Screen Printing In Andy Warhol's Moonwalk

Andy Warhol's Moonwalk exemplifies how pop art took inspiration from cultural trends and, in this case, from the events of the cold war and the space race. The image envisions a single electrifying moment, when man took his first step on the moon, using a technique known as screen printing to capture the dynamic composition of the image. Andy Warhol, a connoisseur of pop art and expressionism, screen painted his Moonwalk only months before his death in the year 1987. It is currently located in the Huntsville Museum of Art, a befitting location as the Huntsville Museum of Art is located near the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The central theme of the painting depicts astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing next to the American flag as capered by Neil Armstrong. Moonwalk ties into the era of pop art that started in the United States in the late 1950's.
Screen printing, which really is a form of stenciling, has been used by early civilizations; like the cave dwellers who used their hands as a negatives to block out pigments blown at the cave surface through a reed or hollow bone. Also, the Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all used stencils in some way to repeat designs of a decorative nature. …show more content…
His use of screen printing provides a great insight into the overall theme of the painting, and it allows the viewer to look at the image from a completely different perspective. Warhol embraced pop art and exposed imagery from daily life to the public in a unique artistic form. Furthermore, Moonwalk is a perfect example of this ideology, his use of screen printing allowed him to experiment with colors and print the same image with different colour compositions. Warhol's other pop art images depict several other iconic American objects and images, like Campbell’s soup cans or Coca-Cola bottles. Moonwalk is one of the great pop art era screen prints, capturing one of mankind's greatest