xi, 961 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : 25 cm

The definitive biography of a fascinating and paradoxical figure, one of the most influential artists of his--or any--age. To this day, mention the name "Andy Warhol" to almost anyone and you'll hear about his famous images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. But though Pop Art became synonymous with Warhol's name and dominated the public's image of him, his life and work are infinitely more complex and multi-faceted than that. In Warhol, esteemed art critic Blake Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions. "The meanings of his art depend on the way he lived and who he was," as Gopnik writes. "That's why the details of his biography matter more than for almost any cultural figure," from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing as the child of immigrants to his early career in commercial art to his total immersion in the "performance" of being an artist, accompanied by global fame and stardom--and his attempted assassination. The extent and range of Warhol's success, and his deliberate attempts to thwart his biographers, means that it hasn't been easy to put together an accurate or complete image of him. But in this biography, unprecedented in its scope and detail as well as in its access to Warhol's archives, Gopnik brings to life a figure who continues to fascinate because of his contradictions--he was known as sweet and caring to his loved ones but also a coldhearted manipulator; a deep-thinking avant-gardist but also a true lover of schlock and kitsch; a faithful churchgoer but also an eager sinner, skeptic, and cynic. Wide-ranging and immersive, Warhol gives us the most robust and intricate picture to date of a man and an artist who consistently defied easy categorization and whose life and work continue to profoundly affect our culture and society today

To this day the name "Andy Warhol" conjures his famous images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. But though Pop Art became dominated the public's image of him, Warhol's life and work are infinitely more complex and multi-faceted. Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions, from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing as the child of immigrants to global fame and stardom. Warhol was a man of contradictions, who defied easy categorization and whose life and work continue to profoundly affect our culture and society today. -- adapted from jacket

Includes bibliographical references and index

1928-1934. Birth ; Pittsburgh ; Carpatho-Rusyns ; Church -- 1934-1945. Family life ; School ; Illness ; The Carnegie Institute ; Schenley High ; College bound -- 1945-1947. Fine arts at Carnegie Tech ; Classmates and teachers ; A dose of failure ; Window dressing ; Gay life and its dangers ; Artistic role models -- 1947-1949. Dada amd film at Tech ; Outlines Gallery and the avant-arde ; Star student ; Origins of the blotted line ; New York horizons -- 1949. First New York digs and contracts ; Fashion magazines ; Record covers, book jackets -- 1949-1951. Franziska Boas and the bohemian life ; A starving-artist commune ; Tommy Jackson and a first flirtation ; Living solo and hunting for work -- 1951-1952. New luxuries ; Otto Fenn ; Stalking Capote ; Julia Warhola arrives ; Commercial success ; Whimsical chapbooks -- 1952-1954. Hugo Gallery and an homage to Capote ; To lower Lexington ; The cats ; The first boyfriend ; The first wig -- 1954-1955. Serendipity Café ; Coloring parties ; Camp ; The Loft Gallery -- 1955-1956. Window display ; Shoes shoes shoes ; Nathan Gluck arrives ; The Bodley Gallery -- 1956-1959. Generosity ; Charles Lisanby ; The world tour ; Compulsive shopping ; Edward Wallowitch ; Ray Johnson ; The foot book ; A silver décor for the theater ; 1,000 names and where to drop them -- 1960-1961. The new town house ; Illness ; Art collecting ; Judson church performances ; Emile de Antonio ; The threat of photography ; An art-market boom -- 1961. Window props become pop art ; Yves Klein ; Ivan Karp and Henry Geldzahler visit the studio -- 1961-1962. Youth culture ; Faux innocence ; The critical reception of pop -- 1962. Warhol, a "new talent" ; Hunt for a gallery ; Painting money ; Soup cans in Los Angeles ; Martha Jackson cancels a show ; The Stable Gallery steps up -- 1962. Birth of the silkscreen ; Liz Taylor and baseball ; "New realists" and the launch of pop ; Marilyn at the stable -- 1963. The firehouse ; Death and disasters ; Costumes for The Beast in Me ; Photo booth portraits ; A portrait of Ethel Scull ; Mona Lisa -- 1963. Gerard Malanga starts work ; Downtown poets ; Amphetamines ; Downtown filmmakers ; Home movies with Jack Smith in Old Lyme ; John Giorno in Sleep ; Kiss ; The put-on -- 1963. Elvis and Liz in Los Angeles ; Driving to L.A. ; Hollywood reception and Marcel Duchamp ; Taylor Mead and Naomi Levine in Tarzan ; Mourning J.F.K. ; Jackie ; The haircuts -- 1964. Finding the Factory ; Screen tests ; Billy Name ; The Factory, silvered ; Boxes at the Stable Gallery -- 1964. The first Factory party ; Most Wanted Men for the World's Fair ; A raunchy Couch and Blow Job ; The Empire State Building, observed ; Flowers -- 1964. From Eleanor Ward to Leo Castelli ; Stipend stability ; Baby Jane Holzer, girl of the year ; Soap Opera ; Pop goes mainstream -- 1965. An anti-Christmas tree ; Film accolades ; Speed freaks ; Henry Geldzahler smokes a cigar ; Philip Fagan, first of the live-in lovers ; 30 films in one year ; Movies and the death of painting -- 1965. Edie Sedgwick ; To Paris with friends ; Superstardom ; Andy and Edie, fashion twins ; The striped shirt ; The birth of video art: outer and inner space ; Warhol fan clubs ; A celebrity, at last -- 1965. Factory rivalries ; New arrivals: Paul Morrisey, Brigid Berlin, Bibbe Hansen ; Too many parties ; My Hustler ; Danny Williams moves in, then out -- 1965. Andymania at the Philadelphia I.C.A. ; Warhol sculpts his persona -- 1966. The Velvet Underground ; Rocking a dinner for shrinks ; Fall of Edie, rise of Ingrid Superstar -- 1966. The exploding plastic inevitable ; New Warholians: Mary Woronov, Susan Bottomly, Susan Pile ; The end of illustration ; Money worries, and hopes ; A Velvet Underground album -- 1966. Silver clouds and wallpaper cows ; Julia Warhola at home, and ailing ; Richard Rheem moves in, then out -- 1966. Repetition as an art supply ; A portrait of Holly Solomon ; Clouds and cows cross the country ; A Boston retrospective ; The Velvets on tour ; "You're In" perfume ; Jane Heir, a failed feature film ; The birth of Chelsea Girls -- 1967. Max's Kansas City ; Flesh on film: Bike Boy and Nude Restaurant ; A crumbling Factory ; Rod La Rod; The Andy Warhol Story; Superstar Russian roulette -- 1967. Dead-end art ; Prints, a new income stream ; Chelsea Girls goes national, and to Cannes ; Thirteen Most Wanted Men in Paris ; End of the Velvets -- 1967. Four Stars--25 hours of film ; a: a novel--24 hours of talk ; Andy Warhol's Index (book) ; A fake lecture tour ; Exit Gerard Malanga ; The silver Factory shuts down -- 1968. A new studio on Union Square ; Lonesome Cowboys in Arizona ; Order replaces chaos ; Last of the Factory crowd ; Fancy Fred Hughes ; A survey in Sweden -- 1968. Valerie Solanas ; SCUM Manifesto ; I, a man ; The shooting ; The hospital ; The arrest -- 1968. Recovery ; Security at the studio ; Midnight Cowboy ; Solanas and the feminists ; Flesh and the business of film ; New (super- ) stars: Joe Dallesandro and a transgendered trio -- 1968. Home from the hospital ; Editing Lonesome Cowboys ; 100 happy Rockefellers ; Julia in decline ; Jed Johnson moves in ; Back in the saddle but still sore ; Pat Hackett, ultimate ghostwriter ; Hospital bills, lawsuits and rubber checks ; Profitable portraits -- 1968-1969. Fuck, a blue movie ; Forays into conceptualism: vaccum cleaners and superstars for rent ; "Raid the Icebox" and the museum as art ; Floating chairs and rain machines ; Video ventures ; A sundae for Schrafft's -- 1969. Valerie Solanas gets out ; More surgery ; Rolling Stones album covers ; Hollywood film plans collapse (twice) ; Gerard Malanga's "Male Parade" ; The birth of Interview ; Business art, the next step after art ; Frozen foods at the Andy-Mat -- 1970-1971. A Warhol retrospective (again) ; Bob Colacello and Vincent Fremont come on board ; Andy Warhol, super-shopper ; New patrons: Sandy and Peter Brant ; L'Amour and its crowd ; VIP living ; Failures in theater: Andy Warhol's Pork and Man on the Moon -- 1971-1972. Financial fiddling ; Fine cars and real estate ; Country life and celebrity renters: Lee Radziwill and the Kennedy kids, Mick and Bianca Jagger -- 1972-1973. Julia Warhola heads home to die ; Chairman Mao and the un-death of painting ; Biting into Europe's upper crust ; The Polaroid big shot, for big shots ; Gallstone warning ; Frankenstein and Dracula in Rome ; With Warhol, Liz Taylor is in The Driver's Seat -- 1974. Warhol headquarters in Paris ; Interview, fashion and society ; Halston and Glamour ; The bent genders of Ladies and Gentlemen ; The philosophy of Andy Warhol (and of his ghostwriters) ; POPism, a (non- ) autobiography -- 1974-1975. A new home ; Jed Johnson decorates ; Return of Brigid Berlin ; Time Capsules and the fine art of junk ; Highborn interns ; A Rolls-Royce to the Diamond District ; The Interview lunch and its prey -- 1975-1977. Portrait prey: Iranian royals and Imelda Marcos ; At the White House with Gerald Ford ; In Georgia with Jimmy Carter ; Commercial art: athletes, pets, cars, and houses ; Victor Hugo and the nude as landscape ; Piss paintings -- 1977-1980. Studio 54 ; Shadow paintings ; Portraits at the Whitney ; Bad, the last movie ; Jed Johnson leaves -- 1981. Warhol the model ; Exposures: a social life ; Ronald Feldman's buisness propositions ; Outsourcing to Rupert Smith -- 1982-1983. The new art kids ; Warhol and Basquiat ; Rorschach paintings ; Shopping and collecting -- 1982-1986. The ConEd studio ; Andy Warhol TV ; Tensions with Fred Hughes ; Ad work ; The Love Boat ; Camouflage paintings ; Jon Gould ; AIDS ; Warhol's charity -- 1986-1987. Crystal therapy ; Last suppers in Milan ; Stitched photos ; The last runway ; Gallbladder trouble ; The fatal surgery -- Postlude: afterlife

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