9/22 READING REVIEW 3: ANDY WARHOL

I’m a little embarrassed to say that, aside from the face and the name, I know very little of Andy Warhol. The images that come to mind when I think of the man stem from mainstream medias’ caricature that depict him as a gaunt, pale, weird and moody artist. The images that come to mind when I think of the man’s work can be summed up with the mention of his three most famous pieces, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse and the Campbell’s Soup cans. I remember these images specifically from studying pop art in an art history class I took many moons ago. There. That’s the extent of my Warhol familiarity. 


When you think of what a pop art icon this man was (and still is) it really is quite surprising that this is all I know of dear old Andy. Just fragmented pieces of a seemingly bizarre man and his equally bizarre work.  However, when you stop and think, fragments are all we really know abou
t anything, anyplace and anybody। Just, little itty bitty pieces of a much bigger picture are what are usually disclosed to people by people, all the time। Whether done consciously or not, life’s more interesting (and meaningful) with the fragments left in than out। It’s these cracks that allow the light to seep into places that would otherwise be left in complete darkness and because of this I like fragments. They make us human. 
It’s because of this I like Andy.

And so, the fragments had made the decision for me, I would critique Warhol’s 1975 piece entitled The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back again). To my enjoyment I discovered that I liked Andy’s writing style. It was down to earth and, although the man is dead, it made him seem real to me. He wrote as though he was just sharing his thoughts in conversation with a friend. It was obvious there were no pretenses, he was not trying to impress the masses, he wasn’t writing to win anybody over. He was just speaking his mind one thought after another humbly and with an undercurrent of vulnerability. Andy was just being…himself.

If it seems that (through writings that are decades old) I’ve “bonded” with a dead gay guy…perhaps I have. You see, most of what I read either made me laugh because I related to it too much (such as his philosophy on “leftovers” - I absolutely think the leftovers are the best part of any project. That’s where life happens). Or, because I discovered a new way of looking at something like work being this non-stop event that continues to go on even while in nocturnal slumber. (I never thought of it that way but, it probably explains why Zoloft is so popular these days.)


Bizarre, quirky, weird, artistic, moody, temperamental, call it what you may, at the end of the day Andy was just like the rest of us. A person. He had his demons and we each have ours.