Thomas francisco navajo biography of michael jackson

As London's National Portrait Gallery opens its Michael Jackson show, we look at Andy’s 80s TIME cover

Andy Warhol painted different people for different reasons. As our book Andy Warhol Portraits makes clear, his early 1960s pictures of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley and Natalie Wood - made when Warhol was still finding his own fame - “transcend earlier conventions of portraiture and feel closer to the presentation of Christian Icons, Olympian Gods and classical history that were the stuff of Old Master art.”

However, by the 1970s, Warhol’s portraits focussed less on earlier, unattainable Hollywood stars, and instead portrayed the socialites, industrial scions and pop stars well within the artist's social circle.

Many of these later portraits were commissioned by their subjects, or by entrepreneurial patrons, such as the American investment banker Richard Weisman, who paid for a series of sports portraits from Andy in 1977, including his now well-known picture of Muhammad Ali.

The pictures served as an important income stream for Warhol, and some disregarded the works’ artistic merit; “less a history of painting than a history of publicity” was how the New York Times’ Hilton K

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