Why is Andy Warhol so massively hated today?

I hate Warhol because he murdered modern art and sold its corpse to the rich.

While Andy Warhol is certainly a polarizing figure, it would be incorrect to say that he is universally hated. However, there are some criticisms and controversies associated with Warhol that have contributed to negative perceptions of him among certain individuals. Here are a few reasons why some people might express dislike or criticism towards Warhol:

1. Commercialization of art: Warhol was known for blurring the boundaries between fine art and commercialism. He embraced consumer culture and mass production techniques, often creating art that replicated everyday objects or popular brands. Some critics argue that this approach devalued the artistic process and prioritized commercial success over artistic integrity.

2. Repetition and lack of craftsmanship: Warhol's use of repetition and mechanical techniques, such as silkscreen printing, led to accusations of laziness or a lack of artistic skill. Some detractors argue that his work lacked the technical craftsmanship traditionally associated with fine art.

3. Superficiality and shallowness: Warhol's focus on celebrity culture, fame, and surface appearances has been criticized for promoting a shallow and superficial understanding of art and society. Some argue that his work perpetuated a culture of celebrity obsession and materialism.

4. Detachment from his art: Warhol often distanced himself from his work and embraced a detached persona. This aloofness has been interpreted by some as a lack of emotional depth or a refusal to engage with the social and political issues of his time.

5. Factory culture and associations with drugs: Warhol's studio, known as The Factory, was a hub for artistic production and countercultural activities. It was associated with drug use and a party lifestyle, which has led to some criticism of Warhol's involvement in that scene.

It's worth noting that despite the criticisms, Warhol also has a large number of admirers and is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Many appreciate his innovative approach to art, his commentary on consumer culture, and his role in shaping contemporary art movements. Artistic opinions can be subjective, and different individuals have different interpretations and preferences when it comes to artists and their work.

They hate Warhol because everyone is on (the drug) social media hating everything unless / because it makes them feel morally superior.

Anyone creatively stunted becomes a critic.

It goes around and around. They'll him again in 15 years.

R1 Warhol was always a commercial artist. He never put up any pretense he wasn’t, and that was part of his entire bit - what is the limit to what people will attach meaning to / pay massive cash for because it has a prestigious name on it? What even is prestige? He forced low class and common things like Campbell’s Soup or Brillo Pads into the high culture by incorporating them into his art.

He also became well known for doing high profile advertising work before The Factory and Pop Art.

We’re in a challenge everything era, as it was in the counterculture late ‘60s & ‘70s.

This includes history, gender, ethnicity, power structures, restrooms, non-dairy products, pronouns. Some speculate this was caused by dangerous levels of kale, avocado and pithily named playlists.

Some things will permanently shift. Then some fads will fade.

Who hates Warhol? Very few people with a decent knowledge of the history of Modern then Contemporary Art actively hate Warhol. He's a giant!

Are you taking a survey at WalMart in Flyoverstan?

I really want to know. Did you just pull that factoid out of your ass? Where are these masses of Warhol haters?

R7 Gen Z does. They all think he personally fed drugs into the mouths of the addicts who came to him to for fame, and believe him to be an overrated hack. Look at the comments here - majority are very anti Warhol. There’s even some moron calling him “homophobic.” Every few months I see a post like this do big rounds on Twitter.

I don't hate Warhol, but he did have an impact that had a lot of negative aspects. He redefine what we consider as art.

r2 courtesy Chat GPT

Let’s play a game called - Take Everything out of Context!

Warhol was cheeky and refreshing in his time.

If he liked being surrounded by interesting or attractive people getting wasted he’s like any other scene person throughout history.

All of the naysayers are likely following scores of artists across media who rose to fame on looks, who they blew or who they knew.

So many people, most people actually have no idea of the history, and the back stories of many classic fine artists. For example Raphael, who adored Michelangelo, was a wastrel. He partied and drank and had his coterie of admirers and lived a dissipated life and died young. But he was brilliant.

R9 thanks. I didn't know. Gen Z in Europe doesn't hate Warhol. Still cool, if they bother to know him at all.

[quote] the mostly fictionalized Jean Stein book

That book takes the form of interviews with people who knew Edie Sedgwick, not a narrative. How was it "fictionalized"? Maybe you mean slanted or biased.

I also think it’s bizarre in this moment where everyone complains about “nepo babies” or otherwise rich people getting an automatic leg up in artistic fields, a gay man from as working class a background as it gets (Czech coal miners in the Pittsburgh slums!) is shat on.

R15 Yes, I mean that it was extremely slanted to the point of outright lies. A lot of the interviews where people get the base for just plain untrue statements (Bob Dylan allegedly writing a million songs about Edie and the entire idea of their torrid “affair” where she aborted his kid - it was actually his friend Bob Neuwirth she had an on/off relationship with) are from her nutty family members looking for attention. Her family had a very troubled history of mental illness and instability. Typical WASP insanity.

CAravaggio was 10 times as wild as Raphael. He murdered someone. Warhol and his Factory were a cultural phenomenon of the times.

Read John Waters's chapter about Warhol in Mr. Know-It-All.

Sedgwick died because she was an addict and couldn't stop.

At the risk of sounding cliched, didn't Warhol "capture the zeitgeist "? Mass media. Consumerism. His famous fifteen minutes of fame quote is sort of being borne out in reality TV and social media, isn't it? Didn't he also pave the way for artists like Jeff Koons and Banksy?

Another Qualude,they love him again, soon.

Everyone turned against him when he did the "Aretha!" album cover back in 1986. They blamed him for the shitty album. He couldn't take the pop culture revolt, and died in 1987.

Because he was a talentless hack who created a faux culture of celebrity worship. A Brillo box and a soup can? Move over Michelangelo and De Vinci, there’s a new girl in town. Her fifteen minutes were fourteen too long. And he was a lousy lay.

I failed to become excited about Andy Warhol back in the 1960s. I live in Pittsburgh now, and it bores me that nearly everyone who comes to visit from out of town wants to visit the Warhol Museum. I never hated him. He just never captured my interest or imagination. I liked Abstract Expressionism so much more than Marilyn and Brillo.

"If he liked being surrounded by interesting or attractive people getting wasted he’s like any other scene person throughout history."

There's always a big of shallow cruelty in a "scene person", to be a scenester you have to be willing to drop anyone or anything the minute it ceases to be the height of cool, even if they were your fave rave an hour ago. But scenester Queen Bees like Warhol are always far worse, they're the ones who declare what is uncool and who should be ostracized, and you know who Warhol's heir as a Scenester Queen really is, or was? Paris Hilton, that's who!

So as a person Warhol seems to have been pretty toxic, which is hardly unusual for a major artist. Really, it's much easier to appreciate Art History, if you don't know too much about the personal lives of the artists.

Ha ha!

How was he “toxic?” From my understanding, the factory was a come and go as you pleased place. He wasn’t forcing anyone to be there or do anything for him.

And they all sought him out too. No one who knew him and actually had anything to contribute artistically themselves outside of being a Warhol hanger on (Lou Reed and John Cale are two major ones, even Reed, who he had a much less friendly relationship with him was furious at Factory Girl for depicting him badly) had a truly bad thing to say about him. Ok, so he was bitchy and flaky? A mortal sin!

That should read “he had a much less friendly relationship with.”

It's becoming increasingly obvious that OP did pull his factoid out of his ass.

That weirdo in a wig?

I love Warhol. He was so snarky about the celebs who were drawn into his circle — such fun. And I love his comment on art and commerce. It still resonates, still questions, today.

R16 Close. Warhol was Slovak/Ruthenian rather than Czech

Shitting on accomplished people is a way for unaccomplished people to gain status by pretending they know better. They usually don’t.

They’re yawny devil’s advocate contrarians with ODD.

In the 70s and the 80s, it was said that if you were a celebrity, and didn't have your portrait done by Warhol, you were actually a 'nobody'. You weren't an A-List celeb until he offered to do your portrait (offered, not asked by the celeb). In the 1960s and 1970s he was supposedly infatuated with Diana Ross, but for some reason never was able to meet her (rumor has it that Berry Gordy didn't like him, and warned her to 'stay away from him').

He finally met her at Studio 54 when she launched her 'diana' album in 1980. He took her into a private room to take Polaroid snapshots of her, and told her he was going to paint her portrait. He did the following year, and gifted it to her - and it was later used it for her 1982 album, "Silk Electric". There it gets a little fuzzy - supposedly he wanted royalties from the sales since she didn't pay for the artwork (she did credit him on the album notes) . I believe he ended up suing RCA and they settled out of court.

Later on, he received word that Aretha was a little jealous he never did her portrait. So he did hers in 1985-86 and made certain he was paid to do it by Arista for her 1986 album 'Aretha' ; he didn't want to get burned again. From what I recall he never gifted the portrait to her - Clive Davis did, since he's the one who paid for it.

[quote]Why is Andy Warhol so massively hated today?

He isn't, OP. How silly.

Will someone please tell OP that Twitter and Instagram reflect Twitter and Instagram, not real life.

No one hates Warhol. Stop using anecdotal proof for broad sweeping statements.

I was indifferent until I read his diaries. Then I became a huge fan.

He was the sort of gay man many of us wanted to meet when we moved to NYC or LA from our small, backwater towns: Unique, sophisticated, witty, bitchy and (of course) tragic.

Fuck. It's like DL is his low rent reincarnation.

I always thought the Campbell SOup can thing was a huge hoax. A send up and scathing commentary on our culture and commercialism.

Warhol isn't hated.

But I think after a big push to celebrate his work during his lifetime for its strengths, as well as the rush to profit from it after his death.....there's also a realization that it's largely iconography and the ways that commercial art and photography can create its own icons (juxtaposed with a likely context of religious iconography), and perhaps it's being repositioned to be considered and respected in its proper context, instead of being flouted as the be-all, end-all of all time in terms of all forms of art.

"Andy was a fucking genius. So was Hitler. Andy was worse."

R35 your art history is full of misinformation. Andy Warhol wasn't very selective about whose "portrait" he would "paint". If you paid, and weren't an axe murderer but just some random rich person, and he had time, he did it. Also Andy didn't give away many portraits at all, not even to the most glamorous VIPS.

After reading his diaries I determined that Andy chased after certain people whose portrait he want to do, people he felt were "important." And then there were those he did for commissions. He would comment on "So-and So keeps calling me for her portrait and I don't like her I don't want to do it." It was a status thing but the celebrities also encouraged the whole image of it being a status symbol as much as he did. They fed off one another.

He was actually very polite.

Like Picasso (and probably many artistes, like Dali, etc.), he was a creep. One analysis:

"Andy Warhol was inordinately attached to his mother, taking her to live with him in New York. He was homosexual but had difficulty in forming longterm relationships. He was vain and deeply insecure, always seeking approbation and affirmation. He had a twofold aim in life, to be the most famous artist of the twentieth century and to become very rich. He lacked empathy, discarding friends and associates, often delegating uncomfortable decisions to others. He was stingy and underpaid his Factory employees. He even failed to pay the $3,000 bill from the surgeon who, in 1968, saved his life after Andy was shot and seriously wounded. The bill was found when one of WArhol’s Time Capsules was opened almost 30 years after Warhol’s death. Warhol also suffered periods of depression. In summary, he appears to have been a classic case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder..."

^ I read all that negativity and then looked at his fuckface and it clicked. He's projecting his own toxicity.

I am rereading his diaries with interest

The Diaries are a great read and supposedly only a portion of them were published for fear of lawsuits. I would love to see them expanded.

Commissioned portraits were the main income for Andy. He rarely gave them away. He was doing about 75 a year or well over 1 a week and they were 25-40K in the 70s.

I get the impression he was a cold, self centered, selfish person. It’s not like there’s any “feel good” stories surrounding him to give his history/persona more of a glow.

the description at R46 makes me think Warhol was a high functioning autistic

Why is autism accusing/spotting such a hot trend these days, r52?

R16 thanks ChatGPT!

R16 gah sorry I meant R2 and someone’s already said it too.

[quote] At the risk of sounding cliched, didn't Warhol "capture the zeitgeist?”

I think he kind of created the zeitgeist of the time. My mom was part of the old school art crowd in NYC back in the day (“before SoHo was called SoHo!” as she liked to say) and they all hated Warhol. They hated the drugs, the art itself and that Warhol was the hip new thing.

My mom also hated the Edie Sedgwick book. It’s not so much that it was fiction as it was a glamorization of a sad drug addicted poor little rich girl. There really was no real reason to write a book about her in the first place. It also managed to create a near mythic image of Edie that again, was not a true reflection of her importance to that time period or the Warhol scene itself. She was there for a little bit and then she was gone. She was very photogenic though. And her childhood with that creepy awful father of hers was interesting I guess.

The description at R46 makes me think Warhol was a high achieving DLer.

The description at [R46] makes me happy to be old enough to to ignore the rampant stupidity of these now-a-go-go times.

He was stunted, emotionally. Add that to a basic shyness and niaivete, with his Catholic background, etc and how he grew up, and the one thing he was great at was networking. But with Andy, it seemed like he collected people but was not able to form mature relationships. His love life was more like a series of crushes or high school romances. I think he had a lot of issues because being Gay was definitely accepted in the environment he grew up in, but he found his people so to speak in that NYC scene.

Yes, the Factory hangers-on were there voluntarily, by committing to become Factory People they gave Warhol power over them, and he misused his power like any bitch Queen Bee does.

Some of them were very vulnerable people, some were rich kids with fragile psyches who spiraled when he cut them out of the group (Edie and Andrea Feldman), others were even more vulnerable, living on the margins and even less able to deal with being used and tossed aside, although Valerie Solanos . Warhol wasn't a good person, and he was the worst friend ever - selfish, exploitative, and as mean as any sorority president during Rush.

Which doesn't make him a bad artist, but I really don't know if he was a great artist. Modern art just isn't my thing, so I'll leave that pronouncement to others.

[quote]r56 My mom also hated the Edie Sedgwick book… There really was no real reason to write a book about her in the first place.

I would argue that any and all people are worthy of a book examining their lives, choices, etc. The human experience is quite fascinating.

Even your mom’s. Who’s simply jealous.

I wish I remember which French director said the same thing - that every person's life is worthy of an epic film. Truffaut? Godard?

[quote] thanks ChatGPT!

It used to be on DL that if someone posted a question for information that could be readily found online, many replies would tell the person to look it themselves on Google. Now it’s easy just to copy and paste from ChatGPT to give the OP the full answer to their question and be done with it.

[quote] Even your mom’s. Who’s simply jealous.

My mom is dead. And of course, that’s a ridiculous assumption. She was a different generation than the drug taking Warhol crowd.

I thought he came off as funny, down to earth and sometimes sweet in his diaries. Maybe aspie, I agree, but not at all a bad person or a monster, nor remotely abusive. His scorn was reserved for the do-nothings around him, both high class socialites and low class leeches. He never lost the working class tough love mentality instilled in him from birth.

By the way, if you want a “feel good” story about Warhol, he spent nearly every weekend doing charity work, feeding the homeless, all that jazz. He was committed to his Catholic faith in way that both seemed contrary and perfectly in line to his persona and lifestyle.

Warhol was also very much not part of in the “in” crowd with the art scene (why he moved to commercial work) at the time because he was too openly gay (both as a person and as an artist) and refused to tone it down - which I think is very brave to have done pre-Stonewall.

[qoute]I don't hate Warhol, but he did have an impact that had a lot of negative aspects. He redefine what we consider as art.

In all fairness, Duchamp made art of a urinal in 1917. I think Andy just challenged what people were willing to pay for "art." He ripped on the mask of the pretense of the necessity of meaning and showed how greedy rich people were to just be a part of something if they could buy it.

It reminds of of the Miuccia Prada retrospective at the MET some years back. There was a part where she is quoted as saying she enjoys walking the line of making something as ugly as possible and still getting people to buy it. I'm not saying Warhol intentionally made things ugly. But he made things that other artist, other people could replicate if they wanted to. He just exposed the fact that collectors only wanted it because HE made it and they were buying into a lifestyle, making a statement of their wealth and not really interested in art for art's sake. He was a cultural King maker for this reason. It was only until his collaboration with Basquiat that he was really pushed to make art that expressed himself and his unique point of view. He had to keep up with Basquiat's genius. It's just a shame Basquiat's gallerist sold his work by using "buy it before he overdoses" and it will be 10X higher as a means to push his work while he was alive.

He won’t matter in 20 years outside of museums that spent fortunes buying his work.

R59 here. I meant "Being Gay was definitely NOT accepted in the environment in which Andy grew up.

I don't hate him - at all. But, I've never thought he was that interesting. In the right place at the right time and thus a cult figure.

I agree with R71.

Lots of incorrect facts and fuzzy logic/confirmation bias going on in this thread. You played right into Andy's hands by projecting yourselves.on him. We simply don't know the totality of who he was, and he wanted it that way. He'd have loved this, and loved DL.

[quote]R73 He'd have loved this, and loved DL.

I don’t think he was smart enough to enjoy DL. Did he even speak in complete sentences?

[quote] There's always a big of shallow cruelty in a "scene person",

Shallow cruelty? Who on datalounge could imagine such a thing from a gay man?

[quote]He won’t matter in 20 years outside of museums that spent fortunes buying his work.

Whether anyone on this thread believes it or not really doesn't matter. He is widely accepted as the most significant artist of the 20th century. He will hardly be forgotten. And I never underestimate the power of money. There are too many people who have spent 100s of millions of dollars on his work (and not just museums) who are literally invested in his continued success. Warhol will be ubiquitous for decades to come. And the fact that he accurately predicted the nature of our society today some fifty years ago means he will be culturally relevant for some time to come. Article after article talking about our "viral" culture today and everyone's pursuit of fame above all else constantly reference him. So R69 I think you might be a little off in your estimation of him.

I’ve know people who criticized him for the messes that some of his super stars were but that’s not his fault. These people were drug addicts and dysfunctional

Warhol is the target of much criticism because he's famous.

Those man-on-the-street quizzes where an interviewer asks strangers to name a country the name of which includes the letter "x"? Or how many words they can name starting with the letter "z"? Or in what century was the U.S. founded? The ignorance of geography and history and simple math pales next the ignorance of art.

Name an architect? Frank Lloyd Wright (subtract 2 points for popular answer Frank Lloyd Wrong)

Name an artist: Andy Warhol. That dude who cut off his ear. (I think you'd have to ask a lot of ransoms before coming up with Picasso or da Vinci, two previous front runners.)

Warhol is the one name most people may know. And they know just a couple things about him: commercial, 15-minutes of fame.

People who know knotting about art and are happy knowing nothing about art like to see trot out one half-truth and and dismiss him and the art world as "it's all subjective anyway" or "my 6 year old nephew could..."

It's not more complicated than to understand the level of ignorance about art.

Andy Warhol cut his ear off?

Warhol is hated because as time have passed, people have started to analyze his work and eventually, grown to see him for what he was: an utterly untalented and shamelessly opportunistic social climber who built an undeservedly successful career on nothing. He is a clear example of the paradigm in the book Charlotte's Web; if you make enough noise about something worthless, you can sell it as valuable to anyone - even those who claim to be sophisticated, cultured and wise.

Moreover, it is because of him that talentless hacks like Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Basquiat and George Condo are considered great geniuses nowadays, when in reality they are mere disciples of Warhol's "Fake It 'till You Make It" school of indecently transparent grifting.

So you have a personality problem with Senorita Andita. Got it, R80.

R79 and then he was circumcised.

To ear is human, but to foreskin is divine.

Picasso: "Good artists copy; great artists steal."

There's another quote I can't find right now - that he'd fooled a lot of people by intentionally producing crap.

But then, some say Picasso was a psychopath, so maybe he was just toying with us when he said that.

Picasso is another artist that gets retarded levels of hate from Gen Z wokesters because he’s the only one they can name. I don’t care about the personal behavior of someone who was born before both World Wars happened, I’m sorry.

Many of the criticisms of Warhol's art are already baked into the art—they're part of the point. I think Warhol is someone whose influence is so massive that lots of people today can no longer see that what he did was ever new. His insights and prophecies have become so relevant as to seem cliche. We are living in Warhol's world and what an exhausting world it is.

[quote]Picasso is another artist that gets retarded levels of hate

He's Pablo-matic!

A number of good insights here about why me must be bored to tears by troglodytes such as OP and the so-called Warhol haters. Another is that for 25 years the zeitgeist has programmed mediocre or weak minds to binary concepts. Good bad, black white, worthy unworthy, clean dirty, virtuous sinner and so on. Many people are incapable of critical thinking and even those who manage it a bit, don't have the synapses to conceive contemporary art from multiple perspectives.

I wuved Diana Woss too.

R77, yes, his "Superstars" were drug addicts and nutcases, but that doesn't mean it was okay for him to use them and toss them aside the way he did. He said he was their friend, he called them "superstars" and made some of them famous, and threw them out when he they were no longer of use, and some of them cracked up as a result. They couldn't take rejection from someone they thought of as a genuine friend, not when that friendship may have meant everything to them.

Warhol's treatment of his "friends" gets under my skin. I place a very high value on friendship and being a good friend, because I come from a generation of gay men that got zero support from their families and who couldn't marry, for some of us our friends were our most important ongoing relationships, when our families rejected us we made "families of friends". So Warhol pretended that the Factory was a "family of friends" but it wasn't, it was just Warhol's toying with vulnerable people.

they are just jealous that can't afford his work. Most people I know like him

He was a gatekeeper of social influence and clout and nothing more - the art is fradulent, vulgar even

People hate Warhol because held a mirror up to America and showed us exactly who we we are and and we don’t like what we see. We aspire to be magnanimous, generous and caring. That’s what we want to be. But at its core American society is a grab-all for yourself sprint to the top. We wish people well as long as they aren’t doing better than us. We feel deep down inside we are empty with no deeper meaning other than sheer existence.

The art world wanted to seize upon the next Picasso and Warhol gave them silkscreened soup cans. He turned America’s icons into mythical legends and we ate it up. Saying he was talentless is like saying someone who plays a dumb blond is in fact a dumb blond when the opposite is usually the truth. People hate Warhol because we haven’t been able to rise above exactly what he told us we are. We’ve actually doubled down on it.

And those ‘poor’ friends r90 mentioned were the worst of them. Do you think any of those people would have hung out with a pock-marked faced pasty white boy from Pittsburgh if he couldn’t make them famous. They weren’t ever friends. They were users too - a lot who lost at their own game, out-played. They went crazy because their own desperation was laid bare before them.

The irony is everyone making pronouncements on Andy Warhol and his career in the art world probably couldn’t name three other influential artist and their impact without hitting up google. Most likely his is the only name they know, which says a lot. Anyone with any kind of serious art background is aware of Warhol’s massive impact on the history of Art.

Idiot thread.

R93 Hit the nail on the head.

Great post, R93. I’ve always liked him as a commercial illustrator but not so much for his screen-printed art because I didn’t understand the conceptual part of it before.

Warhol was important. And one thing I think people aren't cognizant of is, Warhol helped give racial minorities and marginalized groups like poor whites, gays, transgender, drug addicts, sex workers, the disabled, the poor and mentally ill a platform. White middle class Americans ignored them and liked to pretend they didn't exist. Warhol gave them a voice and I don't think he exploited them. Many were already messed up. He just let America know despite it's blind nationalism, it neglected a large portion of its population.

I've always considered Warhol more of a conceptual artist. The "art" itself wasn't the point.

I am completely unaware that Warhol dropped ALL the factory people and cut them out of his life forever. Andy had a VERY wide circle of acquaintances and friends by the 70s. He was become nationally and internationally famous. He could be invited anywhere and with anyone. The Factory was always evolving, as well. Different projects and so on. After he got shot Andy shifted his focus but he already was moving in more circles than just the factory. You DUMB FLYOVER CUNTSTAINS seem to think this is a night time soap and Andy went around to each of his demimondaine friends and said "You're dead to me!"

He wasn’t a highly emotional guy. He was a hoarder who loved things more than people, and was drawn to iconic celebrities because they were just that — icons. He used his friends, they used him, and had no emotional connection or malice towards them; he just moved on.

R101 I think his flat affect and almost robotic nature is why people project so much into him. He's not an easily readable persona which helps with his allure. It's funny people here will question his legacy yet here we are discussing him?

I remember him mentioning people like Holly Woodlawn in the diaries, so he was definitely still in casual contact with them. I don’t get the attitude he seemed to discard them either.

It's the fantasy of dumb little flyoverstans who want to hate him and want him to be evil.

We massively hate Andy Cohen, not Warhol.

What about sex? was he hung? anyone had him? no romantic partners?

If ONLY there was a way to know if the most famous artist of recent times had romantic partners. But alas, such information is only available to the sleuthy art historians who must track it down in dusty archives.

His diaries have me rolling with laughter

R102 I disagree. He was actually a very self-aware and candid artist who defended his subjects. Some of his quotes:

[quote] “Pop art is about liking things.”

[quote]“You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.”

[quote]“I am a deeply superficial person.”

[quote]“Sometimes, people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, so what. That is one of my favourite things to say. So what.”

This wasn’t a guy who lived off-the-grid in austerity; he was a compulsive shopper who lived in a Manhattan townhouse and went to glamorous events where he mingled with celebrities. He painted what he loved, for sure, but did he have reservations about American culture, including himself, obsessed with fame and consumerism? It’s hard to say but there’s no doubt that he reveled in the perceived ambiguity of his art and the controversy it caused.

I like that attitude, "so what?"

I'm gonna start using it

R106 He managed to bag the beautiful Jed Johnson for a whopping 12 years. I understand some of it was a typical "homely" sugar daddy/young twink deal, but 12 years is a long time to engage in that for - I believe Jed actually loved him. I recall when the Warhol Diaries doc aired, some posters found Jon Gould (his other long-term relationship) attractive, but I don't see it at all. He also allegedly had flings with the very good-looking Billy Name (also a Lou Reed fling!) and Gerard Malaga during the Silver Factory era.

Jed still looked pretty good in his 40s - here with Warhol/DL frenemy Fran Lebowitz five years before his tragic death on the TWA Flight 800 explosion...

It's crazy to me that he was only 58 when he died.

There's something about Warhol that flushes the ninnies, and that's what's so great about Warhol's astonsihing genius. He was flushing ninnies from the start, from at least 1962.

astonishing*

Andy was infatuated with Basquiat. Did they ever get it on?

Obviously not. Basquiat was POZ.

Andy went to church on the UES!

If gawping his big cock counts as getting it on then yes. R115.

R115, I could see them jacking off over a canvas together...

Well you have a very active imagination and complete ignorance of Warhol, who was a Maiden Auntie demure person.

Yes, R120, Maiden Auntie demure people’s catalogs always include piss paintings.

Demure piss paintings, sure, but piss paintings all the same.

Sweetie that was his art not his sex life or behavior. For crissakes watch one of the eleventythousand documentaries or read a book or two before you stink up the thread more with your fucking fantasies.

"He was celibate. Though gay, Warhol claimed never to have engaged in any sexual intercourse. It was reported in an early biography that he lost his virginity at 25 to his first boyfriend, but I've found no accounts of him consummating any of his subsequent relationships."

Oops - looked around 5 seconds longer and found this - that he had a big dick and did have sex.

"the most significant artist of the 20th century..." ???

MARY!

R125, I agree with that assessment, although I'd say he was the most significant artist of the second half of the century.

There were piss paintings AND cum paintings. Some of you need to be better prepared when you come to these Warhol threads. There are people here who knew the man personally.

Tell the whole store then. Because Andy himself didn't piss and cum on his art. His friends and acquaintances did. Victor was the main pisser. This started with some dimwit above fantasizing a circle jerk piss party with Basquiat and that really wasn't Andy's M.O. But do carry on.

He was absolutely not celibate - that was his persona that the close-minded mainstream of the late 20th century bought for some reason. He had frequent (by gay standards too!) sex up until the early 1980s.

Maybe he said he was celibate because he didn't want to upset his dear old mom, who he apparently lived with until shortly before her death. What a good boy. Went to church with her every Sunday!

Yes, R128! Agree

[quote]Sweetie that was his art not his sex life or behavior. For crissakes watch one of the eleventythousand documentaries or read a book or two before you stink up the thread more with your fucking fantasies.

JFC, R122, this is a gossip site, of course we’re interested in the man’s private life and dick size. Also, artists do integrate their background and personal experiences into their work, including sexuality, but you wouldn’t know that because you’ve never put a brush to canvas in your life. Go back to Barron’s where you belong.

In his diary he said he and Jean Michel did piss together to work on his "piss paintings..." so Andy definitely participated. I always thought he was an emotional adolescent but it seems he was really child like in some ways.

Well OK then. But would he do that with a rising art star he respected?

I'm reading his diaries now, and it's really odd and amusing that every single thing he does he notes the prices--breaking down the cost of food, tips, taxi, and even noting when he makes a phone call it costs 10 cents, as if the cost is just as important as anything else. I wonder why he did that? Tax purposes or was he oddly focused on spending. He notes every penny! Every single thing is cost noted, even when someone else buys it. Does anyone have any insight into this curious habit of Andy's?

[quote]Well you have a very active imagination and complete ignorance of Warhol, who was a Maiden Auntie demure person.

Homophobes like yourself like to believe that Andy was not a gay man with an active sex life and numerous male lovers, but a chaste, innocent asexual man-child. You’re the one with the delusional fantasy, R120.

he had medical issues towards the end and was celibate as a result of said medical condition, I can't remember what it was...

The gunshot ripped up his organs and he had a lot of issues afterwards, for the rest of his life.

Andy's father was a coal miner who died in an accident when Andy was 13. But he still managed to study Commercial Art at Carnegie Mellon (after originally hoping to be an art teacher and go the state university). So I assume the family struggled, though he managed to succeed very well anyway.

I imagine it could make you more aware of money - thus the OCD bookkeeping (and not paying the surgeon who saved his life, though that suggests quite a mean streak)

By a weird coincidence I was friends with three of Warhol's doctors.

Why did that woman shoot him? Did he do something to her? And what happened to her afterwards?

She gave him a script for her play "Up Your Ass," but he lost it. She thought he was conspiring to keep it from being produced.

The year before she shot him, she wrote her SCUM manifesto.

I wonder if she was on to something?

R141 If ONLY there was a way to answer such basic questions.

R135, he was under audit by the IRS. One purpose of the diary was to document his expenses.

"Why did that woman shoot him? Did he do something to her?"

He gave her false hope, basically, something people in the healthcare professions are warned against doing in the strongest possible terms - because when you give false hope and then something bad happens, people feel deeply betrayed. Solanis was crazy and living in the gutter, and when she came to the Factory he listened to her batshit ideas, she hung around and thought of herself as an insider, until he kicked her out and she felt betrayed enough to shoot him.

There's a pretty good movie about her, "I Shot Andy Warhol" (1996), starring Lili Taylor.

Turns out Solanas' script wasn't lost but hidden by Billy Name. It was found recently in a trunk belonging to Name. But why?

Cue some hipster filmmaker to shoot that script. Too bad Franco was Me Tooed.

I'm pretty sure her script was performed at PS122 years ago.

Like so many other things, I think his ardent defenders are defending him based on emotional arguments from their identity politics. They are told this person, or film, or political idealogy is the right one and most people don't like to think anyways so they run with it. It's the same as like, everyone trying to sell you that Ladybird was some genius movie. Ladybird is like that thing you see scrolling on the digital cable on a lazy Sunday morning you are cleaning that will provide unoffensive background noise. Or like White Lotus being the show you HAVE to see. but people are not good at not being sheep so, fall in line or start making sweaters.

Two words: Edie Sedgewick.

I honestly didn't know Warhol was hated.

Banksy goes the same way. At some time, you cross the tipping point. Being ubiquitous isn't quite the problem. The world changed and one trick ponies lose the significance they once had. Few get a second life, like Keith Haring.

His works always seen so infantile and simple minded, like Clementine Hunter, I guess it's called Americana, soup cans?

[quote]Why is Andy Warhol so massively hated today?

Still the same stupid and false claim it was last May.

I’m with R7. He’s widely regarded as the greatest artist of his generation. I am unaware that he is particularly disliked, although I did meet him several times and thought he was kind of creepy. The recent docu on his life portrays him as quite human behind his artifice.

Artists are not great because they are personally popular- Picasso was a pretty difficult man- not exactly cozy. But like Warhol he changed the visual arts.

I think he deserves some appreciation and respect, and he was a trailblazer of certain paths. Having said that, he's definitely overexposed and overappreciated in some ways.

To my eye and aesthetics, his value isn't in the repetition of some of his celebrity focused work, but rather on the way he saw life as art. He would collect storage boxes, two weeks of whatever mail, newspapers and other content that came to him.....he collected and stored it. I've been at the Warhol museum when they would take one of those boxes out and display it, in almost an archaeological way. It was interesting and sort of predated a whole bunch of things - reality as content or art, the age of Instagram and influencers, etc.

[quote] everyone trying to sell you that Ladybird was some genius movie. Ladybird is like that thing you see scrolling on the digital cable on a lazy Sunday morning you are cleaning that will provide unoffensive background noise. Or like White Lotus being the show you HAVE to see. but people are not good at not being sheep so, fall in line or start making sweaters.

So if R150 doesn't like something, it cannot possibly have any merit to anyone, ever ever ever.

Got it.

Art literacy, never terribly strong in the U.S. (among other places) is at a pitiful point. In the 1950s and 1960s into the 1970s, there remained a sort of Smart Set, sometimes rich sometimes not, who could discuss Literature, Art, Music, Theatre (and not just dreadful musicals), knew a bit about Urban Design and Architecture, and a bit about Geography, mainly from having done a bit of travel themselves.

That's been replaced with gauche people whose knowledge of "Culture" rarely extends beyond ankle-deep brand names. They are ignorant of the traditional Arts and Humanities, and more than a little proud of it.

Warhol is hated for the very "commercialism" and celebrity culture which they adore. Picasso is dismissed as a hack and a womanizer, more likely as a hack because he was a womanizer. Make the leap to Rothko or Hockney or Calder or Richter or Serra and you will get a blank look from the very few who could offer any statement on Warhol and Picasso. Oh yeah, they may know that eyebrow chick, Frida Kahlo.

Art is completely unimportant in their lives, museums, exhibitions, public sculpture...they don't have a clue and are happy that way. And most of those who venture a thing at all are dumb as dirt.

I bet 95% of American college graduates could not name a single living artist of any nationality. Maybe they could come up with Picasso or Warhol. That’s it. Art, literature, opera, ballet. all non events today for even the so called elite.

Andy made me mashively wealthy.

Well said, R159.

I love Warhol. His prediction of "fifteen minutes of fame" literally became true. He called out social media 60 years before anybody else.

And if I were a woman, I'd totally own a Campbells Soup Can dress.

IDK, Warhol's auction records don't support OP's premise that he's massively hated. The Andy Warhol Museum was just ranked around 5th or 6th in the nation recently. One thing about Warhol though, he's always flushed the chumps. So sorry, OP, you really don't know what you're talking about. But it's okay, it's only art -- as Warhol famously instructed.

Because he's an unremitting, self involved cunt no one else is willing to jettison such a horrible human being.

People are such cowards that they played Warhol's shit manipulative game over and over again. Stupid cunts bending over and getting a Supreme and hateful slap, much like Sean Spicer.

Because he's an unremitting, self involved cunt no one else is willing to jettison such a horrible human being.

People are such cowards that they played Warhol's shit manipulative game over and over again. Stupid cunts bending over and getting a Supreme and hateful slap, much like Sean Spicer.

His name will live forever, R165, is it?

I think Valerie Solanas just entered the thread.

OP's entire premise is faulty, yet here we are, still arguing about it years later. Warhol would love that.