The human side of the monster Andy Warhol: "It was like a ghost that spoke with a girl's voice"

• IRENE HDEZ.

  VELASCO

  Madrid

Updated Saturday, March 5, 2022-02:06

• Share on Facebook

• Share on Twitter

• send by email

Comment

• Andy Warhol exhibition at the Tate Modern, the eternal return of a creator beyond pop

• Luis Antonio de Villena Andy Warhol: the magician of transgression

Like a guy who

and demanded total availability.

As someone who alternated rewards and punishments among his circle of followers, while fostering rivalry between them.

Like a kind of vampire that sucked the blood of everyone who came near him.

Like a spider that devoured his victims, emptying them of all substance before getting rid of them, in the words of Nat Finkelstein, who profusely photographed Warhol's Factory and his fauna.

"We were all crazy and crazy about him, getting to be by his side was a true obsession, and yet

. The fascination he aroused was in proportion to the hatred he generated when he suddenly preferred someone else to someone else. It was particularly dangerous with fragile young people, easily manipulated and therefore very vulnerable, "reminds Ultra Violet, one of his

.

The list of people from Warhol's entourage who ended up

is long.

Starting with Philip Fagan, inseparable from Warhol for a time until the artist decided to do without him.

Or Freddie Herko, a regular actor and dancer at the Factory.

Or Edie Sedgwick.

"Who will be his heir?" They say that he limited himself to asking Andy when he learned that the young woman, with whom he had been finger and meat for a time, had died at the age of 28.

Or Andrea Feldman, one of her actresses, who in 1972 threw herself out of a window in her apartment after assuring that Warhol had exploited her.

Valerie Solanas herself, creator of the association for the castration of men and one of those eccentric characters that swarmed the Factory, declared when she turned herself in to the Police after firing three shots at Warhol on June 3, 1968 that she

and she felt controlled.

"Yes, he was a monster. But he was

", says Jean-Noël Liaut, author of

(Harp), a new biography of the artist, the result of 30 years of research, which explores his most human side, which It includes unpublished statements from people very close to him and unknown details about his life.

Like, for example, that Warhol's whistling voice was part of the character he had invented for himself: that of the effeminate

, with a wig and glasses with smoked lenses and an effeminate childish voice that he copied of Jacqueline Kennedy's.

"He said he thought my sister's voice was perfect, it was the voice he would have dreamed of,"

's sister Lee Radziwill told Liaut.

"I remember the formula with which he told me: 'Watching Jackie on television was when I decided to adopt my Bouvier voice!', Alluding to Jacqueline Kennedy's maiden name.

The very gestation of this new biography is palpable proof of Warhol's capacity for suggestion.

It all started on Monday, January 19, 1987 when Jean-Noël Liaut, then a 20-year-old boy, crossed paths with him at the Pompidou.

The artist was wrapped in a cloud of French perfume to try to disguise the strong smell of garlic that he gave off (he ate garlic in large quantities for its supposed health benefits).

He wore his characteristic platinum wig, his inseparable camera and his complexion was so white that it seemed translucent.

The young Liaut was immediately fascinated by Warhol.

"

. I was intrigued by the contrast between the demon they said he was and his smooth, perfect ways. It was as if they weren't the same person."

He followed him around the Pompidou for an hour, much to Warhol's delight.

A month later, at the age of 59, the artist died after undergoing a gallbladder operation.

As a result of that encounter with the sacred cow of art, Liaut was trapped by Warhol.

He dedicated his undergraduate thesis to him and for 30 years he was interviewing members of the creator's most intimate circle.

The result: "Andy Warhol".

This new biography, which has been a bestseller in France, explores the most human side of the King of Pop.

"I have tried to be balanced," Jean-Noël Liaut assures PAPER.

"A lot has been written about his works, about his work.

."

Warhol had

.

His parents were poor immigrants who had come to Pittsburgh from Slovakia.

They killed themselves to work: his father in whatever it was, his mother cleaning houses and sometimes selling cans of preserves door to door that he decorated with flowers and in which Warhol would later be inspired to make his famous paintings of Campbell's soup cans.

They lived crammed into a matchbox.

The king of pop grew up in the deepest intellectual narrowness.

Andy was

who was afraid of everything.

He only felt safe with his mother.

His health was fragile.

At the age of four he had scarlet fever, from which his nose was red forever.

At the age of eight he had St. Vitus's disease (a disease now known as Sydenham's chorea), which caused skin depigmentation and early hair loss.

To that was added that he was a boy with effeminate gestures who hated sports.

With puberty, moreover, he developed acne and myopia forced him to wear bottle-bottom glasses that gave him a mole-like look.

"During his childhood and adolescence he was a source of great ridicule among the other boys, which became for him a source of internal torture that led him to develop a deep feeling of inferiority," explains Liaut.

"He did not fit the prototype of an American boy,

brutal

. But, despite that, he never pretended to be who he was not, never in his life. He was a warrior. He was a decadent being. He was everything to Same time ".

In that childhood full of diseases, he began to develop a total distrust of hospitals and doctors, as well as

that became more acute over the years.

As an adult, he detested the slightest physical contact and went to restaurants after having already eaten at home, because the idea of ​​​​using silverware that someone else had used before repelled him.

All this reached even more paranoid limits with the appearance of

: he began to drink much less so as not to go to public bathrooms and managed to never drink from a cup that had been used by other people before.

The Warholas - his family's original surname - were deeply religious.

Orthodox Catholics, they did not miss mass on a Sunday.

"Warhol was always a believer and practitioner. One more paradox, he was a being full of contradictions and paradoxes. He led a decadent life, but

. At first, when he moved to New York, he even went daily ", reveals the author of "Andy Warhol".

And at the end of his life, crushed by loneliness and sapped by depression, he sought solace in faith and volunteered to serve meals to the homeless.

It is also no coincidence that one of his last works was the reinterpretation of 'The Last Supper' by Leonardo Da Vinci.

The family went to a small church with the walls covered with icons.

“Those beautiful Byzantine faces of saints and archangels, of apostles and martyrs, lined up and hanging close together, would inspire Andy to do silkscreen portraits of him,” says Liaut.

From that poor childhood full of economic straits, he also had a

.

"Reading his diary, you can see it very clearly. He was afraid of running out of money, and in fact he turned money into his paintings," Liaut tells us.

And that Warhol was immensely rich: when he died more than 20 people worked daily for several months to inventory his assets.

In some rooms of his house it was very difficult for them to enter, because the doors were clogged with so many things that he had accumulated over the years.

His personal fortune was estimated at

.

But he wasn't just insecure about money.

He was too with love and sex...

"Warhol hated himself. The tragedy is that he was in love with beauty, all beauty, and in particular the beauty of men. He was always in love with handsome men who were with him because he was famous," says Jean. -Noël Liaut.

And since he wasn't dumb, he knew it.

The question is, how did that self-conscious kid, the son of poor immigrants, become the most famous artist of his generation?

"

. He was always ahead of his time, and before anyone else. If he were still alive, he would still be king. He was an absolute visionary. He understood perfectly what people wanted, what they hated , what he feared," emphasizes the author of

.

" She

. The best time of her life was surely when she lived in New York with her mother and her cats. After her mother, her cat Hester was the living being she loved the most. No, she was never happy, but yes he was proud of himself. He achieved his dream of being a famous artist."

Jean-Noël Liaut's book

(Harp) is out now.

You can buy it here.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• art

• Pop

ArtePeter Saville: "Design moves even more than musicians"

CulturaCarabanchel storms the skies of culture: "What is happening here is crazy, if we manage to protect it..."

ArteWynnie Mynerva: "The surgery to close my vagina has changed my life"

See links of interest

• Last News

• Work calendar 2022

• Davis Cup, live: Roberto Bautista - Gabi Adrian Boitan

• Davis Cup, live: Carlos Alcaraz - Marius Copil

• DSC Arminia Bielefeld - FC Augsburg

• International - Salernitana

• Alaves - Seville