Andy Warhol Looks A Scream...

[mallorys_camera]

My life is boring right now. There's accounting – and more accounting; there's inventory; there's cleaning. There's revamping the business plan and projecting the 2008 budget.

To feed my imagination, I've been watching a lot of bad movies. Most recently, The Brave One, a Jody Foster vehicle that combines plot elements from Lassie Come Home and the Bronson Death Wish trilogy. Ben found it fascinating, even compelling. I found it fascinating too but mostly from the angle of migawwd, famously Sapphic Foster doing sex scenes with a guy? and will she ever get her damn dog back? Neal Jordan is one of those directors who teeters between high camp and the profound. In this instance he lost his balance and fell towards the left.

Also I've been reading – Holy Terror, Bob Colacello's Andy Warhol bio most recently.

I don't find Warhol particularly interesting in and of himself, but there's no denying that he was the Delphic oracle of the peculiar cultural schism that is 21st century America. And so I read a lot about him, and search for clues: how did that vapid, vacant man come to leave his trademark on an entire culture?

Comments

[dinahprincedaly.livejournal.com]

he had personal courage
he was witty and liked fun and was not mean
his kindness and attention to certain creative people was like magic (and apparently also occasionally like poison)
he always was happy to give me a good quote when i needed one
he was not a snob

how is Holy Terror? anything we don't already know? what is the point of view?

[dinahprincedaly.livejournal.com]

I mean, I think its okay not to be deep... the world, particularly NYC, needs its jesters

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

If you liked Warhol personally, it's not a book you would enjoy. POV is disgruntled employee who thinks he did all the work while Andy got all the credit.

[dinahprincedaly.livejournal.com]

delegation is an art as well...

I only know him through the nightlife column I did... and later through my writer friend Tama who adored him, felt his kindness and continues to be very protective

[hotelsamurai.livejournal.com]

I work with a young woman from Slovakia. So, naturally enough, I looked up Slovakia on wikipedia so I could talk to her about it. My search for famous Slovakians yielded only three names that were familiar to me: Martina Hingis, Ivan Reitman, and Andy Warhol. Warhol was born stateside, as I am sure you already know...

I learned something interesting about him, though, that I didn't already know. He regularly attended mass at the Orthodox church, and by all outward indicators he was sincerely devout. He paid for his brother to go to seminary school, was buried in the church, etc.

Two or three things came to mind upon reading this. One, though his public persona was shallow, his religious life was private. Presumably, when the klieg lights were turned off, he grappled with the same questions of meaning that most intelligent and sensitive people face.

Also, this bit of biography reveals something of his artistic lineage: he is a direct descendant of the Eastern Orthodox iconographic tradition, in which the icon itself is believed divine.

This reading lends a new layer of meaning to his prints of celebrities. He is rendering "cheap" images with something like religious awe...

This could be a much longer conversation. I could talk about the religious impulse behind art, and the "meaning" of pop, till the cows come home. The point is, though, that he wasn't necessarily a shallow person. Don't dismiss him just because he was media savvy!

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between superficiality and numbness. Warhol in this book comes across as the latter. Why do people make themselves numb? I tend to think it's so they won't feel pain.

Of course the book is also a memoir by someone who is hyper-verbal writing about someone who isn't verbal at all but hyper-visual

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

She's mentioned in the book. He was kind to a lot of the Factory kids. Not so kind to others. As it was explained to me once -- not gonna mention names here, public forum, blablabla -- he and his entourage had this habit of picking you up, making much of you and then discarding you like trash. That's difficult for people with high expectations. (Personally I've always thought the secret to happiness is low expectations.)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Actually Warhol wasn't Slovakian. He was Ruthenian -- an ever more obscure Eastern European group. One of the more interesting parts of this book actually is a (very short) description of Ruthenian decorative art and the way Warhol's art seems to have been informed by it.

[dinahprincedaly.livejournal.com]

numbness... or did he just live vicariously, watching other people live, a watcher, a voyeur... voyeurs don't really engage, so his experience was all from outside the frame... maybe what is interesting was his ability to distinguish what should be included in the frame... who knew... he kind of landed on the pulse of the time, enabled the pulse, a pulse that seems to have more and more artistic validity as time goes by...

okay, I'm avoiding writing right now

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I can tell! :-)

Yes, he comes across as very much the voyeur in this book. Although, of course, for someone who's primarilly visual, voyeur is not the negatively freighted term it is for those of us who are primarily verbal.

Don't even

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I can tell! :-)

Yes, he comes across as very much the voyeur in this book. Although, of course, for someone who's primarilly <U>visual</U>, voyeur is not the negatively freighted term it is for those of us who are primarily verbal.

Don't even <U<think</U> about answering this comment -- <B>get to work!</b> :-)

[dinahprincedaly.livejournal.com]

I do think he was ultra uber hyper sensitive... and shy... and the clear clean seemingly simple bright soup can etc exterior was an effort toward some sanity... with humor

[usedmonsters.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed that book, though I don't recall a lot of it now. I remember Bob Coke grabbing his Rolodexes. Or is that Rolodexi? My favorite picture was of Andy in his stocking feet painting a canvas with a sponge mop, like some dutiful housewife. He's one of my favorites, more for the concepts than realization.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

He really should have changed his name to Bob Cola. That was a good call on Andy's part.

[hotelsamurai.livejournal.com]

You've commented on the religious nature of our fascination with celebrity; Britney Spears is not just having a meltdown, she's having an OLYMPIAN meltdown. &c.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Not sure I would call it a religious fascination. It's more... an archetypal fascination.

Long ago when I was a freelance writer, I wrote a piece about it:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n83/ai_15607932

Britney Spears would be Daphne fleeing from Apollo. The only way out is to turn into a tree.

[warhooligan.livejournal.com]

I havent read that one, bc I havent read enough about him that delves into factory life, but I consider warhol a pretty important person in my life. He had amazing foresight about consumer culture, celebrity, you name it, and if it seems hollow, he found a way to consider it with depth. In that way, I think he saw what was coming down the pipe and created a persona to facilitate what he wanted to make happen. Whether that was filming Blow Job, or "painting" Ten Most Wanted Men, or founding Interview, Andy knew what he was doing.

And his childhood was pretty abysmal. We all know that people act a certain way because theyve been rewarded for doing it (whatever they consider their reward) and I think he grew up being rewarded for his keen observational eye (Im sure his doting mother thought it was clever, not to mention his commercial success with bonwit teller etc before he because "avante gard") more than for being expressive. Though the man knew how to give a powerful quote.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

You oughta read this book. Really. Colacello is an untrustworthy narrator -- his envy of Warhol is the true biographical subject.

The book does delve a little into Warhol's childhood -- he had St. Vitus's Dance as a child; a really obscure, even medieval ailment. I'm not sure you're right that little Andy was rewarded for being observational. Ruthenian culture is apparently heavy on crafts, and Mrs. Warhola -- Andy's Mom -- was apparently a talented primitive artist.

I think maybe Andy was a primarily visual person in a world where most people are primarily verbal. That always necessitates a translation process of some sort. And he was devout in his own odd way, and obviously that presented obstacles in terms of his sexual preferences.

I'm reading his Diaries now. One gets the sense that he operated on two different tracks -- his "personal" life and then his social life. In his personal life, he seems to have been reclusive and secretive. And except for his daily conversations with Pat Hackett -- an amuenesis is almost the classical sense! -- there was very little permeability between those two worlds. They existed on parallel tracks.

[warhooligan.livejournal.com]

Well you have to think of the reward as not always positive. From his build, his medical history, and growing up around male role models that he probably felt little afinity for, let alone identification with, he probably learned to shut up. And when youre not talking, you spend a lot of time listening (with ears or eyes).

I want to read everything, but Im oh, 200 pages behind in assigned readings, with a paper due monday right now, so it will have to wait.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I'll be curious to hear what you think of the Colacello book if you ever have the time to read it.

[warhooligan.livejournal.com]

maybe it will be my beachy spring break reading. If I get to have a beachy spring break. It may even be in Santa Cruz, so maybe Ill stop by and tell you to your face. ;)