Andy Warhol: A Biography

Penguin Lives

by Wayne Koestenbaum

An intimate depiction of the visionary who revolutionized the art world

A man who created portraits of the rich and powerful, Andy Warhol was one of the most incendiary figures in American culture, a celebrity whose star shone as brightly as those of the Marilyns and Jackies whose likenesses brought him renown. Images of his silvery wig and glasses are as famous as his renderings of soup cans and Brillo boxes--controversial works that elevated commerce to high art. Warhol was an enigma: a partygoer who lived with his mother, an inarticulate man who was a great aphorist, an artist whose body of work sizzles with sexuality but who considered his own body to be a source of shame.

In critic and poet Wayne Koestenbaum's dazzling look at Warhol's life, the author inspects the roots of Warhol's aesthetic vision, including the pain that informs his greatness, and reveals the hidden sublimity of Warhol's provocative films. By looking at many facets of the artist's oeuvre--films, paintings, books, "Happenings"--Koestenbaum delivers a thought-provoking picture of pop art's greatest icon.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Art, Biography Memoir, Queer, Film, History

236 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2001

About the author

Wayne Koestenbaum has published five books of critical prose, including The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and three books of poetry, including Ode to Anna Moffo and Other Poems. He is a Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I expected to read: A highly detailed and thought provoking work on the life and work of Andy Warhol in a biographical setting with history and behind the scenes of his paintings, film, and life.

What I actually read: A subjective critique of Andy Warhol's art and just barely film with an overwhelming focus on the sexual nature and deviancy of the man.

This could have probably been averted had I looked up the author, who is critically known for sexual analysis in other works, but even then it did not seem like an appropriate presentation of the novel. There is no indication that this is by no means a complete observation (whereas the author literally expresses not knowing certain subjects before avoiding them entierely) and while I can appreciate learning about the sexual nature of Warhol's work, the book provides insuffencient context towards the art it chooses to highlight. I too would not want to read an entire book about it, but rather highlight the most important aspects while the book is mostly a biography.

I can imagine this book to be useful in a study of sexual nature in artwork and creative media, but potential reader beware of trying to learn about Andy Warhol: This isn't really about that.

[Madison · Rating 1 out of 5]

BORING I WANT THIS CLASS TO BE OVER SO I DONT HAVE TO READ ABOUT SOUP CANS 14737292 TIMES A DAY

[Kay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really didn't like this book. It was not what it said on the cover - it was not a biography. Its details were sketchy at best. There was a major consideration of AW's films (none of which I've seen) but very little explanation of how AW came to fame or really how he developed. It just seemed to be a riff on Andy being voyeuristic and surrounded by others taking drugs. Other than screen prints of already iconic figures, I got no impression of how much work AW has left for posterity and whether he is likely to be considered a major artist as opposed to just a major celebrity.

[Adam Messinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is absolutely insane gay guy energy to take someone who famously said “if you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it” and be like now…hang on…what if I speculated wildly?

I think saying something like the above quote is attention seeking behavior but if there is one thing I know about the unknowable Warhol it’s—

It’s kinda the eternal struggle to get the bottom of who Warhol was and what we can glean from the things he’s left behind. For someone who so tediously documented his every breath, there is still so much speculation onto who he really was. And I think Wayne does a good job of getting to the heart of him even if at times it is…yes…insane gay guy energy.

Reading a book about a figure and yet being so so so aware of the author while you’re reading it can either be excruciating or a total vibe and for this book I land on the side of it kind of being a vibe. Every gay guy has some deep connection to Warhol and I think it’s much more interesting to be a Stan than to be a hater. Like it’s the ultimate pick me gay guy move to be like “I think Warhol is overrated”.

I think where this book mostly suffers is that it isn’t really a biography of Warhol. Wayne is as much a part of this story and his pathologizing and deep analysis of all of Warhol’s cultural output really is the main focus. Like it’s a really beautiful brain download into one guy’s opinions and artistic theory of Warhol. And, again, I think he mostly nails it. I just wish there had been more pictures if this was the route we were gonna take because I am, also, an insane gay guy who took research chemicals at 17 and my brain has never been the saim.

[Aleksandr Gaitšenja · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a man

[Isai Soto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could’ve done without the entire middle section. The book focuses a lot on Andy Warhol’s films which I don’t believe are as groundbreaking as his repetitive and sometimes perverse ventures into Popism. I do think Wayne Kostenbaum was an excellent choice for this biography, his writing is MANGIFIQUE!!!!

[Sierra · Rating 1 out of 5]

how dare you come after my man andy like that

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wayne Koestenbaum wrote the best biography on Andy Warhol. I think this maybe the case because he is writing from a 'gay' angle, and Warhol if nothing else is the ultimate 'gay' artist. Koestenbaum has a great understanding of the underground gay scene of NYC sixties and life in the late 50's as well. Even if you don't like Warhol (seems like an ok guy) or his work (here and there), the reader can capture a particular scene which I think is super important for the aesthetics that was produced in this country.

[Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This would be better described as a Warhol Filmography than a biography. Also, there were several instances, the most glaring being Warhol and The Velvet Underground, in which the author writes, "this is beyond my area of knowledge" and proceeds to skip over that section of Warhol's life...what the what?!? Any good biographer would know to research. Further, any good editor would not let that stand.

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I borrowed this for Kindle from our library and hoped it would fit well with reading "The Andy Warhol Diaries." Hoped it may give me some other insight into the artworks and films of Andy Warhol and The Factory. It did not. Not a biography at all but rather an art (mainly his film work) critique telling the reader how much of Andy's art had to do with his odd/asexual sexuality and his mother's problems. So slow and boring I just didn't care to finish it.

[Ami · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have retained one sentence from this bio that I use all the time. It's something like, "De Kooning and the abstract expressionist were always getting drunk and vomiting and punching one another in the face. Andy was very much a response to that whole way of art."

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

It reads like a biography of Warhol by someone who really just wants to write a monograph about Warhol's films. Kostenbaum treats the actual details and narrative of Warhol's life as either an inconvenience to dispense with or as a skeleton for his attempts at art analysis and criticism. It doesn't help that Koestenbaun, who works himself into knots finding nice things to say about some of Warhol's more nakedly commercial work and creative failures, completely shrugs off the Velvet Underground: "Their music has many admirers, but it may be the aspect of Warhol's world with which I have the least sympathy, so I will beg off any attempt at analysis. The Warhol factory was home to several kinds of music, as I wish my ear could be". I was also a little stunned at how uninterested Kostenbaum was with Edie Sedgwick (and by extension, Bob Dylan), although I suspect that this has more to do with how he was interested in framing Warhol's place as being more central to gay history in the 1960s than with the larger 60s culture and counterculture. All that being said, it's mostly well written, and I have to give Kostenbaum credit for clearly writing the book that he wanted, as opposed to what most readers would expect.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warhol presents many challenges. He produced so much, acquired so much, left so much behind, but what does it all amount to? What do you make of the interior of someone who spent so much of his life cultivating a showy exterior? How do you place him in the context of his time and place without letting your time and place creep in to distort and judge it? Koestenbaum does yoeman’s work focusing largely on interpretation while not getting into every bit of minutia of Andy’s day to day existence. It feels a bit like a familiar song- despite not ever doing a lot of intentional Warhol research I already knew many of the broad outlines of his narrative, so fleshing out meaning really was something that was useful to me and Koestenbaum’s takes all seem to fit to me, with the caveat that I’m not really very familiar with differing points of view.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Koestenbaum writes of Warhol's "piss paintings: "Jackson Pollack's drips, which had a urinary or seminal reference, turn queer when Andy repeats them, as if he were laying a metaphoric hand on his predecessor's "paintbrush," Warhol's... joking euphemism for the micturating genitals." This imaginatively written work reminds me of Marcia Davenport's "Mozart": neither can strictly be called "biographies", but there is no "life interpretation" sections at libraries. Biointerpretation? Biofiction? Whatever, "Andy Warhol" is a fascinating portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist/person/philosopher, etc. And my personal view of what he achieved has just skyrocketed. I want to know more, and luckily the author provides numerous resources for study. Warhol got away with a lot of sensational actions for a singular reason: he was Warhol.

[M Pau · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives you an insight to Andy's life. From his birth to the end of his days and all the in between troubled, artistic, talented life.

"He was a maker, in love with productivity"

[Michael Zimecki · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her review of the book for the New York Times, Phoebe Hoban remarked that it views Warhol “through a scrim of the artist’s homosexual longing,” serving up a “psychosocial soufflé of arch observations.” I think that sums it up. Koestenbaum’s biography is long on speculation, short on evidence, even shorter on insight — it simply doesn’t get behind the mask Andy Warhol wore for the world and show us the man behind it.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Biography of Andy

I really loved the author’s writing, especially after Andy suffered a near fatal shooting. There are some draggy parts where he describes Andy’s movies in too much detail but the description of Andy’s life in the 70s and 80s made up for that. I was at MOMA not too long ago. There’s a lot of Warhol stuff but I didn’t realize the museum ignored him until after he died. Would like to see the Warhol museum.

[Dan Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

For someone that knew nothing about Andy’s life, this was an interesting read that transcended mere biography. It reads like part historical fact, and mostly hypothesis on his artistic motives that were grounded in his sexuality. It would have been helpful to include more pictures of his work, especially during the chapters that dealt with his films. Having not seen any of his films, it was difficult to visualize the scenes that were being described.

[Dylan Kiewel · Rating 4 out of 5]

wayne on andy! i love the two penguin lives series i've read so far (joyce by edna obrien was the other). in a similar fashion to the decadent editions series (ten monographs on ten films that stick out from the 2000s) they read as more ideal (because succinct, because dynamic) biographies then the decades long researched overlong standard bios. more personality, more voice, more fun.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enigma. Crude. Fear. Sexual. Asexual. Crass. Conman. Genius. Schizophrenic. Observer. Visionary. Revolting. Vacuous. Meaningless. Meaningful. Sycophantic. Joyous. Wonderment. Contradiction. Hypocrisy. Trauma. Death.

[Dkolacinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rapid telling of the sordid, squalid, intriguing, bewildering, bizarre, unique tale of Andy Warhol, a pop icon who left his footprint (and other body parts) on art and the culture in which he lived.

[Christopher Renberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned quite a bit about the sexual nature/undertones of Warhol's work. What I wanted to learn was about his life and his work. I learned bits and pieces as I read. The author seems well-versed in his observations and interpretations but I was looking more for actual biography.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting read - not quite a biography, but more of an art critique/narration of how Warhol’s art echoed his life. I feel like I did learn a lot though, especially about why Warhol’s art is meaningful, and I definitely want to go see the films.

[GK Stritch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andy Warhol Analyzed by Wayne Koestenbaum, Professor of English, CUNY, from Penguin LIVES series--much bosh, some interesting.

[Frank Karioris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. More than that, superbly well written. Worth its weight in gold just for the Introduction: "Meet Andy Paperbag".

[Russell Chamberlain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book for analysis of the art, but less so the man.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetically written. A man of many insecurities.

[Jem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings.......

[Jordan Movinski · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author has a gigantic ego and much of the book is about him...not Andy Warhol...

[Nadia Jasso · Rating 2 out of 5]

R.I.P Andy Warhol. You would've loved 2014 Tumblr.