Art

Andy Warhol may have embodied – or even invented – some of the worst excesses of modern consumer culture, but his passion for accumulation (‘the more the better’) was no more fierce than his work ethic. When talking about work for his book ‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)’, he quips that Picasso’s 4,000 masterpieces over a lifetime made him want to create ‘4,000 in a day’, all of which would be masterpieces because ‘they would all be the same painting’. This playful remark masked a serious drive to transform life’s ephemera into art. Any bid for immortality is about fending off the reality of the human lifespan; Warhol took this to the workaholic’s logical conclusion: the more art he could produce, the better insured he would be against death because there would be so much of him ‘out there’. Feature continues

If, as Warhol argued, ‘making money is art, working is art’, then everyone is an artist – but Warhol wasn’t a man to let a little sophistry about the relationship between work and art hold him back: he named his studio the Factory and roped in everyone from his family and employees to his ‘superstars’ to help him establish and maintain brand Warhol. But strip out the glamour and the posing (which can be hard with Warhol) and what do you have? An immigrants’ child (Warhol grew up in Depression-era Pittsburgh, the son of Czechoslovakian Catholics) who has been handed down a strong work ethic and the obligation to craft his parents’ sacrifices into something more beautiful.

Factory Diary: Andy Warhol on the Phone, 1978

Warhol didn’t just bring his mother, Julia, to New York in the 1950s, although she helped out on his first ‘production line’ and even signed his work in her more marketable flowery handwriting. He brought her ethics, too: the competitive spirit honed by drawing competitions at the kitchen table between the Warhol brothers; helping Julia sell paper flowers planted in Campbell’s soup cans; a belief in the utility of ‘leftovers’ that allowed him thriftily to spot and use talents that others disdained or had simply failed to notice.

Photographer Billy Name could light a set and operate a camera – but he could also cut hair. The poet Gerard Malanga worked on Warhol’s screen prints and performed in his films, as well as going on stage with the Velvet Underground and serving as a model: ‘Self-portrait with Gerard Malanga and Philip Fagan’, a photobooth photo (and therefore arguably a different kind of leftover), is on display in the Hayward’s exhibition. In a 1967 conceptual film, the singer Nico recited a poem against the sunset. Warhol followed Ondine (Bob Olivo), one of the Factory superstars, around with a tape recorder to enable him to ‘write’ a book, ‘A: A Novel’, which was actually a collection of literal transcriptions, each tape a chapter. In Warhol’s cinematic world, there were no extras: his lover John Giorno is filmed sleeping for ‘Sleep’ (1963); his friend and curator Henry Geldzahler smokes a cigar and strikes a pose referencing Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein.

Jane Holzer screen test, 1964

Unlike Warhol, born in 1928, the Factory-goers were mostly in their early twenties; he was compelled to harness their energy on film and tape. Several of the ‘kids’ may have drizzled away their lives and died early, drugs-related deaths (Edie Sedgwick was a notable example), but no material was wasted: Warhol loved the fact that he could screen-print an image with Malanga until the ink ran out, or make portraits in a photo booth, that the film ‘stops’ would appear at the end of the reel or that his Sony recorder would collect all the bumps and knocks on tape and also allow him to recover (and therefore recycle) all his words. He celebrated the accidents that would have caused others to discard work, including keeping the out-of-focus reel of Sedgwick in ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’ (1965).

From the late 1970s, Warhol’s working life hardened into habit. He dictated his diary to Pat Hackett on the phone every morning, taping this and his other telephone gossip sessions. On his way to the Factory, he shopped for Native American art, art deco furniture, jewellery or cookie jars. (Warhol’s collecting may have been the most serious aspect of his life. He devoted the last chapter of ‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol’ to shopping for underwear; the posthumous Sotheby’s sale of his collection contained more than 10,000 items.) He would lunch with clients; often, he would tape-record these lunches, too. After an afternoon of screen printing or painting, he would attend openings, receptions dinners and parties. ‘I have Social Disease,’ he once announced. ‘I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.’ Still, according to Warhol, the only reason to play hard was to ‘work hard – not the other way around’. It’s a surprisingly bleak philosophy for an artist often deemed the father of the ‘me’ culture, but then nobody was ever going to award Warhol any prizes for human interaction. Still, that wasn’t what he was after. Twenty-one years after his death, Warhol appears to have proved that hard work can make you immortal. Perhaps somewhere, in a circle of hell reserved for self-fabulists, his shade is smiling.

‘Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms’ is at the Hayward Gallery until January 18.