Andy Warhol (Penguin Lives) [Hardcover]

Wayne Koestenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Lives | Publication Date: September 6, 2001

The sixties were the "sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll" era, and Andy Warhol was its cultural icon. Painter, filmmaker, photographer, philosopher, Warhol was both celebrity and celebrant, the man who put the "pop" in art. His studio, The Factory, where his free-spirited cast of "superstars" mingled with the rich and famous, was ground zero for the explosions that rocked American cultural life. And yet for all his fame, Warhol was an enigma: a participant in the excesses of his time who remained a faithful churchgoer, a nearly inarticulate man who was also a great aphorist ("In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes"), an artist whose body of work sizzles with sexuality but whose own body was a source of shame and self-hatred.

In his bravura account of Warhol's life and work, scholar and culture critic Wayne Koestenbaum gets past the contradictions and reveals the man beneath the blond wig and dark glasses. Nimbly weaving brilliant and witty analysis into an absorbing narrative, Koestenbaum makes a convincing case for Warhol as a serious artist, one whose importance goes beyond the sixties. Focusing on Warhol's provocative, powerful films (many of which have been out of circulation since their initial release), Koestenbaum shows that Warhol's oeuvre, in its variety of form (films, silkscreens, books, "happenings"), maintains a striking consistency of theme: Warhol discovered in classic American images (Brillo boxes, Campbell soup cans, Marilyn's face) a secret history, the erotic of time and space.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Do a faithful rendering of a soup can, a silk-screened photograph of a starlet, or a film of an empty chair constitute works of art? They do, poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum ably demonstrates, if their author was Andy Warhol.

Warhol, who once observed that in time everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, himself earned early fame "as artist and whirlwind, as impresario and irritant." That fame endured over a career that stretched over four decades, as does his influence, even in some unexpected quarters: "Martha Stewart owes a lot to Andy Warhol," Koestenbaum volunteers. But Warhol, Koestenbaum argues, was much more than an artist. He helped shape the popular culture of his day; he launched the careers of dozens of musicians and artists; he revolutionized interior design, making his studio, the Factory, "an ambient artwork"; and he used art as a way of exploring matters of life, death, sexuality, and group behavior. He was, in short, a self-made phenomenon, an odd American success story.

The price for that success was high, Koestenbaum writes: the controversies Warhol inspired did not always serve him well, his associates had a habit of dying young, and he himself survived an assassination attempt that gave his later work an air of being "bulletins from the afterlife." This slender biography tells all those stories very well, and students of art and contemporary culture will learn much from it. --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal

Warhol is indisputably one of the handful of towering figures of 20th-century art. Yet for all his success and the ubiquity of his images, he remains an icon filled with contradictions. This enigmatic artist has inspired a vast body of monographs, prompting one to wonder why another book is necessary. Koestenbaum (The Queen's Throat), one of our most insightful practitioners of contemporary cultural criticism, immediately puts that question to rest. His analysis of the Warhol phenomenon ranges from the artist's early-1950s line drawings, through his filmic output, to his work after his near-fatal shooting by a disgruntled acquaintance. Koestenbaum shines his flashlight on Warhol's sexuality and complicated body issues, arguing convincingly that they influenced practically everything the artist did and said. The text is constructed not only from a scholarly examination of the work but also from the obscure but fascinating aphorisms and insights of Warhol's personal acquaintances. As readable as any good novel, Koestenbaum's frank approach to Warhol is long overdue. Essential for all collections. Douglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (September 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670030007
• ISBN-13: 978-0670030002
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #776,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gorgeous, innovative work, April 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Andy Warhol (Penguin Lives) (Hardcover)

As a Warhol scholar, and someone who has read dozens of books and essays about him, I would heartily recommend this as an _addition_ to the other works. It's not really a biography in the traditional sense at all, and it certainly shouldn't be the first or only thing you read.

If you prefer a clinical, detached, "just the facts, ma'am" approach - skip this. If you are terrified by 20th century philosophy and psychoanalysis - skip this. If you find it easier to disparage strawman concepts like "postmodernism" rather than actually reading and thinking about continental philosophy (yes, I know it's difficult) - skip this. And judging from the reviews, if you're terribly uncomfortable with sexual themes or "swishiness" in art or writing - forget it.

The book is excellent. The prose is often rich and compelling - my copy is dogeared from all the passages I've marked - and the philosophical and psychoanalytic themes, while not developed, can be very suggestive. Koestenbaum has an excellent reading of many of the films - perhaps the most important and underexamined aspect of his work. Warhol's art is certainly not reduced to postmodernist cliches (as it has been so often elsewhere) nor is it reduced to being "about" his sexual identity. In a striking change, Warhol is not considered as a celebrity or a monster, but like the frail yet determined individual he was, the complex and multifaceted life he led, and the gorgeous, troubling, powerful art he produced. If you don't know anything about Warhol, if you've haven't seen much of his work or any of his films, don't start with this book - you'll be confused and dissappointed. But if you already think you know all about Warhol, and you read this book -slowly - while looking at his work, I think you've find it an incredibly helpful guide.

For real reviews, ...read Hal Foster's review in the London Review of Books

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really Up There, September 20, 2001

By 

"paullyndelives" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Andy Warhol (Penguin Lives) (Hardcover)

This is an important book, the first biography of Warhol to put his films at the center of the vast project that was Warhol's life and work, life transformed into work. Rather than rely on received ideas, Koestenbaum has availed himself of the overwhelming Warhol archive (from time capsules to scrapbooks); actually watched and considered all the Warhol movies currently restored and available for viewing; and looked at the paintings and sculptures--which is how he can, in lightning bright prose, provide a new beginning for thinking about Warhol. No familiar folksy "Andy" but an artist as strange and daunting as any other this country has produced. Few writers on Warhol ever bother to LOOK AT (and READ) what Warhol did; Koestenbaum does look, and his looking becomes the basis for his illuminating, trenchant commentary. (The electric chic of his sentences is as theoretically bracing as his critical observations.) Too many think they know who or what Warhol was/is. Bravely, Koestenbaum allows his thought as writing to be as new, estranging and probing as Warhol's art. "Ur-sexual" Warhol working non-stop to negotiate the glamourous nothingness and Ronellian stupidity called being or "life": this is the Warhol Koestenbaum pushes, star-like, into the klieg light, finally ready for his close-up.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Makes You Care Again, October 28, 2001

By 

"tyuro" (Vancouver) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Andy Warhol (Penguin Lives) (Hardcover)

This book makes you care again for Andy Warhol. In too many books and articles about Warhol, the authors seem to have some sort of vendetta against him and just want to tear him and his work down. Wayne Koestenbaum cares a great deal for Warhol, and his work. It is his work that is central to this look at his life, though from the start there is no denial of his homosexuality which Warhol himself desperately tried to keep somewhat hidden. You should have something of a familiarity with Warhol's work and life, this isn't really a good introduction to it, but it is the best interpretation of it that I have ever read. It is written with a great deal of sympathy for one of the 20th Century's greatest artists, who most critics - both hetro and homo - try to denigrate and destroy.