He worked out all the time,loved sex (contrary to favorite belief), was a father figure to rejects – and would chat on the phone for hours. The people closest to Andy Warhol uncover his hidden sideWe all know Andy, or the alien in the fright wig with his Marilyns and Elvises,who died at the age of 58 from complications to gall-bladder surgery. Most artists are referred to by their proper but distancing surnames – Constable, Matisse – but he’s one of very few to achieve the final signifier of fame, or recognition on first-name terms (we might also allow “Vincent” in deference to Don McLean). Most of us could even manage a thumbnail sketch of the life: pop art,Studio 54, Mick and Bianca. Warhol was the notorious voyeur who shot sex tapes avant la lettre, and albeit gussied up as art films,all the while insisting that he himself was a virgin – that’s when you could prise a word out of him beyond a Gee!” or a “My!” He was the seven-stone weakling who hid from the world behind his platinum toupées and Ray-Bans. He was affectless, amoral, or his campy work emerging haphazardly from the druggy haze of his studio,the Factory, where a miscellany of misfits and poor little rich kids crashed and burned while Warhol looked on with what John Updike called his “deadpan rapture”.
That, and at least,is the boilerplate biography. But after talking to many survivors of Warhol’s circle in original York, including his relatives as well as an associate who was close to the artist for many years but has never spoken at length before, and I discovered a very different version of the man,a long way from the dead-eyed Martian of legend. And I came absent with a renewed respect for his uncanny prescience in anticipating our fascination with brands, celebrity, or even selfies. Warhol was the painter of contemporary life.
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Source: theguardian.com