Customer Reviews

Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bob Colacello put all his unpublished Warhol writing projects into a cocktail shaker and added some ice. The result is this frothy, gossip ridden, whiskey sour. A 504 page, tall drink that doesn't get any sweeter as you suck it down. The anecdotes about Imelda Marcos, Truman Capote, Farah Diba make it seem like the 70's took place on another planet. It's a fun read and I laughed out loud quite a few times. But one get's the feeling that this book was written as revenge on Warhol for the social abuse that Colacello "suffered" during the years they worked together.

I didn't intend to reread this book, but I opened it while searching for an obscure New York address and didn't put it down again until I'd finished reading every page. When it first came out, I remember critics mostly tsk-tsking Colacello because they seemed to think he'd gotten to the place he was through Warhol and no doubt he did...What I failed to notice when the book was first published, was how Colacella and every single "Warhol" person who's written a book had a nervous breakdown as they were spinning (or trying to spin) out of his orbit. I want to read the book that tells WHY these intelligent creative people threw themselves so totally into Warhol's world...a world that couldn't have existed without them.....All I can say is, if your intent is to try and understand Warhol, then Bob Colacello's book is the absolute best take...besides yourself.

This is an enlightening account of Andy Warhol. It's one thing to see the images an artist creates, but another to see how they create....and live. Bob Colacello gives an insider's account of the years he spent working for Warhol. Though much of the book is written through the author's personal experiences and observations, he seems to give a fair and generous account of the people, places and times involved. Along the way we learn about New York and Europe (and even Iran) in the 70's and 80's, popular culture and high society, politics, and the behind the scenes of the creative, wealthy, and famous...and those who fall in between(for Warhol, the more eccentric the better). Much of what we learn about Warhol is scathing, but ultimately humanizing.

This book tells all: The bohemian life of Andy Warhol and entourage are deliciously dished. It makes one want to visit the old days and the Factory lifestyle of non-stop parties, non-stop sex, non-stop drugs and non-stop whining from Andy. Andy had the world by the balls and knew it

This book is one long whine. While I always enjoyed Bob Colacello's column in "Interview", this book, completed after Andys death (naturally), is a case of someone who, while they've outgrown their job, resents the fact that they're still there. Colacello started out worshipping Warhol, then, as often happens, began to feel he wasn't getting quite the recognition he deserved, at the same time forgetting why anyone knew who he was in the first place. Maybe the label "disgruntled employee" is too pat. But, for all his acknowledged ability to manipulate people to do things for him, it was Andy who retained the fame that many around him coveted. Bob C. sounds like any employee of any company who complains incessently about how his boss doesn't appreciate him. The little man who feels he'll make a better big man than the big man himself, but, remains in the shadows, un-acknowledged. Wanna-be's can get ugly, but his remarks against Warhol, while hardly slanderous, are more of the nit-picking variety, revealing fairly transparent resentments right below the surface. While there are certainly two sides to every story, I always find it fairly loathsome when someone decides to cry of the injustices against them by one who can no longer reply to the accusations. Especially when said injustices are so trivial, but manage to make up a book the size of Gone With The Wind , with money, OF COURSE, just being an afterthought to the cathartic process. I also found the title, "Holy Terror", a trifle exaggerated, but I guess the alternative title of maybe "Complex Famous Artist With Contradictory Personality Flaws Just Like Everyone Else" would have been too long, not to mention that it probably would have sold less books. I certainly would'nt want my eulogy to be an exposed inventory of all the products I have in my bathroom (or BEDROOM!!), yet, the only thing Colacello can conclude his memoir with is a list of the contents of Warhols bathroom beauty products,(if he detested Andy so much, what was he doing in his bathroom, after his death??) patronizingly suggesting that these were the props that poor, shallow Andy needed daily to face the world. (Imagine image-obsessed America WITHOUT all our props...YIKES!!!)This book says more about Colacello (if anyone cared) than it ever could about Andy. If you want a perhaps more balanced view of that time period and its events, read "The Andy Warhol Diaries." ANDYS honesty might surprise you.

This book is like a big box of candy--gossipy and chummy--compulsively readable and bittersweet.

Colacello was a top Warhol insider--for a while--so he was in a good position to give us a first-hand account of what it was like. However he isnt an art critic or art historian, and he's not an artist. So don't expect a lot of analysis into Warhol's art.

This book is more about what it was like to live and work with Andy Warhol. At least what it was like for Bob Colacello. For the most part Colcello seems to remember that and doesn't do a lot of sideline psychoanalysis...for the most part. He draws his conclusions, like the rest of us, and, like the rest of us, tells us probably more about himself than he does about Warhol.

Other people are impossible to know. Probably the best we can do is report as directly as possible what we *see*--without commentary. What we see, all by itself, is commentary enough.

Perhaps Warhol understood this better than any other major artist. It may very well be the key to his oeuvre--the films and paintings, the books and interviews that all seem to be about either nothing, or whatever one makes of them.

It's a lesson that Colacello seems to have drawn from to write "Holy Terror," which is refreshingly free from a lot of the usual compromising motivations of first-person, I-was-there books of this sort: the judgment and self-aggrandizement of the author, and the demonizing of the (usually) dead and now voiceless and therefore defenseless subject.

These sorts of books are usually written, to one degree or another, for revenge...and profit. Indeed, at the very end of this lengthy volume, Colacello acknowledges that his original purpose in writing *Holy Terror* was to "liberate" himself from Andy Warhol. Fortunately, this ulterior motive comes through only rarely, and mostly and most strongly in the concluding chapters, where Colacello tries to sum up Andy Warhol for us.

Colacello has some axes to grind. He felt underappreciated by his boss, for whom he labored to the point of physical and psychological collapse, for thirteen years. He ghostwrote the books for which Warhol was given credit, made Warhol's "Interview" magazine a significant cultural signpost, and accompanied Warhol on what seems to have been a non-stop rollercoaster of all-night parties, openings, and get-togethers with the rich and famous. He served his boss as assistant, commissions pimp, social crutch, and, on many occasions, a shoulder to cry on. And all of this for relatively little financial reward--and even less recognition.

On the other hand, Colacello does seem to remember--even if only in passing and primarily by implication--that without Warhol he and so many others who lived, worked, and complained about the artist would not be the chroniclers, critics, and footnotes to art history and American culture that they are.

Warhol, who, according to Colacello, expressed himself primarily in a series of "gees, umms, oh reallys" comes out of this biographical autopsy relatively intact--by which I mean, pretty much as much of an enigma as before. And inasmuch as this is the case, it is to Colacello's credit.

More than perhaps any other artist, Warhol was a blank screen. It's what he aspired to and what he to a large degree succeeded in achieving. He reflected the people and events around him. Peel the reflective part off a mirror or the paint off a canvas and what have you got?

You cant get the answer you really want from Mona Lisa by asking her. Or by scraping away at her vague smile. There isnt anything underneath. That's the mystery, the horror, the beauty, the holy joke of it all.

Beyond being an all-inclusive portrait of Andy, this book breaks down the public, trends and the superficiality of fame and fortune. I loved this book. It was as addictive as the National Inquirer and as informative as the Times.

I did not intend to read this book. I read the first chapter because my wife told me to, and couldn't put it down. The book is like watching a train wreck. I kept hoping that somebody would stand up and inject some sanity into the lives of these people, but they just kept heading toward disaster and oblivion. While I found that the gossipy nature of the book get in the way of the story, I must admit that Bob Colacello made that time in that place seem both glamorous and horrible. I think it is worth a read, if for no other reason than to be able to sit back and say "I'm so glad my life isn't like that!".

This book was extremely well written and informative. After reading Victor Bockris' Warhol biography, Brigid Berlin's & the Superstars' biographies - then the Diaries (some sections over and over), I thought I was pretty familiar with Andy as a person, artist and businessman. But this book is so intelligently written and thorough in its detail, from the point of view of someone who was there, every day and every night, the impression is like living through those exciting yet stressful times myself. I do not see this as Mr. Colacello's way of complaining about unfair treatment all those years; on the contrary, I think he has a legitimate right to want the truth known about the unacknowledged efforts on Andy's behalf by him, Fred Hughes, Brigid, and others at Warhol Enterprises.

I found this book on the shelf recently unread and found it, after the annoying first chapter on Bob quitting, a rather quick read for the length. While there are stories about famous people, I didn't find the tone mean and the stories about the famous people played to make them sound awful. A lot of time has passed since the book was written and certainly since the events described took place. The names of certain socialites discussed at length will mean nothing to most readers.

In terms of the profile of Warhol, it's fairly rewarding in terms of how he managed people, his projects, how he operated socially and yes what some of his eccentric habits were. But once again, this is more 'tell it like it is' than bitter and negative.