Product Description

Painter, filmmaker, photographer, philosopher, all-round celebrity, Andy Warhol is an outstanding cultural icon. He revolutionised art by bringing to it images from popular culture - such as the Campbell's soup can and Marilyn Monroe's face - while his studio, the Factory, where his free-spirited cast of 'superstars' mingled with the rich and famous, became the place of origin for every groundswell shaping American culture. In many ways he can be seen as the precursor to today's 'celebrity artists' such as Tracey Emin and Damian Hurst. But what of the man behind the white wig and dark glasses?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #417050 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Wayne Koestenbaum is a cultural critic and academic based in New York.

Customer Reviews

A well written,factual biography of a 20th century enigma
I found this biography to be well written and well researched.One gripe I did have with the book,was that it concentrated to a large extent on his creative life,perhaps not unreasonably considering the artist's inarticulate nature and secrecy.
He kept his own life and emotions away from his public,and his associates(His "superstars")and this mystique still persists.
However,saying that,it is apparent from reading this book that Andy was not the passive automaton he often presented himself as.There is still a fair amount of material in the book,that shows a man in many ways ill at ease with himself.But it also reveals his intelligence and wit,and fundamental humanity,under that prematurely grey wig.
Good analyses of his films,art work and books are also presented,though once or twice in reading,I found myself skipping certain over- intricate parts.
Also relatively well recorded are the portraits of his "employees"and hangers on at the factory,and this book is not full of the usual claims that he was responsible for many of his superstars extreme behaviour patterns,and untimely deaths.At the same time it is not an unconfessed apology for his immersion in the bizarre world he found some identity in,and does not make him out to have discouraged such behaviours.In fact,considering the time and location,they do not seem so strange.
In summary,this book gives a fine portrait of one of the 20th centuries most influential movers and shakers;as artist,director,writer and over all,his often hidden human nature.

"Wayne Koestenbaum's interpretation of Warhol's Art"
I had bought this book on the understanding that it was a biography, rather than the subjective critique of an arbitrary selection of Warhol's art. Koestenbaum's account of "Andy Warhol" (the title of the book), is less about Andy Warhol, than seemingly the author's own personal interpretation of his art.

Someone once compared the futility of talking about music to "dancing about art". And so seems the futility of a Professor of English in discussing Warhol's art. The text is overly embellished, requiring this to be read in conjunction with dictionary on lap. The content is an erratic, almost stream-of-thought discussion of some of Warhol's art, completely ignoring other aspects.

Despite all this, if one is able to tolerate the flowery subjectivity, there are some interesting insights into Warhol's personality and how this was reflected in his society and his art.

A less misleading title for this book would have been "Wayne Koestenbaum's interpretation of Warhol's Art". Even with such an understanding, for a non-initiate into modern art this book is a rather tiresome opportunity for self-indulgent verbosity, on the author's part.

Good on Warhol's films, but written in a self-consciously smart style
Reviewers on the US site have already commented on Koestenbaum's portentous prose and it really is grating how he puffs it up with pseudo-intellectual expressions ("I want to proselytize" (!), "I reserve the right on prose's death row to suggest an axiom"; a naked bottom is even referred to as a "cleft moon"). It is possible that the critic was camping up his prose, considering it fitting for discussion of Warhol's queer art, but unfortunately it just comes across as quite narcissistic and affected.

This volume - commissioned as part of the Penguin Lives series - is billed as an art-sensitive biography of Warhol. However, Koestenbaum wilfully and openly ignores major parts of Warhol's life and art - take, for example, the Velvet Underground: "Their music has many admirers, but it may be the aspect of Warhol's world with which I have least sympathy, and so I will beg off any attempt at analysis". What follows, then, is a rather eclectic look at Warhol's output; few paintings are analysed, instead Koestenbaum rather solipsistically discusses what interests him most: Warhol's filmmaking. This, of course, can be a good thing: the films are underdiscussed in Warhol criticism. And Koestenbaum does provide enlightening analysis: writing of the short film Vinyl (1965), he argues that it reflects Warhol's belief that torture is inherent in human relationships, concluding that "his work is not a theory of fame but a theory of relationships". The critic is also good on how the artist sought to expose and overturn the "macho" society of such Abstract Expressionists as Jackson Pollock: "Warhol often depicted braggard masculinity as emptiness".

It is a very sympathetic account (Warhol's films are more often than not ridiculed as naive and artless rather than being subjected to serious analysis). Koestenbaum draws parallels to other important figures of the 20th century, e.g. "Freud might have recognized in Warhol a colleague, a systematic explorer of wish and drive". He also notes that Bobby Kennedy was shot dead a day after Andy was severely wounded, which "cemented Warhol's position as a representative 1960s figure". Koestenbaum, however, comes dangerously close to sanctifying the artist by comparing him to Christ (he argues that both experienced a "miraculous resurrection from the dead" and, like Christ, Andy became more iconic as his flesh became more ravaged with wounds and scars). But Koestenbaum rescues his commentary from sliding permanently into the sycophantic: we should remember, he counsels, that Warhol "didn't entirely write [his books], and that he was a liar", that he sought to belittle boyfriend Jed Johnson by "withholding compliments to lower the younger man's self-esteem" and that he introduced Ingrid Superstar into the Factory "to taunt" the emotionally vulnerable Edie Sedgwick, which he hoped would make for more exciting films.

There are some interesting biographical titbits, too: his mother Julia, in a foreshadowing of Warhol's confluence of commerce and art, used to scissor tin cans into floral shapes and sell them door to door for 25 cents to make money. Her colon cancer (after which she had to wear a colostomy bag) is credited with inspiring Warhol to become a Pop artist: "Like Julia, Andy wore his inside on the outside...Her surgery gave him the idea for Pop". She is also regarded, however, as the root cause of the shame Warhol felt about his own appearance, hidden behind silver wigs, dark glasses and collagen treatments (an old friend of Warhol's recalls that "she made him feel that he was the ugliest creature that God put on this earth").

A quick, interesting read if you can overlook the overblown prose!