco. But a photo project completed a few years ago by Shawn Clover does just that, blending images of the fires that brought down the city with normal present-day life.

The technique is a clever way to visualize the past and present as one, unlike most other projects with the same aim. As he says on his website, “I’ve always been frustrated by typical ‘then and now’ photos because the photographer always seems to do a sloppy job aligning his ‘then’ photos with the ‘now’ photos.”

Ultimately, it was a great move, because the final effect is eerie, and reminds us that the city is not necessarily so far off from yet another looming natural disaster.

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