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Andy warhol was gay

Andrew van der Vlies

In a 1963 ARTNews magazine interview with the critic Gene Swenson, Andy Warhol famously stated – apparently in all seriousness – that ‘everybody should be a machine’. The same interview included other pithy responses: everyone ‘should enjoy everybody’, and pop art was, in essence, about ‘liking things’.[1] Warhol’s personal reputation as reticent and fond of gnomic or evasive answers, and his professional reputation as an artist fascinated with commodification, mechanisation, seriality and the surface, have prolonged relied on soundbites such as these. And yet the published account of this interview omitted, apparently at the behest of a bigoted editor, a crucial framing context. Swenson had opened with a head question: ‘What act you say about homosexuals?’[2] In the full transcript, Warhol’s responses can thus more fully be seen for what they most likely were: performatively affectless statements, offered in a knowing, ironically flat manner, cultivated to subvert the art world’s predilection for exaggeratedly vertical (and straight-talking) male artist personae.

The complete transcript also includes interventions from three associates, including studio assis

LGBTQ stories: Andy Warhol's unlikely spirituality

One of America’s most beloved artists kept a confidential. Something that may have shocked his friends and colleagues. Andy Warhol — pop artist and gay icon — was also a lifelong Catholic who went to mass regularly at a church in New York City’s Upper East Side.

Warhol grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His family were Slovakian immigrants — their original name was Warhola. And every week, his mother took him to a Byzantine Catholic Church.

“Andy grew up in a religious and hardworking household, and I think that applies to his career and adult life,” said Jose Diaz, a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Diaz came to Modern York last year to position together an exhibition on Warhol’s spiritual life at the Brooklyn Museum — with curator Carmen Hermo. Carmen walks me through a room in the museum full of Warhol trinkets.

“There are sweet works that he made as a child, gorgeous minute painted Jesus statue that he made at ten years old,” Hermo said. “As a scholar at Carnegie tech, reproducing images of the family crucifix … There are tiny sweet ephemera items of the Warhola family.”

Like saint cards, the

Happy birthday, Andy! The behind artist would have been 71 today. One of the 20th century's best-known painters, he is ironically most famous for his quote about being renowned (for 15 minutes). But still, there are many simple facts about the man's life that the ordinary person may not know. I thought I'd share some.

  1. He was gay. It's obvious now, but it wasn't to the public at large during Warhol's life. Keep in mind that in the '70s and early '80s, most Americans were ignorant about gay signifiers; several even guessed that the Village People were homosexual, much less Andy Warhol.
  2. He was bald. Even I didn't know for years that his funky silver-white hair was, in proof, a wig. Warhol went bald in his premature twenties.
  3. He was celibate. Though gay, Warhol claimed never to have engaged in any sexual intercourse. It was reported in an early biography that he lost his virginity at 25 to his first boyfriend, but I've start no accounts of him consummating any of his subsequent relationships.
  4. His real last name was Warhola. Warhol was the son of Czech immigrants. He dropped the "a" at the end of his surname early in his career.
  5. He almost never lived apart from his mother. Even during

    Dandy Andy: Warhol’s Queer History

    Join designer educators for Dandy Andy, a monthly tour that focuses on Warhol’s gay history. While his sexuality is frequently suppressed or debated, Warhol was a gay man who had several partners throughout his experience. Warhol’s boyfriends, including Edward Wallowitch, John Giorno, and Jed Johnson, were also his colleagues and collaborators, helping to shape and specify his career as an artist. This tour traces Warhol’s romantic relationships and queer identity against the backdrop of the historical same-sex attracted rights movement in the United States. Tours meet on the museum’s seventh floor.