Sunset

Andy Warhol Sunset is a range of artworks created by artist Andy Warhol.

The sunset in Sunset was filmed in California (TM). While the sun sets (and then seemingly rises), we hear Nico’s deep voice off screen reciting a poem. At a couple of points in the film a plane appears flying through the sunset. The whole effect is both beautiful and mesmerizing and is reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s earlier works such as Empire where a static camera captured a self-contained event.

Warhol used the money left over from the de Menil commission to film Lonesome Cowboys. He also did a series of sunset screenprints in 1972.

When Andy Warhol first burst onto the artistic stage in the 1960s’, he did so by incorporating images that were firmly embedded in the American psyche. His bright and colorful paintings and serigraphs presented images that were commonplace — a soup can or coke bottle — but were transformed by his technique into artistic icons of popular culture. Warhol was most interested in image and not reality, although one could say that by casting these mass produced commercial images in his own unique style, Warhol was making a comment on the reality of living in a world that was dominated by images from the advertising and entertainment industries. Warhol’s prints are in essence images of images. They are at least once removed, and often several times removed, from reality. His famous prints of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, not to mention countless other celebrities, are based on photographs. As in the case with Marilyn Monroe, many of those photographs are of his subjects posing as a character, not as themselves, a subtle reminder that once someone achieves a certain celebrity status, they become further and further removed from their real selves. How many layers must one remove to finally see the real person depicted in a Warhol print?