Warhol’s first-known rendering of JFK appears as a rough sketch in one of his early drawings of a newspaper front page, Pirates Sieze Ship (1961). In his book Popism (1980), Warhol remarked, “I’d been thrilled having Kennedy as president; he was handsome, young, smart…” yet in this drawing Kennedy appears sweaty and tired after a “tough day” of cabinet meetings shortly after his inauguration.¹  The attractive and dynamic Kennedy that we tend to remember shows up in Warhol’s artworks from later in the decade. Kennedy’s smiling face is partially visible in some of Warhol’s Jackie portraits, in which Warhol had appropriated a photograph of the happy couple greeting their supporters in Dallas.

Earlier that year, investment banker and avid sports fan Richard Weisman commissioned Warhol to paint portraits of ten famous athletes. Although Warhol knew very little about sports, he recognized that star athletes were effectively commodifying their images with movie deals and product endorsements, becoming international celebrities of the same caliber as the musicians, actors, and politicians that Warhol depicted in his emblematic Pop portraits. “I really got to love the athletes because they are the really big stars,” Warhol wrote in his 1979 book, Exposures. (Warhol 210) Along with Ali, Warhol painted some of the most prominent athletes of the twentieth century for this series, including Pelé, O.J. Simpson, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

From March to November of 1977, Warhol travelled the country to meet these athletes and conduct Polaroid photoshoots. He was about halfway through the process when he visited Deerlake, Pennsylvania, to meet Ali at his training camp, “Fighter’s Heaven.” Warhol brought Richard Weisman, his business manager Fred Hughes, and the author Victor Bockris along with him. Bockris had been working for Warhol for less than a year, but he had interviewed Ali extensively, so he served as a mediator between the two unacquainted icons.

Ali told Bockris about his travels as Warhol shot several rolls of Polaroids of Ali’s profile while he was talking. Ali finally addressed Warhol and Hughes directly when he learned that the portraits would be sold for $25,000. “Man is more attractive than anything else! Look at me! White people gonna pay twenty-five thousand dollars for my picture! This little Negro from Kentucky couldn’t buy a fifteen hundred-dollar motorcycle a few years ago and now they pay twenty-five thousand dollars for my picture!” While everyone in the room appreciated Ali’s enthusiasm, Warhol had yet to get a decent photograph, so he worked up the courage to ask the heavyweight champion, “Could we do some where you’re not…er, talking?” (Warhol 212)

The room fell silent. Warhol later wrote that he thought Ali was about to punch him. But instead the Champ smiled, apologized, and struck a series of classic boxing poses. Once Warhol got the shots he needed, Ali showed Warhol and his team the mosque he’d recently built on the log cabin compound. He introduced Warhol to his wife Veronica Porché and their infant daughter Hana. Ali then brought Warhol and his team to another log cabin where he read a poem about the Concorde Jet:

Concorde’s Palace
I was flying the Concorde
at 60,000 feet
And the feeling you get is
really neat
It puts everything New York has
to a pity
So to keep it looking bad they
keep it out of the city.
The Americans should be protesting
to save the young boys
Instead of wasting time protesting
the Concorde’s noise.
The Concorde is the greatest thing
in the history of mankind.
When headed in the right direction
it outruns the sunshine.
The Americans left England years ago
in order to be free
So they should remember that the
people made the Concorde
Out of the roots of their tree. (Warhol 213)

Ali had been known for his poetry ever since he proclaimed, “Moore will go in four” about his fight with Archie Moore in 1962. But in 1967, after his boxing license had been suspended for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War, Ali took to the lecture circuit and began delivering powerful speeches about race, religion, and humanity. After reciting his Concorde poem, Ali treated Warhol and his team to two such lectures, titled Friendship and The Real Cause of Man’s Distress:

“You’re a man of wisdom and you travel a lot, so you can pass on some of the things I say. See, I’m not gonna give you the kindergarten A B C thing.… I mean, I’m going to go into your head now. You might see me punch the bags, you might be white and we live in a world where black is usually played down. It’s not your fault. They made Jesus Christ like you a white man, they made the Lord something like you, they made all the angels in Heaven like you, Miss America, Tarzan king of the jungle is white, they made angel food cake white. You all been brainwashed, we been brainwashed like we’re nothing. You been brainwashed to think you’re wiser and better than everybody, it ain’t your fault. I’m just admit to that. I’m just a boxer, and a boxer is the last person to have wisdom, they’re usually brutes. I’m matching my brain with yours and showing you I’m not going to get on you, but I’m gonna make you feel like a kindergarten child. This black boxer here will make you feel like a kindergarten child. I can give you something more fresh, make you ashamed of your household. I got something here.” (Bockris)

Warhol and Bockris tape recorded the speech, eventually calling it an “interview” although Warhol asked no questions. Instead he sat motionless, with a vacant expression on his face, exercising a version of Ali’s “rope-a-dope” technique as Ali pounded Warhol with impassioned truths about the plight of the African diaspora. Warhol later described the speech this way:

“For forty-five minutes nonstop he raged on about prostitution on the steps of the White House, gravity, meteorites, jumping out of the window, Israel, Egypt, Zaire, South Africa, drugs, broken skulls, delusions, angel food cake, yellow hair, judgment day, Muslim morality, Jesus, boxing, Sweden, the Koran, friendship, and Elvis, relating it all to the central point that ‘man must obey the laws of God or perish!’” (Warhol 213)

Based on this description, it is safe to assume that Warhol did not readily agree with everything Ali said that day. Though Ali was a hero of black liberation, he held controversial views about segregation, interracial dating, feminism, and gay rights. Certain statements about homosexuality and eroticism in film may have bothered Warhol, since according to Bockris, he later commented on the chauvinism in Ali’s remarks. But he also told Bockris that it was “the perfect interview.” (Bockris)

Ali concluded his speech by explaining that he was boxing for the purpose of acquiring a media platform to spread his message, getting a microphone with which he can say “As-Salaam Alaykum” to billions of fans. He announced he was getting ready to “go out and be the black Billy Graham.” Warhol later addressed this declaration in Exposures:

“He could and he should. He’d make another fortune. He has the most beautiful voice, the most beautiful hands, and the most beautiful face. And he can use all three at the same time. That’s why people will listen to him.” (Warhol 213)

After this eventful visit to “Fighter’s Heaven,” Warhol continued to follow Ali’s career. He bit all the fingernails off one hand during Ali’s brutal loss to Larry Holmes in 1980, and he saved newspapers documenting Ali’s diagnosis of Parkinson’s syndrome in 1984. (Warhol, Hackett 331) The Warhol’s archivists found boxing paraphernalia in Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, including a pair of purple Everlast boxing trunks. Warhol also saved materials pertaining to other intersections between boxing and the art world, such as invitations to exhibitions featuring paintings of boxers by Steven Molasky and LeRoy Neiman and a press release for a boxing match between the performance artists Tom Chapman and Tony Labat. Warhol himself collaborated with Jean Michel Basquiat on a series of paintings on punching bags in 1986.

Less is known about what impact meeting Warhol had on Ali, but it is clear that Ali recognized Warhol’s influential role in American culture. Ali knew it was his celebrity and athleticism that drew Warhol to his camp, but he made a point to expose Warhol to his radical activism. This drive is what made Ali a hero outside of the boxing ring and made him a legend worthy of Warhol’s oeuvre.

Works Cited

Bockris, Victor. “The Perfect Interview: The Ali-Warhol Tapes.” Gadfly Online. Gadfly, Apr. 1999. Web. 09 June 2016. http://www.gadflyonline.com/home/archive/April99/archive-aliwarhol.html.

Warhol, Andy, and Bob Colacello. “Muhammad Ali.” Andy Warhol’s Exposures. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1979. 210-13. Print.

Warhol, Andy and Pat Hackett. The Andy Warhol Diaries. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.

Andy Warhol met Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana, on multiple occasions. The first mention of Trump in The Andy Warhol Diaries is from February 22, 1981, when they attended the birthday party of infamous McCarthy-era attorney Roy Cohn. Two months later, on April 24, 1981, Trump visited Warhol’s Factory. They had a business meeting arranged by Marc Balet, the art director of Interview magazine for eleven years. Thus, the saga begins:

“Had to meet Donald Trump at the office. Marc Balet had set up this meeting. I keep forgetting that Marc gave up architecture to become an art director, but he still builds models at home, he told me. He’s designing a catalogue for all the stores in the atrium at the Trump Tower and he told Donald Trump that I should do a portrait of the building that would hang over the entrance to the residential part. […] It was so strange, these people are so rich. They talked about buying a building yesterday for $500 million or something. […] He’s a butch guy. Nothing was settled, but I’m going to do some paintings anyway, and show them to them.” (The Andy Warhol Diaries, 375–376)

A few weeks after that, Warhol and his assistant Christopher Makos met with Balet at Trump Tower, which was still under construction. Makos photographed the architectural models of the building; his photos were used as the source images for Warhol’s portrait of the tower. Warhol also created line drawings from tracing the photographs and burned them onto separate silkscreens. The result was a beautiful series of multilayered paintings in black, silver, and gold; some with a sprinkling of Warhol’s glittering diamond dust. Although the commission had not been officially settled, as the Trumps had not paid for any work, Warhol felt confident:

“Monday, June 1st, 1981
Marc’s arranged it so that the catalogue cover he’s designing will be my painting and then the Trumps would wind up with this painting of their building. It’s a great idea, isn’t it?” (The Andy Warhol Diaries, 386)

When the Trumps returned to the Factory on August 5, the deal didn’t go as expected:

“The Trumps came down. […] I showed them the paintings of the Trump Tower that I’d done. I don’t know why I did so many, I did eight. In black and grey and silver which I thought would be so chic for the lobby. But it was a mistake to do so many, I think it confused them. Mr. Trump was very upset that it wasn’t color-coordinated. They have Angelo Donghia doing the decorating so they’re going to come down with swatches of material so I can do the paintings to match the pinks and oranges. I think Trump’s sort of cheap, though, I get that feeling. And Marc Balet who set up the whole thing was sort of shocked. But maybe Mrs. Trump will think about a portrait because I let them see the portraits of Lynn Wyatt behind the building paintings, so maybe they’ll get the idea….” (The Andy Warhol Diaries, 398)

Warhol never did satisfy the Trumps. After this failed commission, Warhol expressed seeming resentment of the Trumps in his diaries for the next few years. The next Trump-related diary entry is from another birthday party for Roy Cohn on February 26, 1983:

“[…] And Ivana Trump was there and she came over and when she saw me she was embarrassed and she said, “Oh, whatever happened to those pictures?” and I had this speech in my mind of telling her off, and I was undecided whether to let her have it or not, and she was trying to get away and she did….” (The Andy Warhol Diaries, 487–488)

On November 30, 1983, Trump Tower opened to the public. The mixed-use skyscraper—comprised of apartments, offices, an atrium, and stores on the ground levels—has hosted an eclectic variety of events over the years. When Warhol was invited to judge cheerleading tryouts at Trump Tower on January 15, 1984, he complied:

“It was the first tryout, and I was supposed to be there at 12:00 but I took my time and went to church and finally moseyed over there around 2:00. This is because I still hate the Trumps because they never bought the paintings I did of the Trump Tower.” (The Andy Warhol Diaries, 549)

To make room for Trump Tower, a location of great significance in Warhol’s Pop art exhibition history—and also his pre-Pop work—had to be torn down: the Bonwit Teller Department Store. Warhol did many of the store’s huge window displays from the 1950s up to 1968. The most significant of these was that of April 1961, which included his earliest Pop paintings, reproducing popular culture images such as comics, a crossword, and advertisements.

On one occasion, driving by another Trump-owned skyscraper aroused this diary entry from May 2, 1984:

“And I just hate the Trumps because they never bought my Trump Tower portraits. And I also hate them because the cabs on the upper level of their ugly Hyatt Hotel just back up traffic so badly around Grand Central now and it takes me so long to get home.” (The Andy Warhol Diaries, 571)

Interestingly, Donald Trump has not publicly expressed any ill will toward Warhol. In fact he has quoted Warhol in two of his books. It’s actually the same quote; the line “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” from Warhol’s 1975 book, THE Philosophy of Andy Warhol, appears in the introduction to Trump’s Think Like a Billionaire and is referenced three separate times in his Think Like a Champion:

“There’s a certain amount of bravado in what I do these days, and part of that bravado is to make it look easy. That’s why I’ve often referred to business as being an art. I’ve always liked Andy Warhol’s statement that, ‘making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.’ I agree.” (Think Like a Champion, 57)

“We are all businessmen and women, whether you see it that way yet or not. If you like art and can’t make money at it, you eventually realize that everything is business, even your art. That’s why I like Warhol’s statement about good business being the best art. It’s a fact. That’s also another reason I see my business as an art and so I work at it passionately.” (Think Like a Champion, 86)

Perhaps Warhol would have written differently about Trump if the painting commission had worked out. Two of the Trump Tower portraits are now in The Warhol’s permanent collection. The rest of the paintings and drawings are scattered in galleries across the globe. Will Trump’s presidential campaign result in a new level of importance for these paintings?

Works Cited
Warhol, Andy and Pat Hackett. The Andy Warhol Diaries. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.
Trump, Donald and Meredith McIver. Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life. Random House Publishing Group: 2004.
Trump, Donald. Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life. Vanguard Press, 2009.

I was delighted to help someone the way Sarah Williams had helped me. Lauren and her mother attended one of my gallery talks and then came downstairs to interview me in the same office in the basement where I had done my National History Day research 11 years ago. I knew Lauren and I would get along when I found out that she made her own Campbell’s Soup Can costume for Halloween. We talked about Warhol in the context of the 2015 NHD theme, Leadership and Legacy. I gave her some feedback on her project and then sent her off with a long list of book and website recommendations. She advanced to the next level of the competition. I was very moved when she told me that she hopes to be a student intern at The Warhol someday—sound familiar?

After my bosses saw how excited I was to help Lauren, they assigned me all the other interview requests from students doing their NHD projects about Warhol. Just a couple weeks after Lauren, I got an email from Kaylen Anderson. Kaylen lives in Wisconsin, so we did the interview over email. She sent me four questions, including, “Did his homosexuality have an impact on his success?” and “What did we take from the things Andy Warhol did in the 70s?” These questions were very open-ended, and I always have a lot to say about Warhol, so I ended up writing 500–700 words for each answer. Lauren advanced to regionals.

A young man from Washington, D.C. contacted me shortly after Kaylen. He was able to visit Pittsburgh with his family and chat with me in the museum during one of my gallery attendant shifts. When I showed him around the 6th floor, I was impressed by his insights about Warhol’s manipulation of mass media imagery. His group later called me for a phone interview wherein we discussed Warhol’s complex relationship with CBS set designer Charles Lisanby and how his commercial advertising career in the 1950s shaped his later fine art practices.

I thought my art history fairy tale had already come full circle when I began working with National History Day students, especially after working with a student who lives near where I grew up. But then I was contacted by Lydia Wei and her group from my own middle school! I wanted to do everything I could for these Eastern Eagles. We conducted the interview via email and they sent sixteen questions, so I tried to keep my answers concise. Lydia and her group made it to regionals. Another local student contacted me next. Joey Perrino came to the museum in February and interviewed me in the museum’s entrance space. We talked about how Warhol’s friendships with pop stars and socialites impacted his legacy.

A couple months later, I worked with a uniquely passionate student named Nicholas Serrambana. Nicholas is a high school student from Connecticut who has been participating in National History Day for many years. He did an individual performance for his project, a one-man show in which he performed monologues as Willem de Kooning, Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol, and himself. In our phone interview, we talked about the transgressive nature of Warhol’s films and his romance with poet John Giorno. I also helped him edit his truly eloquent script. Nicholas made it to the national competition and earned 12th place in the senior individual performance category.

After the 2015 NHD competition came to an end in June, I figured I wouldn’t be working with more NHD students until late autumn. However, a young lady named Ambika Verma from Las Vegas is getting a head start on the 2016 competition. She emailed me in July and we did a phone interview at the end of August. I told her about the many setbacks Warhol endured throughout his career, including rejection from fine art galleries in the 1950s, police raids of his Factory in the 1960s, and the annual audits conducted by the IRS from 1972 until his death.

This year I hope to see many students apply the Exploration, Exchange, and Encounter theme to Warhol as I did in 2004. I look forward to meeting more students from across the country and sharing my Warhol expertise. Ideally, one day, a new hire will join me at the museum with a dorky NHD origin story of their own.

Lead image: Grace Marston holding copies of books she used for her original research project, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties.

I had never researched an artist before, but learning about Andy Warhol enthralled me from the beginning. I read Popism: The Warhol Sixties and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol as well as scholarly articles that I obtained on a class field trip to the McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland. I was developing a deeper understanding of Warhol’s art, as well as a fondness for Warhol as a person. I chopped up a white wig and dressed up as Warhol for Halloween. I changed my AOL Instant Messenger screen name to “CatsNamedSam,” a reference to the homonymous cats he cared for in the 1950s and the book of cat drawings he released in 1954. I even got a cassette tape recorder and carried it around, although I was often too self-conscious to try to record conversations. After a few weeks of research, my parents drove me to Pittsburgh to visit The Andy Warhol Museum, where I had an appointment with a museum educator named Sarah Williams.

Sarah and I spent about five hours together in the basement of The Warhol; she brought me a stack of books, and I brought a stack of index cards. I remember Sarah photocopying a book of Warhol quotes—a valuable primary source—that helped me better understand the Warhol persona. Eventually I had a “eureka” moment, and I finally felt confident in my thesis about the repetition of images in Warhol’s artwork being a commentary on the repetition in mass manufacturing and the mass media. I had another realization that day: Sarah’s job must be awesome! I asked her about it and she confirmed that it was a great place to work and told me about the career path that led her to becoming an educator at The Warhol. After that experience, I knew I wanted to work in an art museum when I grew up.

When it came time to form NHD groups, I insisted that my group use my research topic as the basis for our project. As my schooling continued, I consistently incorporated art history into any open ended project I was assigned. I made a stop-motion animation about Surrealism for media class; I wrote a biography of Jackson Pollock for a 9th grade English assignment; I earned my required community service hours at a local art gallery. For years I had been preparing to work at any art museum, but in 2011, at age 20, I saw that The Warhol was hiring gallery attendants, and I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

In October of 2011 I was hired as a gallery attendant at The Warhol, and I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Not only had I achieved my dream of working at an art museum, but it was the museum where my interest in art history had begun. By 2013 I had worked my way up to the education department, where I was giving gallery talks, tours, and helping with research projects. When I told other educators about my how my NHD project led me to the museum, I would refer to it as my “dorky origin story” or my “art history fairy tale.” Last November, the tale came full circle: I got an email from the mother of Lauren Allen, a local 8th grader doing her National History Day project about Warhol, asking if there was anyone at the museum Lauren could interview for her project.

Check back next week for Part 2, where I share Lauren’s story, and you’ll see how a new generation of students has enriched my art history fairy tale.

Lead image: Grace Marston giving a gallery talk on the third floor archives floor, in front of items from Warhol’s personal collection.