Warhol The man behind the legend

Sep 30, 2008 (The Charlotte Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- BAC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- You know Andy Warhol. Everybody does.

The blank stare, the platinum wig, the Campbell's soup can paintings, the hangers-on with names like Ultra Violet, the pithy quotes: "I am a deeply superficial person."

Much of this was contrived -- and obscuring.

So the opening of "Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life & Legends" on Saturday, Oct. 4, at the Mint Museum of Art offers a chance to look behind the image.

Knowing him matters. As with any artist, his life and experiences resonate in his work.

Birth

Andrew Warhola was born into a working-class family on Aug. 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, the third son of Slavic immigrants. His father was a construction worker and coal miner. He died when Warhol was a teen.

Early life

He regularly went to the St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church with his mother and was fascinated by its golden icons, images of saints. Their flat, frontal look may have influenced his art. He remained a devout Catholic, attending Mass sometimes daily.

As a child, he developed a disease that left him with blotchy skin and self-conscious about his looks. He missed school and became an outcast. At home, he drew, listened to the radio and collected photos of movie stars.

Early career

Warhol received a design degree from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University) and in 1949 moved to New York. He did illustrations and ads for Vogue and The New Yorker. Especially prized: his ink drawings of shoes. When the final "a" of his name was accidentally dropped in a credit, he adopted the moniker: Andy Warhol.

Making art

His first exhibit was "Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote" in 1952. In '56 he was in a group show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As the '60s approached, he found a new direction, making paintings from comic strips such as "Superman." He let the paint drip as did Abstract Expressionist painters, followers of the then-dominant art style.

Pop Art

In the '60s, Warhol and artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg formed a new style: Pop.

Warhol's Campbell soup can paintings stirred notoriety -- and controversy. Pop Art erased the line between high art and popular culture, not only in subject matter but in how the art was made. Warhol used silk screening and assistants to produce his work. That dripped paint from the fine art tradition was gone.

Wrote former Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes, "... what was radical in Warhol was that he adapted the means of production of soup cans to the way he produced paintings, turning them out en masse -- consumer art mimicking the process as well as the look of consumer culture."

Warhol added another wrinkle: the frank pursuit of money. "Good business is the best art," he said. No starving artist, he left an estate initially valued at $500 million.

The Factory

Warhol gathered a circle of assistants, collaborators and hangers-on. Celebs such as Mick Jagger dropped in. (Warhol co-designed the Rolling Stones' "Sticky Fingers" album cover.)

Warhol made films, almost 70 of them. The subject of "Sleep" was a man sleeping for six hours. "Chelsea Girls" was more successful commercially. He developed stars such as Viva and debutante Edie Sedgwick. He helped promote a rock band, The Velvet Underground, and founded Interview magazine.

The Factory teemed with drugs and sex. Warhol, a gay man, stayed detached, more a voyeur than a participant.

The shooting

Valerie Solanas grew up in New Jersey, sexually abused by her father and abandoned by her family but able to put herself through college. She tried to get Warhol to produce a play she'd written and became a fringe member of his circle, appearing in the 1968 film "I, A Man."

She also was the founder and sole member of S.C.U.M., or Society for Cutting Up Men. On June 3, 1968, Solanas showed up at the Factory and shot Warhol twice in the stomach, almost killing him. "I Shot Andy Warhol," a 1996 film, recounts the incident. Actress Lili Taylor played Solanas.

Later career

After the shooting, Warhol focused on silkscreen prints of celebrities. The Mint show, from Bank of America's collection, includes about 60 portraits of people such as Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor, filled with bright color.

Celebrity

The man who famously said, "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes," became a celebrity himself -- and his fame has lasted longer than 15 minutes. In 1997, a decade after his death, his character appeared in "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," and on "The Simpsons" in 1999. In 2002 his image appeared on a commemorative postage stamp.

Death

In 1987, Warhol, who avoided doctors but had been in pain for months, had gall bladder surgery. He died in his sleep on Feb. 22 of a heart attack. In an open coffin at his Pittsburgh funeral, he was dressed in a black cashmere suit, wig and sunglasses. Later, 2,000 people attended a memorial Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

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