Andy Warhol, the emperor of pop art, is famous for being so famous. She is so famous that the reason she became famous is because she had a strong desire to become famous from her childhood. Perhaps the easiest(?) way to become famous is to follow a famous person. Most people follow a famous character for a while and then give up, but Warhol followed a famous character for his entire life and eventually elevated it to the level of art.
◇Lee Jeong-gyu, executive in charge of management innovation at Synapsoft (left) and Liveang CEO Heo Doo-young.
As a child, Warhol was often sick with a nasty illness. Suffering from a very rare form of chorea, he was unable to go to school for several months and was lying in bed for long periods of time. As a result, he cut out cartoons such as Popeye, Mickey Mouse, Superman, and Dick Tracy that his mother gave him, and pictures of pin-up girls from fashion magazine pictorials that he had secretly obtained, and pasted them on the wall to express his imagination. I used to spread my wings. The characters that decorated his walls as a child were later ‘reproduced’ on silkscreen and became pop art.
As a teenager, he and his two older brothers would squat next to a theater in Pittsburgh and watch the audience pass by beneath signs and posters featuring Hollywood stars. His desire to pursue fame led him to New York.
Whenever I had time, I would sit in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel and watch Hollywood stars passing by. These days, people in their 20s still make scrapbooks with photos of stars, get autographs from stars, and buy merchandise.
In 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead. Shocked, Warhol found a way to permanently honor his idol. This is the ‘Marilyn Diptych’, a silkscreen arrangement of 25 photos on each side in color and black and white. Does it show the glamorous fame and fleeting life of Marilyn Monroe? Too much yellow peeked out from the outline of her head, too much red from her lips.
Andy Warhol’s work ‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’. [사진=뉴시스]
Famous people tend to want their images printed and distributed more widely. Celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and Ingrid Bergman, as well as politicians such as John Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara, were reproduced in his silkscreens and sold for astronomical prices. Warhol became increasingly famous. This is so-called star marketing.
A space was needed to bring together famous people. Warhol set up a workshop called ‘The Factory’ in New York. It is a factory to mass-produce his cutting-edge products and mingle with lively bohemians. At that time, tough and energetic artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Truman Capote, and Eddie Sedgwick flocked to the area. Warhol lavishly mingled with them, often getting into the spotlight on sensitive topics such as homosexuality and drugs.
He admired celebrities in his teens, chased after celebrities in his 20s, and invited celebrities to his factory in his 30s. From his 40s on, he started making celebrities come to him. In 1969, Warhol founded the magazine ‘Interview’, which covered the current status of celebrities, and when he entered his 50s, he hosted a program under his name called ‘Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes’ on music broadcaster MTV. It’s like extending the magazine ‘interview’ experience into a TV program.
If you want to become famous, the best strategy would be to have famous people find you. Using TV, which was emerging as the most powerful medium, Warhol hosted a talk show in which he invited celebrities who the public was curious about, such as stars, artists, politicians, and wealthy people, to have conversations. As celebrities competed to appear on “15 Minutes of Andy Warhol,” Warhol became famous for being too famous.
◇ Jeong-gyu Lee, an executive in charge of management innovation at Synapsoft, served as a middle manager, executive, CEO, research director, secretary general, and chief supervisor at IBM, a security company, a tech startup, an H Group affiliate, a non-profit foundation, and a supervisory corporation. He taught venture entrepreneurship at KAIST Graduate School of Technology and Management, and is an adjunct professor at Kookmin University, lecturing on process/project/IT consulting. He also displays intellectual assets on his pro bono homepage.
◇Heo Doo-young, CEO of Libang, worked as a reporter and producer at Electronic Newspaper, Seoul Economic Daily, Softbank Media, CNET, Donga Science, etc., and has observed the amazing process of turning tech into ‘lots of money’ for over 30 years. The downside is that he pretends to know everything by using his experience of being a ‘gakdugi’ in all kinds of screenings related to cutting-edge technology and startups. He likes businesses that transform tech into content and spread it through the media.
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