Born August 6: Andy Warhol

For an artist so often dismissed as shallow, Andy Warhol’s work remains a permanent feature of the twentieth century. The way Andy saw the world shaped what the world has become. You can’t say that about Pollock or Motherwell or Rothko or Rauschenberg or Johns (the last two of which—gay, closeted, dating each other—didn’t want to be seen with Andy because he wasn’t butch enough). You might say it about Picasso, but Picasso didn’t make movies (sixty-six shorts and features, many with Paul Morrissey) or start magazines (Interview, still being published today) or produce bands (The Velvet Underground) or have his own show on MTV or coin a phrase as widely-used and enduring as fifteen minutes of fame. Born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh in 1928, he was an illustrator for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New Yorker before he could support himself by his art. His first submissions to galleries were drawings of male nudes that were deemed too gay; his first solo show, in 1952, was called Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote. Within four years his work was shown in a group exhibition at MoMA. In the Sixties he made his silk screens of soup cans, Marilyns, Elvises, and Jackies, and in 1968 he was shot, almost fatally. His death, in 1987, followed routine gall bladder surgery and several hospital missteps such as overloading him with fluids and failing to monitor his condition. He had avoided and postponed the operation because he did not trust doctors and hospitals. He would have been 80 today.