Untitled Essay, Research Paper

Never before have I encountered more intriguing works of art than those done

by Andy Warhol. I have been curious about his life ever since I saw his work

in Milwaukee. I saw his famous work of the Campbell’s Soup Can. By viewing

this, one can tell he is not your average artist. I’m sure his life is full

of interesting events that shaped him into who he was. As an artist myself,

I would like to get to know the background of his life. I may then be able

to appreciate his styles and understand why and how his works were created.

His life is as interesting as his artistic masterpieces.

Andrew Warhola (his original name) was born one of three sons of Czech

immigrants, somewhere in Pennsylvania on either August 6, 1928 or on September

28, 1930 (the date on his birth certificate). His father died when Andy was

at a very young age. Thus, it forced Andy into a deep depression containing

lack of self confidence. Much of his young life has been kept secret. However,

he did report being very shy and depressed because he never felt comfortable

with his homosexuality. His childhood life may have been full of the torture

that children threw at him for being the different person he was. He was

able to attend college. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in

pictorial design from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949, he went to

New York City with Philip Pearlstein, who was a fellow student that later

became a well-known realist painter. In 1960, Warhol finally began to paint

in earnest and to view art seriously as a career. He began his career with

commercial drawings of women’s shoes. In 1961, an early manifestation was

his Dick Tracy, an enlarged version of the comic strip that was placed in

the window of Lord & Taylor’s department store. He followed in his own

footsteps to keep going in the ever-so-famous “pop art” track. Warhol’s use

of images are so close to the images themselves, thanks to the photographic

silkscreen technique, which is a process of applying the same image over

and over again without changing the original. In 1963, he began turning film

into his next aesthetic. He was the recorder of the world around him. Warhol

saw this world as populated by hustlers of various sorts, motivated largely

by money and the goods it would buy. Later that next year, he started to

experiment in underground film. In the late 70’s he began to use sex and

nudity to gain attention in his films. Whether this was moral or not; it

did, however, work. The rest of his short life was spent visiting with

celebrities and keeping up with the world’s times. He tried to understand

how the rest of the world saw things, but just never got there. Sadly, Warhol

died of a heart failure on March 9, 1987, still wearing his famous blond

hair wig.

Andy’s diaries are not actual written records of his day to day accounts,

but they are audio recordings of his phone conversations to Pat Hackett every

Monday through Friday (from Wednesday, November 24, 1976 to Tuesday, February

17, 1987, just weeks before his death). Warhol originally intended these

daily records to be documentation of his minor “business” expenses. He was

just audited and felt the need to be extra careful. “In a word it was a diary.

But whatever its broader objective, its narrow one, to satisfy tax auditors,

was always on my mind” (Warhol xvi). Later on, he felt the diaries were a

great way to explain his everyday occurrences for more than a decade of his

life. This view of his life from his eyes is probably the most balanced view

ever given. He may have changed since the 60’s, but it is still the truest

representation of Andy, himself. He never expressed the key happenings of

his life; it’s as if we, the readers, already knew them. He just usually

mentions the quick everyday type things such as a cab ride to uptown New

York.

The first major influence on Andy Warhol’s life was the stepping stone of

his artistic career, his enrollment in and completion of Carnegie Institute

of Technology with a bachelor degree in pictorial design. After graduating

he moved out to New York City, where his life blossomed. He lived for a couple

of years with Philip Pearlstein, who he had met at school. Warhol, with his

education centered around design, set out to begin his career on the right

foot. He started doing drawings for advertisements in a women’s shoe catalog.

It may not have been much to brag about, but it was at least something he

could learn and gain from the experience given to him. Andy may have acquired

his use of media exploited images through his beginning attempts at

commercialism. He knew what sold to society, whether he agreed with it or

not. He continued on with simplified pop art and he made it famous. He is

the person most people think about when pop art is mentioned. Through his

advertising projects, he was conditioned to think only in glorification of

people, products, and style. One of his popular works, the silkscreen of

the Campbell’s Soup Can, is an example of this. It is an image that everyone

is familiar with, and it is so common that sometimes it is overlooked. Many

times, Andy took something simple and glorified it. This is how he made his

designing skills useful in promotion. “One would compare Warhol to the pictorial

hyper-realism of Norman Rockwell, and to the surrealism of Marcel Duchamp,

and the radicalism of Jasper Johns” (Sagan 1).

A second major influence in Andy Warhol’s life is his participation in the

underground film scene. It started in 1963, when he called himself “the recorder

of society around him” (Moritz 590). He would find people for his movies

in a club-type warehouse called Max’s Kansas City. Every night, celebrities

of art, fashion, music, and underground film-making crowds gathered in the

back corners of Max’s to try their chance at working with Warhol. In 1968,

he was nearly killed by a woman who was in one of his short films. She shot

him on the side of his chest, but fortunately he was not killed. He still

continued to make films; such famous ones are “Eat,” “Haircut,” “Sleep,”

“Kiss,” and “Empire.” He would make them boring on purpose to possibly prove

a point. Again it was glorifying something thought of as being extremely

pointless. In the late 70’s he began to use sex and nudity, featuring films

concerning sexual bondage. He may have been simply looking for a shock value

content. Many artists work off shock value, it takes only the true to admit

it and still continue with it.

The last and most important influence on Warhol was his mother, Julia Warhola.

When Andy first arrived in New York, he would share apartments with friends

and acquaintances. Eventually he could afford a place of his own. Then his

mother suddenly arrived in town and moved in with him. Her reason was to

look after him. She would constantly keep an eye out for a wife for Andy.

Little did she know he was interested in the opposite sex for marriage. Andy

appreciated his mother, and never wanted to explain how she had an impact

on him. Maybe it was the fact that she meant well, and tried her hardest

to take care of him. She lived with him on 89th Street and Lexington Avenue

until 1971. By then, suffering from senility, she required constant care

and Andy sent her back to Pittsburgh to be cared for by his two brothers,

John and Paul. After suffering a stroke, she died in her nursing home in

1972. Andy did not except the fact too kindly. He would even go as far to

say his mother was doing fine, when people would ask about her, even though

she had already passed away. Andy stayed quiet and tried to hide himself

from the rest of society. He would avoid emotional interaction as much as

he could. He did this so he could “shrink away from human touch” (Moritz

591). A man who started his life shy and uncomfortable, blossomed into an

outspoken artist, now finished his life with feelings even worse than the

beginning of his life.

After extensive research I found that Andy had much more to his life than

I had originally expected. He was involved in the classic rock band The Velvet

Underground, with famous singer Lou Reed. He actually even designed a few

of the album covers. Most people remember the self-entitled album with the

picture of a banana on it. Directly to the left of the banana read the words

“peel me.” If one would peel it, it would reveal the pink insides of a banana.

Truly a work of Andy, I must say. Another thing I found was that Andy was

not only homosexual, but he was “omnisexual.” It was rumored he had no problem

with sex with anyone or anything. Men, women, animals, you name it, it was

probably thought of. And last of all I found he was unusually kind and

appreciative to others, especially the ones who worked for him. Pat Hackett,

his editor, once said that she has never met a person who says “thank you”

as much as Andy does.

Not once have I been more informed on a person’s life. In the beginning I

thought I knew a lot about. This research on Andy Warhol definitely reinforced

my positive view of him. It may have possibly enhanced my appreciation for

him as well. I enjoyed the honesty of the entire diary. Nothing was hidden

from the reader and I felt as informed as a good friend of his would feel.

His life is an interesting one and I believe more people should try to

investigate other lives of the unusual. It expands your own viewpoints to

accept those of others.

Many critics have different viewpoints on Warhol’s autobiography. He was

still appreciated by those who understood his ideas. “But he had to have

had some sense of history, or he wouldn’t have left the diaries behind to

try to explain everything to future generations” (Plagens 1732). Some realize

that the diaries are rather boring, but seem to see the true Andy come through

in the entries. “Despite their virtuoso triviality, their naive snobbery

and their incredible length, the diaries are not without a certain charm”

(Amis 1732). Others saw the diaries as a simplistic record of events. “His

diaries are more or less just records of who went where and did what with

whom, that anybody else who’d been along could have kept” (Plagens 1732).

It’s too bad he didn’t start the diaries earlier in his life, such as the

60’s, “when it would have been more interesting to know what he did and whom

he was with, instead of waiting until 1976 to begin” (Plagens 1732). Some

even complained of the editing job done by Pat Hackett. “One problem with

the diaries is their postmodern polish, such as the casual proofreading and

editing” (Trebay 1732). The reason the editor didn’t fit up to par was the

mere fact she wanted it to sound how Andy explained the day. “…still the

book is great social history with its lip-smacking tales of loveless, sexless

marriages, its gimlet-eyed view of other people’s success, and its rampant

unclosetings” (Trebay 1732). I, myself, found the book very entertaining

and a great nonchalant look at the famous and their everyday lives. It may

have been organized better and condensed a bit, but none-the-less it was

still interesting and kept me reading.

318