Andy Warhol obsessively documented his life, but he also lied constantly, almost recreationally.
, part conceptual, part painterly, and edging into “Pop,” a style that used imagery from mass culture—comic strips, movies, advertising—and adopted a light, playful tone, the very opposite of the Abstract Expressionists’ heavy lifting. Warhol, too, was interested in this popular matter and manner, and he was annoyed that other people were, as he saw it, stealing a march on him.
He soon became a celebrity himself, if an unusual one. In his thirties, he was famous, in TV interviews, for putting two fingers over his lips and saying things like “er” or “um,” but not much more, as the cameras rolled. For live interviews, he would often bring along Gerard Malanga, who worked with him, and say, “Why don’t you ask my assistant Gerry Malanga some questions? He did a lot of my paintings.” There was some truth to this.
In the same year as the “Nine Jackies,” Warhol unveiled silk screens of his “Flowers,” big, blobby hibiscus blossoms against a grassy field. They looked like wallpaper or, as Gopnik suggests, Marimekko dress fabrics. In any case, they were something that, unlike a picture of an electric chair, you might be willing to hang over your living-room sofa.
Just as Warhol’s movies were not merely movies, the Factory was not merely a place where things were made. It was also a showcase for a certain group of people who clustered around Warhol. Billy Name was one; Gerard Malanga another. Also important was Ondine , wild and vicious. Best known to outsiders was Edie Sedgwick, a sweet-faced and rather hapless rich girl who, in black tights and expensive sweaters, often went along on Warhol’s outings, as his “date,” and paid the tab.
This story won him an enduring reputation, with those so minded, as an emotionless person, a sort of freak—an image reinforced by his paintings of soup cans and electric chairs. Cold heart, cold art. Gopnik doesn’t say whether or not he believes the report, but he concludes that, if it is true, it says as much about Warhol’s desire to shock as about his supposed lack of feeling. He also points out that Warhol used the joke more than once.
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