Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is among the most important artists in the history of art, as he has profoundly changed our ideas about aesthetics and artistic concepts. Icon of Pop Art, experimental film director, and prolific image-maker, addressing the originality, reproduction, and distribution of art, Warhol hugely contributed to the visual language of today’s popular culture. Having lived through the optimistic 1950s as a young man, the American artist passionately and analytically embraced the commercialism and, later on, the celebrity culture, making these aspects the core of his oeuvre. New technical possibilities in a postwar American society inspired and allowed him to reinvent the artist studio (Factory), art production and, finally, the medium painting.

Throughout the 1980s Warhol produced series of silk-screened and painted portraits of celebrities and less-known people. Natalie Sparber (1984) is a characteristic portrait by the artist, presenting the head of a young woman looking seductively at the viewer. Her pink skin, blue eyes, and red lips are artificially highlighted, while her golden blond hair almost blurs with the light brown background of the painting. The image is screen-printed from a photograph to the canvas, and hand-painted on. Sparber was not a famous person, nor a public figure, but Warhol depicted her with the glamor and stardom of a celebrity who is enjoying her status of fame.

Often the unique portraits in the 1980s were commissioned by Warhol’s many customers and produced on demand. Again, Warhol challenged the idea of scarcity and rarity as value-defining qualities: one of the most expensive artists in the history of art was also one of the most prolific. In the same period, Warhol was fascinated by the new possibilities offered by the development of the medium television – he hosted two programs, Andy Warhol’s TV and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes for MTV. Despite the harsh criticism of superficiality and commerciality that he faced at that time, Warhol seems to have been ahead of his time in understanding the influence of the social media.