ANDY WARHOL-FROM A TO B AND BACK AGAIN.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: EXHIBIT - Brief article

"A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good," observed Andy Warhol in 1975. "What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest."

That quote suggests at least some of the reasons why Warhol, who died in 1987, has remained the most influential visual artist of postwar America. More than most, he understood the leveling promise of the place. Born to immigrant, impoverished parents outside of Pittsburgh in 1928, he was a sickly gay kid who fell in love with the ways mass production made things affordable and mass entertainment created an endless succession of identities and images people could try on, tweak, and discard.

"An artist ought to be able to change his...