432 pages. 325 illustrations, including 85 color plates. The author's background is as an art critic and close firend and confidant of Warhol's for over 25 years. He had the cooperation of Warhol and Warhol's family with the book. A light impression runs through the front board and front panel of the jacket.
Perhaps no artist has so captured the imagination of the public as has Andy Warhol. To some he was a genius whose brash, provocative, and often zany paintings and films epitomized the prevailing cultural and moral spirit of the time; others saw him as a flagrant self-promoter whose insatiable appetite for fame and fortune led him to pure sensationalism at the expense of serious art. Yet no one can deny his influence on the world at large, an influence that continues unabated even after his death. By preempting the celebrity of his subjects-from Campbell's Soup and Coca-Cola to Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor-Warhol parlayed his own name into a highly valuable commodity. But he didn't stop there. Recognized as a founding father of underground film, a pioneer of multimedia "happenings," and the brightest light in his own galaxy of "superstars," Warhol strove to be a "jack of all arts," and the legacy he left behind-paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, films, anai"publications, as well as a decorative art collection perhaps unrivaled in ourtime-proves him to be a master as well. Author David Bourdon, art critic and a close friend and confidant of Warhol's since the early 1960s, has been working on this book for several years, receiving full cooperation from the artist during his lifetime and from his family and friends afterward. He has succeeded in capturing Warhol's art, life, and impact-and the essence of an era- with style, grace, insight, and the authenticity that only comes from having been there. In portraying the multidimensional artist in all his many guises, Bourdon presents the most comprehensive, authoritative view available of the life and work of the internationally renowned king of Pop art. With his perceptive text and more than 320 pictures, he explores the young Warhol's struggle to find his own niche in the art world-and his personal rivalry with Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in his attempts to innovate new forms in art; analyzes his films-from early, motionless studies such as Empire through Chelsea Girls, which one critic termed "the Iliad of the Underground," and Lonesome Cowboys and Blue Movie, both confiscated by lawmen; documents the evolution of his Interview magazine; discusses the shock waves that spread around the world from his 1968 near-fatal shooting; and examines his role as cult figure and mentor. The off-center members of Warhol's eccentric entourage -Girls of the Year Baby Jane Hölzer and Edie Sedgwick; Factory regulars Ondine, Viva, Ultra Violet, and Billy Name; transvestite film stars Candy Darling Holly Woodlàwn, and Jackie Curtis-are all here, as are such notables from the worlds of music, fashion, and Hollywood as Liza, John and Yoko, Mick, Bianca, Capote, and Jackie Q They all come together in the pages of this critical biography, fhedefinitive study of one of the most closely scrutinized but least understood artists of the century.