Andy warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Two by Dave Jaffe

   Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Two




      Andy Warhol told people in effect in the mid-1960's, "I'm retiring from painting." In fact Warhol never did stop painting. Yet soon he was making films that often bored people. Then he sponsored a rock band called 'The Velvet Underground' and started to write books. He set up a work space in New York City called 'The Factory' where he painted, wrote and filmed movies. The Factory was soon overrun with disturbed speed freaks and heroin addicts. Even so, Warhol had by now become one of the most famous visual artists in the United States.
     Warhol showed himself indifferent to the deaths and/or suicides of some of the unhinged people around him. Then in 1968 Warhol himself nearly died. On June 3,1968, a disturbed feminist named Valerie Solanas shot Warhol twice in the stomach as well as one other man in The Factory. "He had too much control over my life," Solanas said after surrendering to police.
    Warhol survived but he went around in great pain for the rest of his life. Warhol then went on to discard most of the disturbed people that had cluttered up his life. In the 1970's, he moved into the circle of celebrities. As a child Warhol had adored the film stars of Hollywood like Judy Garland and used to send them fan letters. Now in the 1970's, he hung out with celebrities like Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, Bianca Jagger, the wife of rock star Mick Jagger and Lee Radziwill. He danced at Studio 54, an exclusive dance hall where only celebrities were allowed in.
     "It's hard to get in to Studio 54," Warhol wrote. "But once you're in you could end up dancing with Liza Minelli. At 54 the stars are nobody because everybody is a star."
      Warhol also befriended families of loathsome dictators like the Shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.  He got to know the Shah's sister and also Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand Marcos. Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand later became infamous because of her massive shoe collection. While tens of millions of Filipinos eked out a bare existence the Marcos family lived high off the hog. Later the Shah and Marcos were overthrown by revolutions.
     Warhol also painted many portraits of Mao Tse Tung, another brutal dictator who ruled China with an iron fist from 1949 to 1976. Warhol never met Mao. He just used an official photo as a guide to his portraits. By now, Warhol was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by doing portraits of the rich and famous. 
      In 1981, Warhol attended the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president. He also taped an interview with First Lady Nancy Reagan for his now flourishing magazine quite rightly called 'Interview'. Left wing critics like Alexander Cockburn raked Warhol over the coals for breathlessly listening to Nancy Reagan and never once criticizing her or her husband for the uncaring lives they were living. As U.S. president Ronald Reagan cut social programs to the bone making millions of poor Americans even poorer. Meanwhile his government shoveled out huge tax cuts to the rich.
     The 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes had never liked Warhol's art. Now he went after Warhol again. Warhol, he said, " was the shallow painter whose entire sense of reality was shaped like Reagan's sense of power, by the television tube."  All of this was true. Warhol by the way was gay and had many close male friends. Whether he made love to any of them remains an unanswered question.