Warhol gay

LGBTQ stories: Andy Warhol's unlikely spirituality

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

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

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

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

“There are sweet works that he made as a child, gorgeous minuscule painted Jesus statue that he made at ten years old,” Hermo said. “As a pupil at Carnegie tech, reproducing images of the family cruci

DID WARHOL HAVE ‘GAY PRIDE’ BEFORE THERE WAS A Morning FOR IT?

THE DAILY PIC is a drawing that Andy Warhol did of his first grave boyfriend, Carlton Willers, somewhere around or ‘ I’m posting it today in honor of this coming weekend of Gay Pride.

The drawing was recently reproduced in the Taschen book called “Andy Warhol: Devotion, Sex & Desire.” It includes a long essay I wrote about the role that Warhol’s gay imagery played in his notions of avant-garde art. But what that essay could not quite convey was the central role that gay passion played in his life. I was incredibly lucky to have talked to Willers for my Warhol bio, and the impression I got was of a relationship with Warhol marked by real romantic tenderness.  In a letter he wrote me, Willers described Warhol as “such a lovely young man…. I felt very seal to him. I suppose I loved him.”

The unhappy thing is that Warhol half jokingly (and maybe completely masochistically) encouraged Willers to get married. He did, at least briefly. I think it just a

JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

Roy Grundmann’s guide, Andy Warhol’s "Blow Job,” deals with white lgbtq+ male identity in postwar United States.

Andy Warhol’s film Blow Job () — a single shot of a young man’s movements against a brick wall — facilitates a gay reading of its scenario without confirming any one interpretation.

Is the man in the frame receiving a blow job?

Who is giving it to him?

Does he come? When?

The book reproduces early Warhol sketches, illustrations (including two book jackets the painter designed), paintings, and silkscreens. It also features many large stills from Blow Job.

 

Grundmann shows us many of Warhol’s personal photos, some of the painter himself.

The book includes Hollywood poster art and publicity shots of James Dean. Grundmann finds this headshot metaphorical. The wire tunnel creates an optical illusion in which the player both appears in a black void and is magnified by it.

The novel explores relations between cu

Warhol exhibit explores roles of gender and sexuality in his life and art

A large portrait currently on view at London’s Tate Modern is one of many in a recent exhibition that is instantly recognizable as the perform of Andy Warhol. Its composition is bold, and so is its content: The model was Marsha P. Johnson, a Dark transgender woman and trailblazing LGBTQ activist.

The portrait is one of over two dozen from Warhol’s “Ladies and Gentlemen” series featured at the museum’s newly reopened and extended Warhol retrospective, on view until Nov. The series, which portrays Black and Latinx trans women and kingly queens from New York, is one of the highlights of the exhibition.

The retrospective, which opened briefly in March before organism closed in the coronavirus pandemic, features more than pieces of the artist’s work and explores the influences of gender statement and sexuality in both his life and art. In doing so, the exhibit — which will travel to Cologne, Germany, and Toronto after its London run — aims to unearth Warhol, the person, from beneath the well-known facade of Warhol, the