Blake Gopnik – författare

Skämt eller geni? Radikal konstnär eller social klättrare? Andy Warhol var kontroversiell och full av motsägelser. Denna heltäckande biografi borrar djupt i Warhols liv och person och beskriver hur han kom att revolutionera populärkulturen.

Baserat på åratal av efterforskningar i arkiv och intervjuer med hundratals vänner, älskare och fiender följer Blake Gopnik konstnärens väg genom livet. Från barndomen som son till fattiga östeuropeiska invandrare på 1930-talet, genom hans tidiga framgångar som kommersiell illustratör och det omvälvande genombrottet som konstnär, till tiden som societetens porträttör och kulturkändis på 70- och 80-talet. Med nya insikter om Warhols liv växer en paradoxal bild av konstnären fram: ytlig men sofistikerad, glamourös men privat, orädd men blyg. Samtidigt analyserar och reflekterar Gopnik över den föränderliga dynamiken mellan kommers och kultur som kom att prägla Warhols konstnärskap.

Brought to you by Penguin. When critics attacked Andy Warhol''s Marilyn paintings as shallow, the Pop artist was happy to present himself as shallower still: He claimed that he silkscreened to avoid the hard work of painting, although he was actually a meticulous workaholic; in interviews he presented himself as a silly naïf when in private he was the canniest of sophisticates. Blake Gopnik''s definitive biography digs deep into the contradictions and radical genius that led Andy Warhol to revolutionise our cultural world.Based on years of archival research and on interviews with hundreds of Warhol''s surviving friends, lovers and enemies, Warhol traces the artist''s path from his origins as the impoverished son of Eastern European immigrants in 1930s Pittsburgh, through his early success as a commercial illustrator and his groundbreaking pivot into fine art, to the society portraiture and popular celebrity of the ''70s and ''80s, as he reflected and responded to the changing dynamics of commerce and culture.Warhol sought out all the most glamorous figures of his times - Susan Sontag, Mick Jagger, the Barons de Rothschild - despite being burdened with an almost crippling shyness. Behind the public glitter of the artist''s Factory, with its superstars, drag queens and socialites, there was a man who lived with his mother for much of his life and guarded the privacy of his home. He overcame the vicious homophobia of his youth to become a symbol of gay achievement, while always seeking the pleasures of traditional romance and coupledom. (Warhol explodes the myth of his asexuality.) Filled with new insights into the artist''s work and personality, Warhol asks: Was he a joke or a genius, a radical or a social climber? As Warhol himself would have answered: Yes.© Blake Gopnik 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

The definitive biography of a fascinating and paradoxical figure, one of the most influential artists of his—or any—age  To this day, mention the name “Andy Warhol” to almost anyone and you’ll hear about his famous images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. But though Pop Art became synonymous with Warhol’s name and dominated the public’s image of him, his life and work are infinitely more complex and multi-faceted than that.

 In Warhol, esteemed art critic Blake Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions. “The meanings of his art depend on the way he lived and who he was,” as Gopnik writes. “That’s why the details of his biography matter more than for almost any cultural figure,” from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing as the child of immigrants to his early career in commercial art to his total immersion in the “performance” of being an artist, accompanied by global fame and stardom—and his attempted assassination.  

The extent and range of Warhol’s success, and his deliberate attempts to thwart his biographers, means that it hasn’t been easy to put together an accurate or complete image of him. But in this biography, unprecedented in its scope and detail as well as in its access to Warhol’s archives, Gopnik brings to life a figure who continues to fascinate because of his contradictions—he was known as sweet and caring to his loved ones but also a coldhearted manipulator; a deep-thinking avant-gardist but also a true lover of schlock and kitsch; a faithful churchgoer but also an eager sinner, skeptic, and cynic.

Wide-ranging and immersive, Warhol gives us the most robust and intricate picture to date of a man and an artist who consistently defied easy categorization and whose life and work continue to profoundly affect our culture and society today.