In 1977 Warhol began making some explicitly sexual works, based on nude Polaroids he had taken of men having sex. The less explicit ones are now known as the Torso series, the more explicit ones as Sex Parts, and some of these are very explicit indeed. The men are faceless, they are reduced to their body parts. Yet the works display an eye for composition that creates a sort of abstract beauty while not reducing their impact as sexual images.
Although Warhol’s death in 1987 meant that he did not see the very worst effects and terrors of AIDS, his diaries contain many references to the disease, and he certainly lived long enough to lose several close friends. In the early 1980s Warhol’s celibacy suddenly looked less like an ironic pose, and more like good sense. Images of extreme gay sex from the 1970s inevitably now serve as memento mori. Warhol’s skull paintings, even though they were done well before anyone knew about AIDS, appear now to be the grim other side of his depiction of body parts.
Warhol’s most enigmatic utterance on sexual matters is recorded in a book by Victor Bockris called William Burroughs; A Report from the Bunker. Bockris, Burroughs and Warhol are in conversation:
BOCKRIS:
Andy, you had the best sex in England?
WARHOL:
No, the best sex was when this guy bit off this guy’s nose. That was the best sex.
BURROUGHS:
I heard about that.
WARHOL:
Wasn’t that the best sex, Bill?
BURROUGHS:
Ah yes, I imagine so.
WARHOL:
The best.
Summary
Warhol’s initial success coincided with a period of ‘sexual liberation’ yet his work and life subvert any easy ideas of liberation.
Warhol was gay, yet he isn’t simply a ‘gay artist’.
His work shows a simultaneous fascination with glamorous and pornographic imagery.
9 The Present and Future Warhol
In the years since Andy Warhol’s death his reputation and the financial value of his art has increased exponentially. In 2001 the Warhol Museum organized 39 shows and loans of his work. A recent touring exhibition of his work visited Eastern Europe, making Warhol the first modern American artist to have his work shown in Latvia and Kazakhstan.
The Warhol Foundation has struck various licensing deals which mean that Warhol images now appear on everything from scarves to plates to stationery to martini glasses to hot-water bottles. The US post office is planning to issue a stamp with one of his photobooth self-portraits on it.
When Warhol’s works come up at auction they regularly set record prices. In 1998 Orange Marilyn sold for $17.3 million, while $2.3 million dollars is the current going rate for a small electric chair silk-screen.
Of course, none of this in itself says much about whether or not Warhol is a great artist, but what it certainly does mean is that his work continues to connect with a mass audience as well as with the connoisseurs and taste-makers of the art world. He continues to be seen as current and relevant.
The discovery that Warhol had been a practising Catholic at the end of his life, combined with the many works of art he made from Leonardo’s Last Supper has led to some debate about the extent to which he was a ‘spiritual’ artist. The question is a difficult one. If we understand the word spiritual simply to mean a concern with things beyond the merely physical and material, then ‘spiritual art’ would once have seemed a tautology. If a painting wasn’t in some sense spiritual, then it probably wasn’t art; it was just paint.
But then we remember Warhol’s recommendation that if we want to know all about Andy Warhol and his art we should just look at the surface of his work, that there is nothing behind it. There are plenty of modern artists who would share this emphasis on the material nature of art, and yet this doesn’t quite describe the experience of looking at an Andy Warhol painting. One doesn’t think, ‘Here’s a canvas that looks like a soup can, but actually it’s just paint’, any more than one does when looking at Leonardo’s Last Supper. Rather one is inclined to think, ‘Here’s an image of a soup can, or a dollar bill, or Marilyn Monroe, that clearly has a material existence but which also allows me to perceive the subject in a way I never quite have before.’
In that sense Warhol’s best work is not merely spiritual, it is actually transcendent. It not only allows us to see eternity in a grain of sand, but to see it in a Coke bottle or a can of soup. In Warhol’s work, as William Burroughs put it;
“…a soup can, seen with a clear eye, can be as portentous as a comet.” (Warhol, 1989).
Andy Warhol has cleared all our eyes.
Glossary
Abstract Expressionism Post-war, mostly New York-based artistic movement, that produced large, non-figurative, gestural, spiritually complex paintings. Artists include Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning.
Agitprop Literally a political strategy involving techniques of agitation and propaganda to influence public opinion. Originally used by the Marxist theorist Plekhano and then by Lenin.
Brechtian alienation German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) employed what he called the Verfretndungseffekt, usually translated as ‘alienation effect’ but more correcdy it means something that is ‘made strange’, i.e. a way of presenting things on stage in a non-naturalistic way to enable us to see them with fresh eyes.
Conceptual art Art that is more concerned with ideas than with representation. Its appeal is therefore intellectual rather than visual. Artists include Joseph Beuys, Christo, Yoko Ono.
Cubism A short-lived artistic movement that reduced physical forms to cubes, spheres and cylinders. It also contended that objects were best depicted by simultaneously showing them from multiple viewpoints. Artists include Picasso and Braque.
Dadaism A largely nihilistic artistic movement which believed in the subversion of traditional art and culture. Artists include Tristan Tzara and Marcel Duchamp.
Diptych A painting made on two joined but detachable panels.
Exploding Plastic Inevitable A multi-media event and environment involving rock bands, dance, and the projection of slides and film.
Factory Warhol’s studio and workshop.
Faux naif Someone or something that has the appearance of naivety but in reality is very knowing and sophisticated.
Green Stamps Stamps that were given out with purchases in shops and supermarkets in the 1960s as a kind of bonus system. Stamps were stuck into books and redeemed against consumer items.
High Bohemia Term used to describe Warhol’s working and social environment, which included movie stars, fashion designers, various heiresses and members of the European aristocracy.
ICA The Institute of Contemporary Arts, a London gallery that has championed cutting edge, avant-garde art, since the middle of the twentieth century.
Idiot savant Term used to describe individuals who display little obvious intelligence but are able to perform formidable mental or artistic tasks.
Impressionism The late nineteenth-century movement that marks the beginning of modern art, employing exuberant colour and vigorous brush strokes, often giving a sketchy ‘unfinished’ appearance. Generally concentrated on contemporary and vernacular subject matter. Artists include Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Degas.