How to Teach Andy Warhol: A Step-by-Step Lesson Plan (Grades 9–12)

Students already recognize Warhol’s soup cans and repeated celebrity faces, which makes him a gift for the art room: the images pull them in before you say a word. The challenge is moving past “I’ve seen that” to a real understanding of seriality, mass production, and what it means to call a copy art. This single-period lesson plan takes a Grades 9–12 class from recognition to independent making, and it leans on the Andy Warhol – Pop Art and Seriality resource set for images, prompts, and studio structure.

Objectives and standards

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to define Pop Art and seriality, explain how Warhol used repetition and mechanical processes to comment on consumer culture, and produce a small serial image of their own. These outcomes support National Core Arts Standards in creating, responding, and connecting—students make work, analyze an artist’s choices, and relate art to the world they live in. Write the target on the board: “I can explain why Warhol repeated images, and I can make a series that says something.”

Warm-up (5 minutes)

Project a grid of the same photograph repeated in different colors alongside a single, unique painting. Ask: “Which one feels more valuable, and why?” Give students two minutes to jot a response, then take three answers. Do not settle it—let the disagreement sit, because that tension between the handmade original and the reproduced multiple is the heart of the lesson.

I-do, we-do, you-do (25 minutes)

Model close looking first. In the I-do (7 minutes), think aloud in front of one Warhol work—name what you notice, then interpret it.

• Subject: everyday products and famous faces, things everyone already knows.
• Process: screen printing and photographic transfer, methods borrowed from advertising and factories.
• Repetition: the same image tiled again and again, sometimes with color shifts or deliberate flaws.
• Meaning: a question about fame, money, and whether endless copies drain an image of feeling.

In the we-do (8 minutes), analyze a second work together using a see-think-wonder chart, and push students to link each observation to one of Warhol’s ideas. Then in the you-do (10 minutes), students draft a simple serial image: a single object drawn four times in a grid, changing one variable—color, line weight, or background—each time. Circulate with one guiding question: “What does repeating this object make a viewer feel?” For students who want to contrast Warhol’s stance with an artist who saw art as social action, point them toward the Joseph Beuys – The Extended Concept of Art and Action unit.

Guided practice: color and feeling

Warhol’s color choices are not decoration—they change the emotional temperature of an image. Have partners test this directly: give them one line drawing and ask them to fill it two ways, first with harmonious colors, then with jarring, clashing ones, and describe how the mood shifts. This is a natural moment to connect back to how earlier modern artists treated color as a carrier of feeling, which the Wassily Kandinsky – The Path to Abstraction materials explore in depth. Ask groups to name the rule they discovered: color is a tool, not an afterthought.

Plenary and exit check (10 minutes)

Bring the class back to the warm-up image. Ask: “After making your own series, has your answer changed—is the unique original really worth more?” Take a few responses, listening for students who now talk about intention and meaning rather than just craft. Then collect a short exit ticket:

1. Define seriality in one sentence.
2. Name one process Warhol borrowed from advertising or industry.
3. Explain what you wanted a viewer to feel when they saw your repeated image.

Read the tickets before the next studio day. If students describe repetition only as “copying” with no purpose, reteach with a side-by-side of two Warhol grids and ask what changes between them. If they connect repetition to a message, they are ready to develop full serial pieces and to compare Warhol with the other modern artists in your sequence.

Related reading from the Teacher Hub

• 8 Hands-On Classroom Activities for Teaching Andy Warhol
• Meaningful Homework and Independent Practice for Pablo Picasso
• Teaching Joseph Beuys: Common Student Misconceptions and How to Fix Them