A new program at The Andy Warhol Museum makes it a more welcoming destination for visitors with autism and sensory sensitivities.  

It’s a toss-up for favorite moment of the morning for 14-year-old Jacob Schmitt: lying on the floor with Andy Warhol’s “floating balloons” dancing overhead, or mashing together blood-red lips and a pastel-colored cat in a collage he crafted in the underground studio of Andy’s museum, The Factory.

“I feel like myself when I do art,” says Jacob.

For Jacob’s mom, Jane Stadnik, it’s about something just as powerful: spending two enjoyable hours in a museum with her son. Jacob has autism, and outings to busy public places can be overwhelming for him and those around him. But on this particular Saturday morning at The Andy Warhol Museum, the goal is making teens and young adults like Jacob with sensory sensitivities—and their caregivers—feel welcome.

“When you come to a program like this, where people are knowledgeable about autism, if he’s stimming [self-stimulating behavior], it’s not a big deal. People go on their way and it makes it so much more of a relaxed experience,” says Stadnik, who made the trip from Ambridge after learning about the free program on Facebook.

“Art has been really inclusive for Jacob. In math class, he notices that he’s different from other kids. But when he rolls into art class, he’s like everyone else. It’s the same here. Art is an equalizer.”

This morning’s sensory-friendly program is not unlike most of the museum’s tours that introduce visitors to Warhol’s life, art, and practice. It reveals many artifacts from the Pop artist’s storied life—from his working-class Pittsburgh roots to his New York stardom. It also points to the lasting impact Warhol still has on artists working today, including the global sensation Chinese activist-artist Ai Weiwei. There’s even dedicated time for artmaking, including Warhol’s signature process of silkscreening.

What is a little different with this tour is the preparation. Knowing that many in today’s group are sensitive to loud noises, bright lights, and crowds, in advance of the visit staff made available a “pre-story” video, designed to inform participants about what they could expect to find at the museum—from the sights and sounds of specific galleries to the location of the bathrooms.

On each floor of the museum is a quiet area that includes a bench and a box full of calming aids that participants grab as needed: noise-cancelling headphones and sunglasses as well as super-stretchy fidgets and weighted blankets—self-regulating tools that promote focus and concentration, decrease stress, and ­keep fidgeting fingers busy.

Also on hand for support and conversation: a small team of occupational therapy students from the University of Pittsburgh and Chatham University.

“It’s not about changing the experience of being at the museum or how Warhol’s art is viewed,” says Leah Morelli, The Warhol’s school programs coordinator who developed the pilot program in partnership with a focus group and advisory committee. “It’s about providing multiple pathways for discovery and a successful experience.”

The art of reading a face

On the museum’s sixth floor, artist-educator Christen DiLeonardo pauses in front of a series of blue, gold, and grey silkscreens of Jackie Kennedy. The paintings, she explains  to a wandering group in tow, are significant because they combine two of Warhol’s signature themes—celebrity and fatal disaster.

Fascinated by the relentless media coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Warhol zeroed in on the First Lady, culling from newspapers and Life magazine eight images that, when cropped, juxtapose her facial expressions immediately before and after her husband’s murder to powerful effect.

“Here Warhol gives us a rounded view of Jackie at her most raw,” DiLeonardo says. “In which images does she look happy?”

Pointing to a canvas featuring the First Lady beaming in a pillbox hat she wore on that fateful November day, Dale Johnston replies, “that one.” “Yes!” DiLeonardo counters. “What tells you that she’s happy?”

“She’s smiling,” asserts Johnston.

“Yes! What is it about her mouth that tells us that?” DiLeonardo asks, this time prompting the larger group. As if on cue, two participants use their fingers to push the corners of their lips toward the sky.

For Johnston, 27, and other adults and children on the autism spectrum, reading facial expressions and nuanced body language is a challenge that art can help them overcome.

Johnston is no stranger to art museums. An especially big fan of Warhol friend and collaborator Keith Haring, Johnston and his mother, Shawn, say they both enjoy art, how it makes them feel, and what it has to teach them.

“It’s amazing how art opens him up,” says Shawn, noting that Dale is also active with Manchester Craftsman’s Guild. “I like to make things with my hands,” adds Dale, a common refrain from the day’s participants, all of whom spent about an hour in the museum’s studio doing any combination of three projects: watercolor, collage, and silkscreening.

“Coming to an art museum, looking at portraits, making portraits, that’s more of an adult way to practice these very important life skills,” says Kelly Ammerman, a teacher at City Connections, Pittsburgh Public Schools’ community-based life skills and independent living program designed for students ages 18 to 21 who have moderate to severe disabilities.

“Programs like this help get these young people out into the community, engaging with people and in topics that interest them,” says Ammerman, who has accompanied both teens and young adults to sensory-friendly events ­at The Warhol. “It also allows them to get the lay of the land; so, for some, they can feel prepared and comfortable coming back on their own.”

Twenty-year-old Maximus Chaney was so inspired by Ai Weiwei’s artful protest of placing fresh flowers inside the basket of his bicycle each day while banned from leaving China for 600 days, he vowed to build a bicycle out of Legos, a material also used by Ai. “I might even donate it,” he says.  “I know one thing for certain. I’d like to come back [to The Warhol] and bring my grandmother.”

In an exercise on the second floor, with Warhol’s colorful Pop portraits as the backdrop, program leader Morelli gives the participants photocopies of faces—some expressing happiness, sadness, even indifference—and sends them off in pairs to match the emotions on the paper to those in Warhol’s paintings.

For ninth-grader Bella, on her first visit to The Warhol from Streetsboro, Ohio, it was a good social exercise. “We knew it would be a great opportunity for a hands-on experience, where Bella could learn and create, and also meet and interact with new people socially, which is always good,” says Bella’s mom, Keri Stoyle, who found the program online while making plans for the pair to come to Pittsburgh to paddleboard and ride bikes. “She’s learning to advocate for herself.”

Like any gathering of teenagers, there was, of course, talk of music. At Jacob’s mention of his love for Green Day, Chrisoula Perdziola, whose teenage daughter, Eva, has autism and is limited verbally, notes that despite the fact that all five of Eva’s senses are heightened, she loves listening to music—Green Day and Foo Fighters, in particular. “And she likes to listen to it loud,” says Perdziola, laughing.

Embracing difference

Perdziola remembers opening day of The Andy Warhol Museum in 1994. She still  has a Polaroid of herself walking in the front door. That same day she bought a print of one of Warhol’s most famous paintings, Flowers, in the museum store. Four years later, when they were preparing to have Eva, they put the print in her room, and it’s been there ever since.

“Warhol did a lot of art outside of the box, and kids and adults on the spectrum  live outside of the box,” says Perdziola, who works for PA Museums (the state’s museum association), is active in Autism Connection of Pennsylvania, and brings the perspective of a caregiver to The Warhol’s advisory committee for sensory-friendly programming. “For me, The Warhol is a place of acceptance for uniqueness and differences of all kinds. We feel relaxed and at home here. That’s big.”

Having Perdziola as an advisor, as well as Jessica Benham—who is autistic, a doctoral student at Pitt, and heavily involved in Pittsburgh disability advocacy as director of public policy at the Pittsburgh Center for Autistic Advocacy—is important, says Roger Ideishi, associate professor of  rehabilitation sciences at Temple University and a national consultant for sensory-friendly programming. He’s partnered with The Smithsonian, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Warhol, and others. Best practices for sensory-friendly programs within the arts are still emerging, he notes.

The Warhol is among a growing list of local cultural organizations—Carnegie Science Center, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Ballet, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh—to program specifically with those on the autism spectrum in mind.

Since 2009, The Warhol has partnered with Wesley Spectrum High School in Whitehall to develop and deliver an intensive in-school art program that helps students on the autism spectrum or with behavioral health issues identify facial expressions,  body language, and social cues. The Warhol’s pilot sensory-friendly series, made possible through the support of The Edith L. Trees Charitable Trust, the Allegheny Regional Asset District, and the FISA Foundation in memory of Dr. Mary Margaret Kimmel, is just one part of the museum’s comprehensive accessibility initiative for museum visitors with disabilities. Also available: an inclusive audio guide, tactile art reproductions and signage, and assistive listening devices in  The Warhol Theater.

“What’s great about arts organizations across the country is that they’re recognizing that there’s been a group of people in society who rarely get the opportunities to experience the arts in multiple ways like many of us do—as patrons, as art makers, as art appreciators,” says Ideishi. “The Warhol is really looking closely at how we can capture the strengths of these individuals and help fill wants and needs.”

What’s success look like? “For the museum, it could be that it’s living and  even expanding its mission,” says Ideishi. But he’s the first to note that measuring the outcome may be different for everybody.

“We hope to see return participants; I think we’d all be happy with that result,”   he notes. “At the same time, we could see    a family come to a program, stay for only
a short time, and think to ourselves, wow, that’s disappointing—only to learn later from the parent that it was the best 20 minutes that family ever spent together
in a public place. So it’s often very individualized, and that’s something organizations need to consider.”

Where The Warhol is ahead of the curve, he says, is with young adults and adult programming. Benham, who is often asked to advise on programs within Pittsburgh, says The Warhol is a needed leader in this respect. The transition to adulthood for those on the spectrum—in terms of social services, health care, employment, even entertainment—is a growing challenge.

One in six adults in the United States are living with a disability. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 68 children has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder. As these kids continue to come of age, they’re the next generation of patrons, says Benham.

Which is precisely the reason she believes occupational therapy students, in addition to museum staff, benefit from spending time immersed in the culture of a population that is part of their clientele.

“The saying goes, if you’ve met one  autistic person, you’ve met one autistic
person,” says Benham. She notes that she had an interesting interaction with one of the occupational therapy students while  participating in the program at The Warhol. “It turns out I had one of her family members in a class I teach at Pitt. This interaction gave the student, I hope, a moment to think about the fact that this person who is autistic is just like me, is a graduate student just like me, is human just like me. When people look at me, they often have no idea I’m autistic. There is no one universal physical attribute or singular characteristic for being autistic.”

Like many of the program’s participants, Benham says, the level of support she may need often depends on the situation and   the timing.

“The Warhol’s staff is learning to interact with all people, and meeting them where they are,” says Perdziola. “And in that, there’s real value.”

Andy Warhol loved the beauty in others but couldn’t see it in himself. A new exhibition shows how the artist’s insecurities about his appearance transformed his art.

Andy Warhol stepped out of the shower, and his friend John Giorno gaped. It was 1963, and something rare had just occurred: The artist allowed himself to be seen completely naked. Not even his trademark wig masked his bald head.

“Andy, you’re beautiful,” said Giorno, a poet who would later become Warhol’s lover.

Giorno had accompanied Warhol on a trip to a mutual friend’s house in Connecticut, and was struck by Warhol’s muscles. Who knew? Usually they were hidden by jeans and a loose white shirt. But he was well toned from his 18-hour-a-day, speed-fueled artist’s workout of silkscreening and painting.

Warhol never understood what Giorno saw; the artist could only see his reflection through a fun-house mirror of distortion. “He always thought he was ugly. He always thought everybody else was beautiful,” says Giorno. “He always thought everybody else’s ugly body was beautiful.”

Warhol’s gnawing insecurities about his own appearance were rooted in his sickly childhood and exacerbated by premature baldness, the taboo of homosexuality, and, later, scarring from gunshot wounds. Self-consciousness about physical imperfections is universal, but the Pop art icon took it to another level.

Now, a new exhibition, Andy Warhol: My Perfect Body, will offer the first comprehensive look at Warhol’s complicated and fascinating relationship with the body. The brainchild of The Andy Warhol Museum’s Associate Curator of Art Jessica Beck, it opens at The Warhol on October 21 and runs through January 22, 2017. The show will include more than 200 paintings, drawings, and photographs that highlight the museum’s permanent collection as well as rarely traveled loans from the collections of other major American museums.

Among the works: a painting of an impaled car crash victim, Christ juxtaposed against a body builder, paintings of cosmetic surgery, and a rare photograph of Warhol pumping iron.

“In Warhol’s work and writing, he points out, over and over, that beauty has this close relationship to pain,” Beck notes. “His own anxieties become manifested into the work.”

Warhol even presented images of the body’s interior, creating medical sketches of the human anatomy to illustrate his famous quote: “Pop is just taking the outside and putting it on the inside or taking the inside and putting it on the outside.”

His art also drew from the false promise of Madison Avenue—that clothes, cosmetics, and surgeries can create the ideal beauty. “He was really thinking about people’s insecurities about their appearance and his own,” says James Boaden, assistant professor of art history at the University of York in England who writes about Warhol. “He is as important as his artwork and that’s why he was so influential. He created a certain kind of persona and the paintings were drawn off the back of him. He created the persona out of his anxieties. He wore a wig, dressed in leather jackets, and disguised the body in ways that helped him reinvent himself.”

As a kid growing up in the South Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Warhol was always self-conscious about his appearance. At age 8 he contracted Sydenham chorea, also known as St. Vitus Dance, a rare disorder of the nervous system. During his youth he also suffered from a pale, blotchy complexion that polluted his self-image.

He would later use his art to criticize himself. His prominent nose became a theme in his early artwork as a student at Carnegie Technical Institute (now Carnegie Mellon University) in the 1940s. His Nose Picker paintings are distorted self-portraits, his finger lodged up his nose, including one work titled The Lord Gave Me My Face, But I Can Pick My Own Nose.

After college, Warhol continued engaging with the idea of fixing an imperfect nose, both personally and artistically. In the early ’50s, after moving from Pittsburgh to New York to become a commercial artist, he doctored his passport photo. Using a black pencil, Warhol narrowed his nose and filled in his balding head with hair. A trip to the surgeon’s office wouldn’t measure up to his improvements on paper. At age 29, he underwent unsatisfying plastic surgery on his nose.

“Warhol didn’t have true rhinoplasty where the nose is fractured and reshaped,” Beck says. “His nose issue was actually a skin issue. He had the skin shaved, a procedure which forces new skin to grow in its place. He spoke openly about his disappointment with the procedure in Popism,” even complaining that his pores looked larger afterwards. In fact, Beck says Warhol perfected his artistic style—now known as Pop art—by early experiments painting the human nose.

Then came the day, now a legendary event, when Warhol painted multiple versions of two gigantic images of Coca-Cola bottles, a symbol of Americana—some abstract and one in clean, simple lines. He asked his friend Emile de Antonio his opinion, and de Antonio told him to go with the simple lines and discard the rest. In 1962, Pop art was born with those soft drink bottles.

“His connection to Pop art starts with the body,” Beck says. A year before he created the Coca-Cola bottles, Warhol was doing similar experiments while painting a nose job ad that ran in the National Inquirer. In a series of four paintings titled Before and After, he created various versions—one in dribs and smears, others in half tones, and one in the clean lines that became his trademark. A pair of these early works will be on display in My Perfect Body.

Up to that point, while Warhol was a highly successful commercial artist in the ’50s, his look was disheveled. “In the advertising trade, they called him Raggedy Andy,” says Boaden. “He used to wear shoes gaping at the front, with the toes poking out. If you think of the image of Mad Men, it was the complete opposite.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, social changes roiled over the United States and Warhol’s celebrity status grew. He used his image to rewrite his story, and the rules of visual art. His trademark sunglasses, silver wigs, and black leather jackets created a mysterious persona.

In TV interviews, Warhol would give only “yes” or “no” answers to questions— a level of concealment that made him an even more fascinating enigma. “There was power in withholding that private self,” Boaden recalls. “There was also power in the way in which he covers and hides his own body.”

In the ’60s, as Warhol made silkscreens of celebrities, he played with the concept of imperfection, and the inability to live up to expectations. “Marilyn Monroe’s face was not quite lined up with the color behind it,” Boaden says. “He played with imperfections in all sorts of ways—sometimes it’s very camp, photos of him in drag. Sometimes it’s very tragic, crime scene photos.”

In his Polaroid portraits, notes Beck, Warhol often took an aggressive approach to editing. “He’d use bright lights and put heavy powder on people as a way to bleach out imperfections.”

In his Death and Disaster series, which numbered some 70-odd works made in the mid-1960s, Warhol plucked images of mangled bodies from newspapers and police photo archives. “They’re not just car accidents. In one, the driver has been thrown from the vehicle and he is impaled around a lamp post,” Beck says. “It’s about the actual body trauma that goes on.”

Warhol also deconstructed the body into imperfect forms. His painting of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s body is broken down into sections that suggest a Polaroid or an X-ray. If you look closely, you’ll also see he adds a third arm to the body.

“There is always something askew with the bodies,” adds Beck. “It’s never an idolized beauty or perfect image. It’s never an Adonis. He’s always questioning or challenging that idea of perfection.”

In 1978, Warhol took the idea of body abstraction one step further with his Oxidation paintings, iridescent canvases made up of copper paint and urine, which combined creates a chemical reaction that turns green over time. He laid canvases with ground copper, and when invited friends and acquaintances urinated on the canvas the uric acid reacted with the copper in the paint, developing a trace of the body with its abstract splatters. Warhol and his collaborators experimented with both pattern and coloration by using a variety of metallic background paints and by varying the maker’s fluid and food intake.

Many of the artworks on view display the body in pieces, cropping it to show only sections at a time—torsos, feet, hands—which can be seen in such works as the film Sleep (1963) and the 1950s Boy Book drawings, which are about love and desire. “They’re incredibly intimate, beautiful, and with clean, elegant lines,” Beck says of the Boy Book works. “But there is also subversive desire at work in these sketches. Homosexuality in the 1950s was an illegal act. So, this sort of desire had to be hidden.”

Recalls Giorno, “Being gay was a death in the art world as well as the real world. But Andy was skillful at walking the line. Everyone knew he was gay. He got away with it.”

Just as the abstracted and tormented body are prominent themes of Warhol’s art, so is the sculpted body. For the show, Beck secured an Eve Arnold black-and-white photograph of Warhol in his New York studio, The Factory. It shows the artist in an unexpected pose: wearing sunglasses while lifting enormous dumbbells on a freestanding toilet. Even though Warhol enjoyed lifting weights at various times throughout his life, it’s rare to find photographs of him in the act, especially in the early ’60s.

On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist writer, entered The Factory and shot Warhol in the chest, nearly killing him. The event shook him to his core, Giorno says. Warhol described himself as “the living dead” and became cautious about anyone he invited into his social circle.

His own damaged body became a novel source of inspiration for his art. Warhol became less self-conscious about exposing his body—he even had photographs taken to show his imperfections, including prominent scarring and the medical girdle he wore to support his organs post-surgery.

“The surgery was botched,” Boaden says. “His body looked like Frankenstein, but he showed it off. He described a beautiful pattern on his skin. He played up how crazy he looked. He always liked horror movies.”

Ironically, Warhol had painted abstracts of girdle ads earlier in his career, including one titled Where is Your Rupture?

“The whole show is about ruptures,” Beck says. “A rupture exposes something. Perhaps that something is Warhol’s shame in his own body,” despite assurances from Giorno and others that he was actually beautiful.

Giorno could never convince Warhol that he was attractive. “But being humble is the most powerful position,” Giorno says. “It all got inverted into the art. His self-consciousness was transforming.”

Andy Warhol: My Perfect Body is generously supported by Cadillac and UPMC Health Plan.

We’re thrilled to be part of this international project and to collaborate as sister institutions. Though the last time we collaborated on a social media driven project, it was a friendly competition. In 2015, our museums entered into #CarnegieClash, pitting collection objects against each other in a bracket-style competition for the public to vote for its favorite. In the end, Pittsburgh’s beloved Dippy beat out Miniature Railroad & Village®, Vincent van Gogh’s Wheat Fields after the Rain, and Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds.

For @52museums, we decided to engage a different theme each day. As four disparate museums with singular collections, it can sometimes be a challenge to decide on themes or ideas that work for all of us. But after a bit of back-and-forth, we decided to feature some of the most important things to all of us—our people, our spaces, our collections and objects, and, of course, our city.

So far, we’ve explored #CarnegieSpaces, #CarnegiePeople, #CarnegieObjects, and #CarnegieTBT. Follow us @52museums, and stay tuned for #CarnegieBackstage, #CarnegieAnimals (yes, there will be cats), and #CarnegiePittsburgh.

Let us know what you think and what you want to see more of!

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.

Even when domesticated, the cat embodies freedom. Cats generally do as they wish, not as instructed.[1] In attitude and behavior, they are the opposite of dogs, which are widely considered ‘man’s best friend’. Contrarily, a cat can be very close to a human, but almost always on its own terms; the English-language expression ‘like herding cats’ encapsulates the feline’s autonomy. Cats, while usually quiet, also possess a wider range of vocalizations – spitting, hissing, purring, chirping and more – than their canine counterparts. Their expressive use of these sounds (as many as 100, according to some sources) indicates their complex desires.

Many of the most celebrated modern Western artists were closely associated with cats, as can be seen in photographs of Jean Cocteau, Gustav Klimt, Frida Kahlo, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. At points in their lives, both Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei have lived with an abundance of cats. Warhol is alleged to have had as many as twenty-five cats in his home at once, while Ai’s studio (FAKE) harbors a reported forty felines.[2] The small furry animals are a frequent subject for both artists, including numerous postings to Ai’s social media feeds. Cats have appeared in art since the time of ancient Egypt; perhaps most frequently in the nineteenth-century Art Nouveau work of Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen. One of the most unusual works of art with a cat is by the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, who recorded his Interview with a cat in 1970.[3]

Warhol and cats

In the 1950s, when Warhol was working as a commercial artist in New York, he was surrounded by a clowder of Siamese cats. Somehow reminiscent of the fossilized remains of dinosaurs, their paw prints were literally left on some of his artworks, including the cover of a copy of Wild Raspberries, the artist’s cookbook parody of 1959 made with his friend Suzie Frankfurt.[4] Having scampered about upon Warhol’s art, these furry creatures left their mark much more profoundly on the artist himself.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Siamese first entered Warhol’s life, but he made reference to live-in felines as early as 1951 or 1952. A postcard Warhol addressed to Truman Capote, but failed to mail, is signed “from me and my cat.” Cards sent to and from his friend Tommy Jackson reference cats and “pussies.”[5] Old bios for Warhol published in the magazine Interiors track the expansion of his cat colony: eight in 1953, and ten in 1954.[6] With one exception, all of Warhol’s Siamese cats were named Sam, foreshadowing his reliance on repetition in his later Pop work. One wonders if Warhol was actually thinking of his cats when he created the Cow wallpaper, 1966, or Ethel Scull thirty-six times, 1963 (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). The uniquely named Hester seems to have been the matriarch of Warhol’s brood.

The Siamese breed was peaking in popularity in the United States at the time, so it seems that he kept them in order to start breeding business on the side. Siamese cats are distinctively beautiful; they also are considered among the most intelligent and vocal of cat breeds. Even Hollywood (a frequent bellwether for Warhol’s creative efforts) jumped on the bandwagon: in the 1958 film Bell, Book and Candle, Kim Novak’s character (the beguiling modern witch Gillian Holroyd) was given a ‘familiar’ in the form of a Siamese cat named Pyewacket.[7] This considered, Warhol’s cat breeding business should have boomed, but his model failed. According to his friends, the cats became inbred and were notorious for bad behavior, crushing the plan for extra income. Warhol’s home was so overrun with cats that he had to give them away. The animals themselves, however, gained identities in the process: painter Philip Pearlstein and his wife Dorothy Cantor renamed their pair Cimabue and Sassetta, while author Ralph T. Ward (himself known as Corky) had Sweetie.[8]

…

Weiwei and cats

It seems no accident that Ai Weiwei, an internationally renowned artist now stripped of his Chinese passport, surrounds himself with twenty to thirty cats, many of them former strays to whom he’s given a very comfortable home in his studio.[26] Speaking about them, Ai says, “I love them and the people in this office all love these cats.” Just like Warhol’s Hester, most of Ai’s cats are not neutered. He says, “I didn’t choose them, they chose me.”

The cat’s essential characteristic of individual freedom is magnified in comparison to the restrictions placed on Ai, and the larger issues to which he draws our attention: absences of freedom, justice and responsibility. “They’re very independent. They [broke] several of my artworks. It’s [sic] very costly, these cats, but we cannot function [without them].”[27]

The cats and dogs in my home enjoy a high status; they seem more like the lords of the manor than I do. The poses they strike in the courtyard often inspire more joy in me than the house itself. Their self-important positions seem to be saying, ‘This is my territory,’ and that makes me happy. However, I’ve never designed a special space for them. I can’t think like an animal, which is part of the reason why I respect them; it’s impossible for me to enter into their realm. All I can do is open the entire home to them, observe, and at last discover that they actually like it here or there. They’re impossible to predict.[28]

While perhaps only a coincidence, the cat is absent from figures of the Chinese zodiac depicted in Ai’s Circle of animals / Zodiac Head: Gold, 2010. There are several versions of the ancient origins of this zodiac. According to one, the animals were summoned by the Jade Emperor to a meeting, stating he would name each year according to the order in which the animals arrived; in another, Cat drowns after making a pact with Rat, which is the reason cats chase rats, in eternal revenge. There are many other cat myths in China, unrelated to the zodiac. One states that soon after the gods created the Earth, the goddess Li Shou, herself a cat, was made its overseer, and she and all of her fellow cats were given the ability to speak. Soon it became clear Li Shou was not up to the task, as she kept falling asleep. The gods asked Li Shou to choose her successor, and she picked humans, who were then given the power of speech at the expense of cats.[29]

In the documentary film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, the many cats of FAKE are seen lounging and patrolling the studio. In a widely known scene, one cat (Tian Tian) is captured demonstrating his unusual ability to open a door. The artist asks:

Where did this intelligence come from? All the other cats watch us open the door. So I was thinking, if I never met this cat that can open doors, I wouldn’t know cats could open doors. Cats can open the door, but only men can close it.[30]

Ai’s observation can be read as a critique of humans’ misuse of power. Perhaps it is time for us to hand back the reins of power – and the power of speech – to Li Shou? Ai claims that each time he gives an interview at his studio, one particular cat, Lai lai, is always present: ‘He’s never missed a word’.[31] Does this cat possess a vestigial understanding of the long-lost ability to speak?

…

The full essay is printed in the catalogue Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei, available for purchase in The Warhol Store. The catalogue is published by NGV, in collaboration with The Warhol and Ai, and edited by Eric Shiner, The Warhol’s director, and Max Delany, former NGV senior curator, contemporary art. Alongside reproduced images by both artists are essays by an international team of art experts, curators, and scholars that survey the scope of the artists’ careers and interpret the impact of Warhol and Ai on contemporary art and life.

Notes

[1] In the author’s many years of experience with numerous domestic cats, he has been able to train only two (Batgirl and Batman, tuxedos born to a tortoiseshell mother) to recognize his whistle.

[2] Ai’s assistant Darryl Leung informed the author that the number of resident cats at FAKE fluctuates between twenty and thirty.

[3] Recorded at Broodthaers’s Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles), 12 Burgplatz, Düsseldorf, 1970. Broodthaers interviewed a cat regarding esoteric subjects, such as market trends in contemporary art. The work contains a transcription of the interview. An edition of fifty copies was published by Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, in 1995.

[4] This copy is in Warhol’s Time Capsule 12, held by The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Wild Raspberries is a brilliant parody of French cuisine, which was becoming enormously popular in the United States at that time.

[5] This correspondence is found in Warhol’s archives, in the collection of The Andy Warhol Museum.

[6] These references were initially noted by Neil Printz; my reference is Lucy Mulroney’s ‘One blue pussy’, Criticism, vol. 56, no. 3, Summer 2014, pp. 559–92. Mulroney cites Printz’s work.

[7] The name Pyewacket has roots in the horrific Salem witch trials in early American colonial history of the mid-seventeenth century.

[8] Named after the painters of the early Italian Renaissance Cimabue (Bencivieni di Pepo, Florence c. 1240–1302) and Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni, c. 1390–1450).

[26] In an email to the author on 7 May 2015, Ai’s assistant Darryl Leung wrote: “The cats all come to the studio in different ways. Sometimes they are found on the street; sometimes they jump into the studio by their own volition, other times friends might bring the cat to the studio.”

[27] Ai Weiwei in 258 Cats, Hosen Tandijono, China, 5:38 mins, 2013, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFUVigZYyJo>.

[28] Ai Weiwei, ‘Here and now’, posted 10 May 2006, in Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews and Digital Rants, 2006–2009, ed. & trans. Lee Ambrozy, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA & London, 2011, p. 49.

[29] A folk tale from Quebec concerns a specific ‘talking cat’ named Chouchou; it was first published in 1952.

[30] Ai Weiwei in Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Alison Klayman, Expressions United Media, MUSE Film and Television, Germany, 90 mins, 2012.

[31] Ai in 258 Cats.

So dad told me the tale of how a story was circulating around their Oakland neighborhood after the 1936 Pittsburgh flood. The story was that the Clark candy company was throwing out candy bars because they had been contaminated by the flood. When Paul, John, and Andy heard of this, they decided to venture down to the North Side to see if they could get any of the “free” candy. As young boys, they were not concerned about the safety of the candy. Fortunately, when they got to the Clark candy company, they realized that this was in fact just a story, with no truth.

Disappointed, they started their journey back to Oakland, on foot, of course. By this time Andy was already very tired; it had been a long walk from home (more than two miles from Oakland, through downtown, and across the bridge to the North Side). He looked to his older brothers to give him a “horsey,” allowing Andy to straddle their backs and have one of them carry him. Both Paul and John were equally tired and suggested that Andy just rest on the steps of the building they were passing. Andy did sit on the steps of that building at 117 Sandusky Street, a warehouse built in 1911 for Frick & Lindsay (supply distributors for oil wells, steel mills, and mines), and now the home of The Andy Warhol Museum.

Image: Adil Mansoor, photo by Joshua Franzos

This text by Betsy Momich originally appeared in the spring 2016 issue of Carnegie Magazine, a quarterly publication of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

By his estimate, it was all those “checked boxes” that helped then-undergrad Adil Mansoor score a coveted spot as a campus tour guide at Northwestern University: “I’m a Pakistani- Indian. I was a queer-identified kid. I did a lot of theater. I went through the financial aid experience. I had an immigrant background.” But it’s likely his big personality had something to do with it, too. The theater artist and arts educator learned early on that his ability to command an audience—a tour group, a theater audience, a group of teenagers—could not only get him somewhere in life, but also allow him to do some good. Today Mansoor has no fewer than three jobs to help him fulfill that mission. He’s program director at Pittsburgh’s Dreams of Hope, a queer youth arts organization, where he directs young people in plays they write themselves. He’s a founding member of Hatch Arts Collective, a performing arts group committed to socially engaged work that recently produced and directed Chickens in the Yard, the first play staged by Quantum Theatre as part of its Gerri Kay New Voices Program. And for the past four years he’s been youth program coordinator at The Andy Warhol Museum, where he manages two of the museum’s big annual youth events: Youth Invasion, where kids from across the region plan programming and then take over the museum for a day, and Prom @ The Warhol for queer, trans, and allied youth, some of whom don’t feel they have a place at their own school proms. He also won a national award for Dine and Discuss, an afterschool program he helped create, where kids sat around tables at The Warhol, ate a meal, and talked about issues of culture and religion. Says Mansoor, “We want young people to be talking about this stuff.”

When did you become interested in the arts?

In the first grade—I have a really clear memory of it. They took the best two readers from every grade level to be in this all-school play, and I wasn’t one of them. So I petitioned the first-grade class to do a play so everyone who wanted to be in it could be in it. I played a groundhog that had a guinea pig sister, and I taught her how to juggle. It felt like a victory. I had my voice heard!

At what point did equity and inclusiveness become so much a part of your work and your art?

When I started to realize that I was an anomaly at Northwestern University. That I was unique for someone coming from my income experience to be at a school like that. I was in all of these education classes reading about the educational gap and looking at what income does to test scores, and I started to think a lot about who gets to go to college, and who gets to go to a school for the arts. It started to click that I might have the opportunity to shift that paradigm, even for a small 1 percent.

Did you find Pittsburgh a welcoming place to do that kind of work?

I found people here very willing to say welcome to new folks. The community is also really accessible in terms of getting projects supported, getting people interested, and building teams.

One of the first places I made networks and friends was at the My People film series at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater. It’s an annual film series of movies for and by queer people of color. I could not believe that it was happening. I hadn’t even seen that in Chicago. The staff is super diverse and represents communities in a way I’m excited to see represented.

Has a lot changed in high schools in terms of kids being able to embrace their identities sooner?

Oh yeah. I think social media has completely shifted our access to information, so young folks today are thinking about things like identity in ways that I know I wasn’t in high school. And they’re seeing more people standing up for themselves.

Do you believe art can be transforming for everybody?

Yes! And in my heart of hearts it’s the most efficient way to transform. I think folks want to believe that art is for fancy people or smart people or whatever, and we’ve set up all of these systems so that kind of becomes true. And that’s heartbreaking.

How does The Warhol try to change that?

What I love about the museum is that it’s always engaging people who don’t think about art all the time. One of the first things I did at The Warhol was serve on an advisory board for The Word of God exhibition series. The first event looked at the artist Sandow Birk [who hand-copied pages of the Quran onto backgrounds of American scenes], and the group they gathered together all looked like my father—older, Pakistani-Indian men who had immigrated to America at some point. These men were being beautifully, intelligently critical of the art. In a museum. In a really queer museum. It was awesome!

Last May, we had almost 1,000 teenagers in this building for Youth Invasion. Maybe they came here for the free samosas or they came here to support their friend who was a model in the fashion show. But, regardless, they were in a building full of contemporary art.

So, do you ever do only one thing at a time?

No, I think I’m always doing 10 things at once. But for one thing, it’s feasible in Pittsburgh.

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.

Meanwhile, back in Munich, during a lunch break I met a young man who was the assistant of artist Ellsworth Kelly; they were installing the next show at Haus der Kunst: a full-on retrospective of Mr. Kelly’s beautiful abstract paintings and sculpture. This news was a great surprise, as Mr. Kelly’s work was of great interest to me when I was a young art student in the 1970s, and I was enthralled by the bold freedom expressed in his work.

I mentioned this to the assistant (whose name I do not recall, regrettably foreshadowing in retrospect, as it were). He replied that I should tell this personally to Mr. Kelly (or, as he put it, “You should tell Ellsworth; he would be so happy.”) I was in total astonishment; imagine having the chance to speak to one of the heroes of your youth. We decided that the assistant would relay this to his boss. The next day, still to my surprise, I was invited to have a coffee.

I could not hide my shyness, but I managed to utter my story, to say how just seeing a group of his then-new curvy shaped canvases from the mid-1970s reproduced at a mere fraction of their actual size in a catalogue for a show at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., changed my ideas about what art could be, and how much I admired his boldness and the importance of that experience for my efforts at painting in art school. Mr. Kelly was indeed very happy to hear this; I was taken aback, again. As he was a huge art star, I assumed that he would be accustomed to such stories and that another would make no difference, but his personality was equally as graceful as his elegant art work.

Mr. Kelly noted my position, and elaborated; it went something like this: “So, you work for The Andy Warhol Museum. I knew Andy, and I recall a story that you may want to hear. It’s not much, just a fragment, but I think it shows a side of him that many people aren’t aware of.”

Wow, I thought, what could this be? “Yes! Please, what do you remember?” I almost fell off my stool; this was a golden opportunity. It’s so important to collect memories before they are gone!

After apologizing for not having all of the details, Mr. Kelly then told me the tiny fragment of memory that he had: sometime in the 1960s or ‘70s, at a sale or auction of contemporary art, several of the artists were walking through the exhibition of works. One—a young woman—was upset with the manner in which her work was displayed; she felt that it was not being shown to its best advantage, and Warhol was adamant in telling her to insist that the work be re-hung to her satisfaction, as this would affect the sale price, and subsequently would lower her prices forever after.

Mr. Kelly could not remember the artist’s name, or what her work was like, so we could not even guess who it might have been. But, as he said, her identity wasn’t so important, it was what HE did. Mr. Kelly emphasized: Andy Warhol gave free career advice to another artist—not being competitive, but supportive.

And she (that mysterious unnamed artist), did become a very well-known and successful artist, “You know her, and her work, I just can’t remember her name, I’m so sorry!” is something like how he put it, as I recall now, nearly 20 years later.

And of course, Mr. Kelly was right; Warhol had such a public visibility as a celebrity far beyond the art world, that for him to make the effort to point out the seriousness of that crucial moment to the artist, it would seem quite surprising to people who did not know him well, and even for those (such as Mr. Kelly), it was an extraordinary moment of generosity.

So, as we have just passed the holiday season, also known to many as the “Season of Giving,” it seems appropriate to bring this memory of “giving of oneself” by the museum’s namesake and subject: Mr. Andy Warhol, who gave the world so very much.

As did Mr. Ellsworth Kelly: he gave me a beautiful (if brief, and even frustrating), memory that I am delighted to share with the readers of this blog. He inspired me to create in my youth, and his enormous output of art is still very exciting to me and to many others. Just like Warhol, Mr. Kelly was a true master, a giant of his time, and for all time.

Self-portraits, which can be seen and understood as the predecessor to today’s “selfie,” have received attention for laying the framework for this digital portraiture. Over the past year, Warhol’s self-portraits have been enjoying their own 15-minutes of Internet fame.

In early 2014, Huffington Post reported that Andy Warhol is “The Original King of Selfies.” In May 2015, The Hollywood Reporter remarked, “Sorry, Kim Kardashian,” Andy Warhol is the originator of the selfie game in a story about a Sotheby’s auction of a collection of Warhol’s celebrity and self-portrait Polaroid shots. The New York Post published a story in August 2015, titled “Andy Warhol Instagrammed his life before Instagram existed.” In July 2015, The New York Times made a case for a scholarly analysis of selfies, and the list goes on.

Taschen, a reigning name in art book publishing, released Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987 this past fall.

It is safe to say that in 2015 Warhol’s selfies had a strong, self-indulgent moment. But what is the role that the selfie plays in the context of a museum, and what do these shots reveal about the person behind the camera? Walking through The Andy Warhol Museum, I found that the artist’s self-portraits hold an important place for themselves on the institution’s walls.

In his book, About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits, critic Nicholas Baume writes, “Clearly, Warhol was intrigued by the human face. Throughout his career, he constantly drew, painted, filmed, photographed and described it” (86).

Warhol left behind a vast collection of self-portraits, including Polaroid prints and silkscreen paintings, spanning from young adulthood to death.

An early image cut from a photobooth strip reveals a casual, cool-kid Warhol. With dark black shades, the artist used the photobooth to capture his own image and experimented with self-portrayal. The result is strikingly similar to much of what can be seen on a young adult’s Instagram account today.

Later in his career, Warhol employed his Polaroid camera for a larger project. Called Ladies and Gentlemen, the large-scale portrait series using drag queens as models was commissioned by an Italian art dealer in 1974 (Catalogue Raisonne n. pag). In 1981 Warhol worked with photographer Christopher Makos on a series of Polaroid self-portraits depicting himself in drag.

By the end of his career, Warhol’s self-portraits continue to change as he experiments with his image. His 1986 self-portrait series, completed just months before his death, shows a gaunt face and wild hair. This self-portrait, one of the last he created, appears to capture his feelings about his late self-image and is largely understood as an acknowledgement of death.

Celebrities’ Instagram posts often collect millions of “likes” and tens-of-thousands of comments by turning cameras on themselves, showcasing their bodies, and perhaps their acceptance of them.

I wondered, then, how does a selfie function in the context of a museum?

Warhol’s self-portraits give us an insider’s look into the artist’s personal sphere. From his youthful photobooth moments to his dramatic silkscreen self-portraits, the changing images allow us to observe his lifelong experimentation and to understand his cultural fixations.

Maybe, however, the answer is much simpler, as Warhol is quoted as saying: “I paint pictures of myself to remind myself that I’m still around.”

Baume, Nicholas. “About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits.” About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits. Cambridge: MIT, 1999. 86-98. Print.
Printz, Neil, and Sally King-Nero, eds. The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne: Paintings and Sculpture Late 1974-1976. Vol. 04. New York: Phaidon, 2013. Print.