Andy Warhol (20 page)

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I NEVER MET ANDY
Warhol,
but I interviewed people who worked with him, fought with him, painted for him, performed for him, partied with him, photographed him, fed him, wrote for him, shopped with him, posed for him, lighted him, designed for him, transcribed him, flew with him, slept with him, impersonated him, protected him, observed him, analyzed him, and sacrificed for him. The experience of interviewing his friends illuminated mysteries of Warhol's temperament. Even when I didn't incorporate their words, their points of view informed my thinking, and I am profoundly grateful to each of them: Mary Boone, Randy Bourscheidt, Stephen Bruce, John Cheim, Bob Colacello, Ronnie Cutrone, Ronald Feldman, Vincent Fremont, Vito Giallo, John Giorno, Nathan Gluck, Sam Green, Pat Hackett, Pat Hearn, Madalen Warhola Hoover, Benjamin Liu, Gerard Malanga, Christopher Makos, Taylor Mead, Allen Midgette, Sylvia Miles, Paul Morrissey, Billy Name, Robert Pincus-Witten, Stuart Pivar, Robert Rosenblum, Stephen Shore, Holly Solomon, John Wallowitch.

Conversations with curators and critics helped me understand Warhol's work. Callie Angell, adjunct curator of the Andy Warhol Film Project at the Whitney Museum of American Art, elucidated unseen aspects of Warhol's cinema. The Andy Warhol Museum was an essential resource: I spent days at the archive, looking through time capsules and files, with the help of John Smith, archivist. Thomas Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum, answered many questions and read a draft of this book. At the museum, Geralyn Huxley and Greg Pierce showed me films, and Margery Smith explained paintings and drawings. At the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Sally King-Nero gave guidance and advice. The staff at the Museum of Modern Art Film Study Program—Charles Silver, Ron Magliosi, and John Harris—permitted me to spend hour after hour watching Warhol films. Nicholas Baume at the Wadsworth Atheneum invited me to speak at a symposium, and we traded reflections on Warhol. Peter Halley provided many leads. Reva Wolf gave me ideas and facts. Steven Watson generously supported my project with insight and information. Years of conversations with Bruce Hainley are intrinsic to this book's fabric; he began writing about Warhol before I did, and his bold work is always my model.

While researching this book, I had the good fortune of teaching a seminar on Warhol at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I learned much from my students, and from the essays they wrote: I want to acknowledge the work of Melissa Anderson on Candy Darling, Paul Battiato on Julia Warhola, Jennifer Brown on
Lonesome Cowboys
, Delphine Daniels on the commissioned portraits, Jennifer Farrell on the self-portraits, Jason Frank on the photographs, Tim Heck on the Torsos and Sexparts series, Akira Hongo on Truman Capote, Christine Pichini on Brigid Berlin, and Michael Angelo Tata on Donyale Luna and Dorothy Dean. I also benefited from reading Neil Printz's Ph.D. dissertation, “
Other Voices, Other Rooms
”:
Between Andy Warhol and Truman Capote.

The process of writing, revising, and publishing this book was warmly facilitated by my splendid trio of editors, James Atlas, Jesse Cohen, and Carolyn Carlson, and by my literary agent, Faith Hamlin.

Andy Warhol's books are a fundamental resource for the biographer and critic. Especially useful are
The Andy Warhol Diaries
(1989), edited by Pat Hackett;
POPism: The Warhol '60s
(1980), cowritten by Hackett;
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)
(1975);
Andy Warhol's Exposures
(1979); and
a: a novel
(1968). Of interest, too, are
Andy Warhol's Index (Book)
(1967),
America
(1985), and
Andy Warhol's Party Book
(1988), the latter cowritten by Hackett. Several of the 1950s presentation books have been issued in facsimile editions, including
Wild Raspberries
(1959), with Suzy Frankfurt;
25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy
(1955), with Charles Lisanby; and
Holy Cats by Andy Warhols' mother
(1957).

There are two major biographies of Warhol, on which I have necessarily relied for facts. Both are delightful and informative, and I recommend them: Victor Bockris's
Warhol
(1989; the British edition, reprinted by Da Capo in 1997, is preferable), and David Bourdon's
Warhol
(1989). A third biography, Fred Lawrence Guiles's
Loner at the Ball: The Life of Andy Warhol
(1989), contains fascinating details. Paul Alexander provides a full account of Warhol's death in
Death and Disaster: The Rise of the Warhol Empire and the Race for Andy's Millions
(1994). Margia Kramer, in
Andy Warhol et al: The FBI File on Andy Warhol
(1988), offers a quirky, disturbing addendum.

Some of the most exciting information about Warhol occurs in his own interviews, uncollected, scattered across magazines and newspapers. More easily found are the interviews given by his associates. Crucial documentary resources are Patrick S. Smith's interviews with Warhol's colleagues, collected in Smith's two books,
Andy Warhol's Art and Films
(1986) and
Warhol: Conversations about the Artist
(1988). Revealing interviews with Warhol 1960s cohorts appear in John Wilcock's
The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol
(1971), and in
Andy Warhol: Transcript of David Bailey's ATV Documentary
(1972). Another fascinating compilation of interviews with Warhol's friends is John O'Connor and Benjamin Liu's
Unseen Warhol
(1996). Though the focus of Jean Stein's (and George Plimpton's)
Edie: American Girl
(1982) is the life of Edie Sedgwick, the book includes many valuable interviews about Warhol's practice and personality.

Warhol's Silver Factory was documented by photographers, whose works have been collected in book form. Billy Name's legendary images appear in
Andy Warhol's Factory Photos
(1996) and
All Tomorrows Parties: Billy Name's Photographs of Andy Warhol's Factory
(1997). Stephen Shore's definitive images are gathered in
The Velvet Years: Warhol's Factory, 1965–67
(1997), with incisive text by Lynne Tillman, as well as interviews with Factory regulars. A rare book, worth looking for, is the catalog for the 1968 Warhol retrospective at Stockholm's Moderna Museet,
Andy Warhol;
it includes photos by Shore and Name. Nat Finkelstein has collected his photos in
Andy Warhol: The Factory Years 1964–1967
(1989). Christopher Makos provides candid text and photos in
Warhol: A Personal Photographic Memoir
(1988).

Firsthand accounts of life with Warhol abound. The best is Bob Colacello's
Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up
(1990). Mary Woronov's
Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory
(1995) is evocative and concise. John Giorno includes an intimate essay, “Andy Warhol's Movie ‘Sleep,'” in his collection,
You've Got to Burn to Shine: New and Selected Writings
(1994). Ultra Violet's
Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol
(1988) and Holly Woodlawn's (with Jeff Copeland)
A Low Life in High Heels: The Holly Woodlawn Story
(1991) are entertaining. Viva's roman à clef,
Superstar
(1970), is good smutty fun. Michael Ferguson's
Little Joe: Superstar
—
The Films of Joe Dallesandro
(1998) gives all the facts; and I adore Candy Darling's diaries, a selection of which are published in
My Face for the World to See
(1997). A sympathetic guide to the artwork of Warhol's associates is Debra Miller's
Out of the Shadow: Artists of the Warhol Circle, Then and Now
(1996).

There are many critical studies on Warhol. Good introductions to the subject are Carter Ratcliff's
Warhol
(1983), and the compendium of reviews and essays in
The Critical Response to Andy Warhol
, edited by Alan R. Pratt (1997). A classic account of Warhol's cinema is Stephen Koch's
Stargazer: The Life, World & Films of Andy Warhol
(1973; revised edition, 1991); though not always accurate, it is beautifully written—a serious, lasting contribution to the study of film. A fine early monograph is John Coplans's
Andy Warhol
(1970). A valuable monograph, Rainer Crone's
Andy Warhol: The Early Work 1942–1962
(1987) includes astonishing reproductions (among them
A Gold Book
and
In the Bottom of My Garden).
Jesse Kornbluth's
Pre-Pop Warhol
(1988) is sharply informative. Sophisticated analyses are collected in three anthologies:
Who Is Andy Warhol?
(1997), edited by Colin McCabe with Mark Francis and Peter Wollen;
The Work of Andy Warhol
(1989), edited by Gary Garrels; and
Andy Warhol Film Factory
(1989), edited by Michael O'Pray. (The last includes Gretchen Berg's 1967 interview with Warhol, and seminal essays by Jonas Mekas, Ronald Tavel, Parker Tyler, and Gregory Battcock.) Three recent books offer new approaches to Warhol's work:
Pop Out: Queer Warhol
(1996), edited by Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flatley, and José Esteban Muñoz; Jane Daggett Dillenberger's
The Religious Art of Andy Warhol
(1998); and Reva Wolf's intrepid analysis of Warhol's poetic affiliations,
Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s
(1997), an epitome of scrupulous scholarship. An early, nuanced appreciation is Peter Gidal's
Andy Warhol Films and Paintings: The Factory Years
(1971). Poet John Yau's
In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol
(1993) pursues an idiosyncratic interrogation. Influential analyses of Warhol's art occur in Arthur C. Danto's
Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective
(1992) and Hal Foster's
The Return of the Real
(1996). (Foster discusses Warhol's “traumatic realism.”) Two accounts of Warhol's gay or queer iconography are Juan Suárez's
Bike Boys, Drag Queens, and Superstars: Avant-Garde, Mass Culture, and Gay Identities in the 1960s Underground Cinema
(1996) and Richard Meyer's essay, “Warhol's Clones,” in the
Yale Journal of Criticism
(7, vol. 1 [Spring 1994]).

There are dozens and dozens of exhibition catalogs. Some I have depended on:
The Warhol Look: Glamour Style Fashion
(The Andy Warhol Museum), edited by Mark Francis and Margery King, with essays by Hilton Als, Richard Martin, Bruce Hainley, and others;
Andy Warhol: Portraits of the Seventies and Eighties
(1993), with essays by Henry Geldzahler and Robert Rosenblum, and a recollection by Vincent Fremont;
The Andy Warhol Museum
catalog (1994), including a CD of Warhol's voice, and a chronology by Margery King; the Museum of Modern Art's catalog, edited by Kynaston McShine,
Andy Warhol: A Retrospective
(1989);
Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962–1987
(1997, 3rd ed.), edited by Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann, revised and expanded by Feldman and Claudia Defendi;
The Films of Andy Warhol (Part II)
(1994), from the Andy Warhol Film Project, with text by Callie Angell;
Something Secret: Portraiture in Warhol's Films
(1994), from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia, with an essay by Angell. Two sumptuous new catalogs are
Andy Warhol Photography
(1999), produced by the Warhol Museum and the Kunsthalle in Hamburg; and
Nadar Warhol: Paris New York
(1999), by the Getty Museum, with an essay by Judith Keller. A historically significant catalog is
Raid the Icebox I (with Andy Warhol): An Exhibition Selected from the Storage Vaults of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
(1969), with an essay by David Bourdon. An assortment of other recent catalogs whose images and essays I have found illuminating:
Andy Warhol Nudes
(1995), edited by John Cheim, with an essay by Linda Nochlin;
About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits
(1999), from the Wadsworth Atheneum, with essays by Nicholas Baume, Douglas Crimp, and Richard Meyer;
The Films of Andy Warhol: An Introduction
(1988), from the Whitney Museum;
Andy Warhol's Video and Television
(1991), from the Whitney;
Andy Warhol Camouflage
(1999), from Larry Gagosian Gallery, with essays by Brenda Richardson and Bob Colacello;
“Success is a job in New York 
. . . 
”: The Early Art and Business of Andy Warhol
(1989), from the Grey Art Gallery and the Carnegie Museum of Art, edited by Donna M. DWeSalvo, with texts by Trevor Fairbrother, Ellen Lupton, and J. Abbott Miller;
Andy Warhol: Philip's Skull
(1999), from Gagosian, with an essay by Robert Rosenblum;
Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters
(1989), from the Menil Collection, with an essay by Neil Printz;
Andy Warhol: Oxidation Paintings/Piss Paintings
(1998), from Galerie Daniel Blau in Munich;
Warhol: Shadows
(1987), from the Menil Collection;
Andy Warhol Crosses
(1999), from the Diözesanmuseum, Cologne, with essays by Rosenblum and Joachim M. Plotzek;
Andy Warhol Photographs
(1986), from Robert Miller Gallery, edited by John Cheim, with an essay by Stephen Koch;
Eggs by Andy Warhol
(1997), from the Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, with texts by Rosenblum and Vincent Fremont. This list could be expanded, as could any list regarding Andy Warhol.

About the Author

Wayne Koestenbaum has published over a dozen books on such subjects as hotels, Harpo Marx, humiliation, Jackie Onassis, and opera. His latest book of prose is
My 1980s & Other Essays
(2013); his latest book of poetry is
Blue Stranger with Mosaic Background
(2012). Koestenbaum's first solo exhibition of paintings took place at White Columns gallery in New York during the fall of 2012. He is a distinguished professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University­ of New York.