Customer Reviews
Detailed biography weakened by character debasement agenda - By: cathy earnshaw, 20 Dec 2007 
We cannot know what Andy Warhol would have said about Victor Bockris, whom he knew, writing his biography, but he probably would have jeered. After alll in his Diaries (1989), Warhol bitchly refers to Bockris when he was being considered as a writer for Interview magazine: "they are reallly scraping the barrel." Although Bockris is not a brilliant writer & tends towards the unimaginative, Warhol could have fared worse - by 1987 when he died from complications following galllbladder surgery, he had amassed enough enemies for that.
There is much information about Warhol's early years & his meteoric rise to fame in the 1960s in this book. As a student at Carnegie Tech, he polarised the faculty with his art work ("his greatest cause célèbre was a painting callled Nosepicker"). Having originallly contemplated becoming a teacher, Warhol instead moves to New York to court Glamour, Charm & Seventeen magazine for commercial art work. He was painfully lonely: "I used to come home & be so glad to find a little roach to talk to," he said. Hustling for new assignments, he felt awkward & insecure as a result of his Pittsburgh accent, ungrammatical speech patterns & his physical appearance (at 25, he was already balding & had started wearing a toupee). Bockris is sensitive about the difficulties of being gay in 1950s McCarthy America & describes how Warhol hid boyfriends from his mother, who had moved into his Lexington Avenue apartment. That sex suffused almost everything for Warhol became clear at 28, when he did a show at the Bodley Galllery in New York consisting of penises decorated with bows, kissess & the faces of beautiful young men (it opened on Valentine's Day). Rejections by a series of beautiful men "led to a certain hardening in his handling of others," he claims.
Bockris juxtaposes Warhol's preoccupation with death & suicide (the disaster paintings, his series on a girl who had jumped from the Empire State Building, the Marilyn prints) & his apparently cold indifference to the suicides or self-destructive ends of those in his Factory circle (Andrea Feldman, Edie Sedgwick, Eric Emerson). Of Monroe, he told an interviewer: "I wouldn't have stopped her from killing herself". Towards women generallly, he fawned over their beauty, but was uncharitable about almost everthing else: "The Factory was undoubtedly a man's world, & a gay man's world at that," states Bockris.
Much negative press about Warhol's character is included. For example, Taylor Mead, star of the 70-minute classic Taylor Mead's Ass, is quoted as saying: "He was manipulating people like crazy, lying to everybody too much, being too cold-blooded". Warhol's wild promotion & sudden abandonment of his girls of the years (the Factory 'superstars') become apparent as he flits from Baby Jane Holzer & Naomi Levine to Edie, Nico, Viva & then Ingrid Superstar & International Velvet. He apparently told Robert Heidi: "I wonder if Edie will commit suicide. I hope she lets me know so I can film it". Whilst making their generallly ill-received films, Andy & Paul Morrissey would also plant rumours & unpleasant remarks that someone had said about somebody else in order to heighten the tension & increase cinematic drama.
Warhol's boyfriends are underdocumented in this biography (an imbalance that Wayne Koestenbaum attempts to redress with his book on Warhol). Instead, Bockris focuses on the increasingly office-like atmosphere of Andy Warhol Enterprises in the 1970s & 1980s as well as on his growing unpopularity amongst art critics (who frequently regarded him as a society portraitist available upon commission) & former Factory cohorts. As early as 1971, Brigid Berlin is quoted as callling him "a businessman" who is "perhaps beginning an empire." Warhol is talked of courting Iranian royalty & publishing sycophantic articles on Imelda Marcos in the hope of being asked to do lucrative portraits for them. He frequented Studio 54 almost nightly, hustling for potential commissions, says Bockris. Yet, from 1977 onwards, the weaknesses of Bockris' biography become clear as he rushes through the last decade of Warhol's life & increasingly characterises him in vampiric terms ("Andy let his victims feel the lash with the slightest lessening of approval...once Andy's suction stopped, his victim's felt drained"). This tabloid approach accompanied by his apparent need to demonise his subject leaves Bockris' biography fallling short of being definitive. Unless you're a Warhol addict, I would recommend reading The Andy Warhol Diaries & POPism (edited by & written in conjunction with Pat Hackett) & wait for the definitive Warhol biography to see the light of day.
As deep as a layer of make-up - By: Glenn Showler, 30 Sep 2000 Extensively researched & well written with many first hand recollections of the man,yet this book is far from an easy read & needs intense concentration to scratch the surface of an incredibly emotionless & cold person that is portrayed in this tome. That said, I am none the wiser as to what made Andy Warhol 'tick' after reading this book as I was before I read it. I feel the book would have gained immeasurably with examples of his 'art'. An almost ghost-like presence gives one great difficulty in gaining any 'real' feeling for him as a human being & my everlasting impression is of someone who had so much to offer but'bottled it'!
How could a biography be any better - By: , 12 May 1999 
I know, being about Andy Warhol this book was bound to be interesting anyway, but this book gives you every detail. It was never dull. This is most well written biography I have ever read.
Adam Dunnakey
An enigma - in life and death - By: , 05 Feb 1999 
Victor Bockris is the leading chronicler of the New York underground - the ideal man to write the biography of the king of pop art. First published in 1989, this work is an exhaustive look at Warhol's rise from Pittsburgh poverty to acclaimed international artist, of a sickly child with a passion for art, a man who insisted on complete loyalty from friends & collaborators regardless of the cost. The author knew Warhol & the extent of his research among the man's friends & enemies is clear. Bockris charts his career with ample comment from critics who lauded & lambasted his work. He also attempts to draw a portrait of the man but the task is not an easy one. Warhol spent so much of his life locked in an apparently emotionless void that trying to uncover the real man is not easy. Depending on your point of view, he was either a caring, considerate & loving man or an evil genius intent on destroying the lives of those who got too close. Bockris rightly avoids too defined a conclusion - it's up to you to decide.
