High life
Warhol's put-ons
Taki
ANew York ndy Warhol and I suffered from the same social disease. We both needed to go out to a party every night. When the news came in last Sunday that Andy was dead, I hoped against hope that he might have sent a double to the hospital for gallstone surgery, and that the real Warhol would show up that night in New York but it was not to be. As of this writing, Andy's tragic and untimely death is still a mystery.
He was born Andrew Warhola, the son of a Czech miner-immigrant who died when Andy was only 14. He somehow scraped the money together and attended • the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, graduating in 1949 with a deg- ree in pictorial design. He moved to the Big Apple, cut the final vowel from his name, and quickly found success as a commercial artist.
Ten years after graduating, however, Warhol got bored and began painting in earnest. He never looked back. What he did was revolutionary to some, and a fraud to others, but there was no question that he was instrumental in extending what the public accepted as art. Marilyn Monroe, Brillo boxes, Elvis Presley, cans of soup, Dick Tracy, and the rich and famous all became his subjects, but what really sold Warhols was Andy himself. His forte was the fun he poked at the art world, the constant put-ons, the ambiguity of it all.
He was a fixture of New York nightlife, attending every party, every opening, al- ways surrounded by a group he called his `superstars'. I knew most of them, but my close friend was his very first 'superstar', Baby Jane Holzer. Her discovery was typical and pure Warhol. Jane was an overweight, rich Jewish princesss from the wrong side of Park Avenue. She had trouble with her weight, her parents, but most of all with men. One day, outside Bloomingdale's (where else) she was spot- ted by Andy. 'There's a very mysterious woman,' whispered Andy. Jane Holzer was as mysterious as a nail file, in fact she was like all the other million-odd Jewish princesses in the city, but Warhol was adamant. She became his first 'superstar'.
And the master of the put-on got away with it. Baby Jane Holzer was soon on every chic magazine cover, and no event could be called a happening unless she and her Svengali were present. That was back in the middle Sixties, and Jane was soon followed by Edie Sedwick, the society girl who died from a heroin overdose. Andy got a bum rap on that one. Edie was a druggie long before he made her a star. Warhol never touched drugs, alcohol or tobacco, nor did he encourage them.
Warhol's other put-ons were legion. The one I preferred was his film of a man sleeping for 30 straight hours. He was the most prolific artist of his time, making movies, writing books, publishing Inter- view magazine, hosting cable-TV shows, and painting enough portraits and pictures to fill galleries and museums. And he went out. Every night, and loved it. Especially the glamour of it all. He knew every celebrity in the world, and every celebrity knew him. But it never went to his head.
I used to see him during those wild days of the Sixties, always watching, never speaking, always extremely polite and deferring to others. 'Wow, that's great,, was his favourite expression. He was the most soft-spoken of men, as well as the nicest. In 1968, a deranged feminist shot him. The bullet passed into his left lung, abdomen and chest, and hit his spleen, liver and oesophagus before exiting on the right side. He lay close to death for two months, but never pressed charges. It was after the shooting that he began sending doubles to certain events. At one time I thought there must have been at least as many Warhols making the rounds as there were Warhol groupies.
He was a devout Catholic, and a very loving son. He is survived by two brothers, both of whom still live in Pennsylvania as blue-collar workers. It is usual to finish eulogies by saying how much the recently deceased will be missed. More often than not people are not missed at all. Andy will be, not only by the hundreds who bene- fited from him, but by those who live at night, like myself, who know that the only originals left in this world are to be found at night, Andy's favourite time. He was also my employer for the last two years, which shows that Andy made fun of the literary world, too.
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