00:10 - We are joined today by Gene Wainwright, professor

00:13 - Emeritus at the University of for the Creative Arts in England.

00:17 - Andy Warhol is considered one of the best known pop artists.

00:20 - Which of his work do you think best represents him as an artist?

00:24 - Well, I love that question.

00:26 - It's interesting because I would say, of course best represents him.

00:31 - Perhaps the best known of the soup cans and the Marilyn.

00:35 - So the flowers, however, what best represents him?

00:38 - I sometimes think of some of his films and some of his drawings,

00:43 - in the sense that they perhaps show a side of him, a very human side

00:48 - that perhaps isn't so obvious in those very particular and well known pop works.

00:55 - Now, Andy Warhol was born Andy Warhol

00:58 - on August 6th, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

01:02 - How did his upbringing inspire some of his art?

01:05 - It definitely inspired his art.

01:09 - Pittsburgh was very important

01:12 - as a breeding ground for his ideas.

01:16 - And of course, a lot has been talked about of how he came

01:21 - from immigrant parents who had come to America.

01:25 - And really, he fulfilled the American dream.

01:28 - You know, there was a lot of poverty.

01:30 - But of course, the strength of the family saving up.

01:35 - They owned their own home when Moore was six and Dawson Street.

01:39 - So they moved swiftly from, you know, almost like

01:42 - very poor dwellings to actually owning their own house.

01:47 - His esthetic was very much toned by the working

01:53 - and hard work of his parents and basically his mother, because his father died

01:58 - when he was a teenager and she saved everything.

02:01 - She was thrifty, she made things and that esthetic

02:06 - and his surroundings very much informed his early art.

02:11 - And actually it all started in Pittsburgh, really.

02:14 - And those things he learned that never really left him.

02:18 - I don't think ultimately religion, churchgoing, things like that as well.

02:23 - What drew him to art initially?

02:27 - Well, that's a very interesting question.

02:30 - I think it was partly, his mother set up

02:33 - drawing competitions at the kitchen table

02:36 - to keep the three boys, because he had two older brothers amused.

02:40 - And so that that was one influence.

02:43 - Secondly, he suffered from siblings. Career.

02:46 - A a childhood illness confined him to bed,

02:51 - and his mother again would give him things to cut out from magazines.

02:55 - And then again, I think he was very

02:58 - visually interested in everything.

03:01 - So I think that that definitely is what

03:04 - formed his certainly early art. Yes.

03:07 - So he was always and probably I mean, obviously, Pittsburgh.

03:12 - And in the depression years when he was growing up

03:15 - was definitely a steel town, coal mining.

03:18 - And it was pretty obvious early on that

03:22 - he wasn't going to work in heavy industry as well.

03:26 - As he got older, he went to college.

03:27 - Where did he go and what did he study?

03:30 - So he went to Carnegie Tech

03:33 - and he studied a very interesting course of pictorial design.

03:37 - But what was fascinating about that was it was kind of

03:40 - not so much by not based, although there was fine art in it,

03:46 - it was really teaching the students to be able to earn a living.

03:50 - So they learned how to express themselves

03:53 - artistically, but how to also take on commissions.

03:57 - It was in a way based on the kind of bar house school of design

04:01 - where you tried different methods, and then you worked at those

04:06 - and you learned about techniques and things like that.

04:09 - So it was a very good grounding for him, particularly to go into illustration.

04:14 - He had some inspirational teachers there as well, which certainly helped.

04:19 - So I think what was Andy Warhol's first job out of college?

04:24 - Well, the first job out of college is quite interesting.

04:27 - He went to live in New York

04:31 - in 90, went to 1949, went to New York,

04:35 - and he very quickly got illustration work.

04:38 - He got work on glamor magazine.

04:40 - But again, being Warhol, he was very distinctive.

04:44 - You know, you didn't really forget him.

04:46 - Whether it was the anecdotal stories of a cockroach coming out of his home

04:50 - made portfolio or giving clients little hand illustrated books.

04:56 - So he quickly got known for his role with quirky drawings

05:01 - and being able to take instructions, being able to do what clients wanted,

05:06 - you know, for the illustrations, so became

05:09 - very popular very quickly.

05:12 - What were some of the different styles that Andy Warhol used in his art?

05:15 - In his early years?

05:18 - Well, there were many different ways that he approached.

05:21 - So there was drawing.

05:22 - There was also a dotted line technique.

05:25 - Now, that was a really clever, idea of Warhols.

05:29 - And that's where you attached a piece of paper, drew round

05:33 - what you drawn in ink, and then folded the paper over

05:36 - so you could make a copy of it.

05:37 - So right in the beginning, he's thinking of how he could produce

05:41 - more than one work.

05:43 - That was what he used marbling in the background of his works.

05:47 - He, in the show that I've got on,

05:50 - at the moment, in Newlands House Gallery in Petworth,

05:56 - we've got lovely early examples of exquisite bits of old Tate

06:00 - where he's actually run out of paper and, you know, added a bit more paper.

06:04 - So that goes back to the thrifty background,

06:07 - but also to his trying out of different techniques.

06:10 - Used stencils, he used stamps, you know, and stamps

06:14 - that he would make multiple butterflies and things.

06:17 - So right in the beginning he's using a lot of different techniques.

06:22 - Now, you mentioned at the beginning two of his most notable pieces,

06:24 - which are the Campbell Soup Cans and The Shot Marilyns.

06:28 - Those involve repetition.

06:30 - How did he get into repetition in his art?

06:34 - Well, again, you know much.

06:36 - I had it total evidence.

06:37 - But also what he loved

06:40 - was the idea of lots and lots of things.

06:44 - And that came lots of the same thing, and that came

06:47 - almost from production line and thinking of how things are produced.

06:51 - So he could have lots of the same things for people to see in different color ways.

06:56 - Also, he was it's interesting that today for Marilyns, he made many, many

07:01 - 450 of his flowers, multiple Marilyns, but all using the same image.

07:07 - Now that's quite interesting.

07:09 - Same in which different colorways, different iterations.

07:12 - But also people have talked about how he.

07:16 - There were three cinemas in Pittsburgh that he went to as a child

07:20 - and in the cinema, you think of the images going through the frame.

07:25 - And as a child he had been totally project and he was aware of how animation

07:30 - worked and frames worked, which were lots of the same image, slightly altered.

07:35 - So I guess there were lots of ways

07:39 - that we could think of those early inspiration versions.

07:43 - As we said earlier, Andy Warhol was a pop artist.

07:46 - Can you explain what the pop art movement was?

07:50 - So the

07:50 - pop art movement really comes from popular subject matter,

07:54 - easily accessible to people, often about something

07:59 - that was very simple, as I say, a soupcon, a Brillo box.

08:03 - So the pop art movement, though it's about a quite a few artists,

08:08 - was about taking cartoon characters, taking household

08:13 - objects, using everyday things to make it work.

08:17 - And that was very different from the preceding art movement that came

08:23 - before the Abstract Expressionists, which were all about, you know, one man,

08:28 - usually in the farm and making this incredible work

08:33 - about themselves, their interior teria selves.

08:37 - And his was the opposite of that.

08:39 - So it was to communicate something.

08:41 - And as he said, you know, about his Coke is Coke work.

08:45 - You know, the the president can drink a Coke,

08:48 - I can drink Coke, Andy Warhol can drink.

08:52 - They're all the same Coke.

08:53 - So he was really interested in that.

08:55 - Bring it down to the level of everybody being able to understand it.

09:00 - Did the pop art movement reflect something that was going on culturally

09:04 - at the time?

09:06 - Yes. There was so much happening.

09:08 - Of course, in the 1960s, as we know, there was a huge shift

09:14 - between the 50s and the 60s, both

09:17 - culturally, sexually, everything.

09:20 - We had a youthquake, we had a completely a shift in society.

09:26 - It's the time of consumer goods becoming much more readily

09:32 - available for the, you know, people working in the home.

09:36 - They could have a seat can rather than having to make soup.

09:40 - There were all the new appliances coming out often used in pop art.

09:44 - So there was a real shift.

09:46 - And obviously for Warhol, he was very aware

09:50 - of all those shifts, weather and and reflected them in his art,

09:54 - whether it was race riots, which he actually made

09:58 - work of in the 60s, the sexual things that were happening.

10:03 - The so there were many, many things that were going on that he was very aware of.

10:09 - He looked at newspapers all the time.

10:12 - He took references from time magazine, from the New York Times.

10:16 - He really did study from photographs that he saw.

10:20 - So he actually was very on the bus and of, of the cultural things

10:25 - that were happening and trying to paint things that he felt would communicate

10:30 - what people were going through and feeling.

10:33 - You mentioned, Andy Warhol's films, and I'm sure a lot of people may not be

10:37 - familiar with the fact that he made films as well as physical art pieces.

10:41 - Could you talk about, what some of those projects of his were?

10:45 - Well, he made

10:46 - many projects, starting with things like the film tests of the screen test,

10:51 - where you sat rather like we're sitting in front of a screen

10:55 - and try to keep as still as you could silently for, three minutes.

11:00 - So there were those works, but there were also the much longer films.

11:04 - The Chelsea Girls, we think of some people, No Empire.

11:09 - So eight hours of the Empire State Building.

11:12 - Then we have, his kind of boyfriend, John Journo sleeping.

11:17 - And again in my exhibition have a wonderful film called Mrs.

11:21 - Hamilton, which was, done in 1966.

11:25 - And it's off and to gorgeous mother and she's playing

11:29 - a murderous with the character.

11:32 - Is she's playing a murderous character, but she's acting

11:36 - with, Warhols boyfriend at the time, Richard Ream.

11:40 - And it's it's a wonderful film, very rarely screened,

11:44 - and people might not even know these kind of really interesting works.

11:49 - It's part of a trilogy.

11:51 - And so Warhol was also interested in ordinary again,

11:55 - ordinary somebody eating a banana or a mushroom or kissing.

12:01 - And they're

12:02 - really interesting to watch because that,

12:05 - that they got zooms, they engage

12:09 - with the faces, that portrait.

12:12 - So the they're really interesting.

12:14 - Then they change rather after his show but that so now the story,

12:18 - they go, in a different direction.

12:21 - There's more narrative and storytelling than in the early ones.

12:25 - In the 1960s, Andy Warhol created The Factory.

12:28 - What was it and how did it impact his career?

12:32 - Well, the factory had three factory spaces,

12:35 - but the one you're talking about, 1963 to

12:39 - 1968, was really, really important.

12:43 - So Billy Name sprayed the war silver.

12:46 - We know that was all covered with silver foil

12:50 - and that was where the activities happened.

12:53 - Screen printing, the films.

12:57 - And it was a melting pot.

13:00 - So all different people, as you probably heard

13:04 - from people from Uptown, from downtown.

13:08 - When I say that, I mean celebrities, people off the streets,

13:13 - area, offices trust that they'd now be transformed.

13:16 - Kids. They all came to the factory.

13:19 - Many of them brought their own problems with them.

13:22 - And until Warhol was shot in 68, really the only criteria for being allowed

13:28 - in was that you had your portraits done at film portrait done,

13:34 - but it was a very important working environment as well.

13:39 - And at any one time Warhol would be have his audio recorder.

13:44 - He'd be recording what people said.

13:47 - There'd be somebody on the telephone.

13:49 - He installed a payphone.

13:50 - There would be a film going on that we screen screen printing going on.

13:55 - So it was like this hub of activity,

13:58 - often collaboration, that people were helping with screen prints.

14:02 - Different people were in the films.

14:05 - There was a kind of core group of superstars to go through a wonderful name.

14:10 - And so that was really an important place

14:14 - for, you know, and I think, you know,

14:18 - talking to many people, as I have done and I've got many,

14:23 - photo photographs in the

14:25 - exhibition I curated, which shows the factory and shows

14:30 - people know had encouraged photographers to come there.

14:34 - And so there were photographers

14:36 - who were professional photographers and amateur photographers.

14:39 - So it's great.

14:39 - We've got so many references to what was happening

14:43 - as a factory at the time, and I don't think we've any other example

14:46 - in all different media of a kind of a society

14:52 - what was happening in society, what was happening in alternative society,

14:57 - and then what was happening in that space of time from 63 to 68.

15:01 - He always called his spaces the factory.

15:04 - So yeah. Yeah, he had to more up to that.

15:07 - Can you talk a little bit more

15:08 - about the assassination attempt that he survived in 1968?

15:13 - Yes. This was really unfortunate.

15:16 - Valerie Solanas, who had written a manifesto

15:21 - called the Scum manifesto, the society for Cutting Up Men.

15:25 - She had worked with Andy, and she'd been in a

15:29 - he costarring a film, Iron Man, and she'd given him a script,

15:33 - a script that she had written, and Andy lost it, apparently.

15:38 - Well, we're not quite sure

15:39 - whether he lost it or whether he thought that perhaps it was

15:43 - she was trying to get him into trouble because it was it was pretty hardcore.

15:48 - And she came into the factory, she had a gun,

15:54 - and she went up in the elevator,

15:57 - and then she she came out to the elevator and she shot him.

16:00 - And that was a catastrophic event for Warhol.

16:05 - He remembered actually

16:10 - waking up, being aware

16:12 - and hearing somebody said he's he's a goner.

16:16 - Really?

16:17 - He they managed to get him to the hospital in time,

16:21 - and they repaired in a long operation.

16:25 - Obviously everything that, you know,

16:28 - had happened to penetration, the bullet and everything,

16:32 - leaving only a hernia that he lived with for the rest of his life.

16:36 - And that was only repaired in the final operation he had, which, of course,

16:41 - he didn't recover from and died and died in a hospital, New York hospital.

16:46 - So this event really did have an impact on his on his future health.

16:52 - He, you know, he it of course it did.

16:55 - And in fact, there's, a lovely,

17:00 - German langer portrait of Warhol in 1971.

17:05 - Valerie was actually released from a short time from prison, from prison.

17:09 - And she allegedly phoned him up.

17:12 - And so obviously that must have really scared him.

17:15 - So it was she said she handed herself in.

17:19 - She said he had too much control over my life.

17:22 - And I suppose, you know, it was a very scary event.

17:28 - And he was in hospital for a long time.

17:31 - He was frail for a long time, and I think that

17:35 - it made him more cautious, less, less

17:39 - able to have just everybody around him.

17:42 - I know he still went out all the time, went to parties

17:46 - and it that silver factory kind of time,

17:51 - if you like, ended with the shooting.

17:55 - Andy Warhol was a gay man living through the 1960s to the 1980s.

17:59 - How was life for him as a gay man at that time?

18:03 - Well, I think

18:03 - this is such an interesting question because

18:08 - for me, Andy,

18:11 - literally, it was very brief.

18:14 - You know, it was very difficult to be gay then.

18:17 - People forget how hard it was.

18:20 - But he kind of hid in plain sight.

18:24 - He, you know, wore his wig, his glasses.

18:27 - He didn't shy away from having relationships

18:33 - and kind of filming, doing films that could be considered, you know, doing

18:39 - drawings of men while men of penises have all these things.

18:45 - And yet somehow he managed to navigate that landscape pretty well.

18:51 - And if you think about it, you not only, you know, he was 40 in 1968.

18:56 - So not only did he come from Pittsburgh,

19:00 - then goes to New York, he kind of

19:05 - is a gay man having relationships.

19:07 - But then in the 80s, the catastrophic

19:11 - Aids crisis really, really affected him as well.

19:15 - He saw many people die.

19:18 - He saw people that he knew well die.

19:21 - And indeed, his last relationship with John Gould.

19:26 - Unfortunately, John died of Aids and this traumatized Warhol.

19:30 - And so there were, you know, there was much sadness about that.

19:36 - And it must have been a terrible time for him to see these glorious young men

19:41 - that he had been, you know, around and had inspired his art.

19:48 - And he'd seen his ballet dancers

19:51 - as wonderful photographers, as artists die.

19:54 - So I think for him there were there was always conflicts.

19:59 - When you read his diaries, there's many, many poignant points

20:04 - there where he talks about does someone like him or not?

20:07 - And, you know, and he did have relationships.

20:11 - How intimate they are is can

20:14 - is a source of debate always.

20:17 - But I think that he managed somehow to

20:22 - make work that both

20:25 - responded to that, but also work

20:28 - that had nothing to do with that at all.

20:31 - You know, there were many, many things a result you could look at,

20:35 - and they have nothing to do with his sexuality.

20:39 - So it's quite an interesting it's quite an interesting point.

20:44 - And I think when you see the Mrs., Hamilton's story

20:48 - and you see, his mother relating to rich and famous boyfriend and how it's

20:54 - such a lovely, intimate relationship and you kind of think,

20:58 - well, this is like, this is really great to see this,

21:01 - you know, and I think that, again, it shouldn't define him

21:06 - because I don't think he did consider it defining him particularly.

21:11 - His art did bind to his work, defined him.

21:14 - His work ethic is fascinating for every single different media,

21:20 - whether film or illustration or computer art.

21:23 - All those things, you know, defines him

21:27 - as well as how he lived his life.

21:32 - Andy Warhol died in 1987.

21:35 - What lasting legacy did he leave on the art world?

21:39 - He left such a lasting legacy.

21:42 - I don't think there's any artist in history

21:47 - where every day there's some kind of citation, you know?

21:51 - Oh, why Andy Warhol would have embraced the internet age, the Instagram age,

21:55 - the tick tock, generations.

21:59 - He really had such

22:03 - I mean, from his phrases like 15 minutes of fame.

22:06 - It's always fascinated me that a man who supposed Lee said so little.

22:12 - We've got so many of his quotes that we can see and reach,

22:17 - but also so many artists he influenced.

22:21 - And actually, again, in my exhibition, I've got, Robin,

22:25 - Nick Carter, I've got Philip Kolb, I've got Gavin Chalk.

22:29 - And I could have had many, many other artists that there have been

22:33 - so many artists that have been indirectly influenced by him.

22:39 - And it's really the fact that he took things around

22:43 - him and made art people of that imitated his art.

22:47 - And of course, he also was a magpie.

22:50 - He took, you know, appropriated images from other people.

22:55 - So there's that wonderful kind of chain reaction, I think.

22:59 - And people love pop art.

23:01 - They love the colors.

23:02 - They love the the kind of expression of it.

23:05 - Like they love, you know, from Lady Gaga saying that war was an influence due

23:11 - to Debbie Harry to, as so many artists have been influenced by him.

23:16 - Lastly, what drew you to want to study Andy Warhol?

23:20 - Well, I

23:22 - was very interested in the wide bas, the, British artists in Britain,

23:27 - and it turned out that many of them had been very aware of Warhol,

23:31 - and I knew that Warhol left a lot of audiotapes behind,

23:35 - and I was very interested in those.

23:37 - There are over 4000 of them, and no one had devastated them.

23:40 - So I thought I had to do my doctoral thesis on those.

23:44 - So in the 90s I came to Pittsburgh and started listening to them.

23:48 - Sadly, there in Belgrade, as you probably know,

23:52 - and I met his family, his brothers, nieces, nephews

23:57 - who were all in Pittsburgh and I loved Pittsburgh.

24:02 - I loved the family.

24:04 - I really felt connected to Warhol.

24:08 - I felt connected to what it influenced him.

24:11 - Looking at all these areas that had kind of

24:15 - had an influence on his work, but also the familial things.

24:20 - How much influence his his parents, particularly his mother, as I say,

24:25 - his relationship with his brothers,

24:28 - how that has all impacted on him.

24:31 - And I just couldn't stop.

24:33 - I couldn't him, you know.

24:35 - So I did my doctorate.

24:36 - I decided to have this it because of, the problems

24:40 - that later the tapes with withdrawn from circulation.

24:44 - But I continued being fascinated by him as a man.

24:49 - And all the time I still discover things now,

24:53 - and I was fascinated by, you know, how

24:58 - he looked at brands and how, you know, though he did Campbell's Soup Can.

25:04 - Pittsburgh was a house of poems,

25:07 - that term of art.

25:07 - So I was like, well, that's so Andy Warhol.

25:12 - So I think there was so many things. Yes.

25:14 - And I went to the church where he worshiped as a child.

25:17 - I went round with John Mulholland, sadly not with us now.

25:21 - He would drive me round Pittsburgh, showing me all the sites where he studied.

25:25 - So it really gave me an intimate.

25:28 - I just flew back and forth to Pittsburgh came an intimate connection

25:32 - really, with Warhol and the work in Pittsburgh.

25:36 - We've been speaking with Jeanne Wainwright, professor

25:39 - emeritus at the University for the Creative Arts in England.

25:42 - Thank you for your time.

25:44 - Thank you. It's been a pleasure.