Becoming Andy Warhol

by Nick Bertozzi, Pierce Hargan (Illustrator)

Celebrated during his lifetime as much for his personality as for his paintings, Andy Warhol (1928–87) is the most famous and influential of the Pop artists, who developed the notion of 15 minutes of fame, and the idea that an artist could be as illustrious as the work he creates. This graphic novel biography offers insight into the turning point of Warhol’s career and the creation of the Thirteen Most Wanted Men mural for the 1964 World’s Fair, when Warhol clashed with urban planner Robert Moses, architect Philip Johnson, and Governor Nelson Rockefeller. In Becoming Andy Warhol , New York Times bestselling writer Nick Bertozzi and artist Pierce Hargan showcase the moment when, by stubborn force of personality and sheer burgeoning talent, Warhol went up against the creative establishment and emerged to become one of the most significant artists of the 20th century.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Biography, Art, Nonfiction, Comics, Graphic Novels Comics, History

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 4, 2016

Reviews

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This stylistic romp does nothing to perpetuate the artist's genius, something which I rather truly craved. But no matter, for we find out, ultimately that he's a hack with a miasma of strangeness so many NYC malcontents found appealing and ultimately even salvific (intimately & art world-wise). He does nothing for me, personally. And after this lush bio, the only artist I care an eye for would be Nick Bertozzi!

Because really, "police files are our only claim to immortality..." [87] Love it!

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Police files are our only claim to immortality."--Warhol

“The only time I ever want to be something is outside a party so I can get in.” --Warhol

Not a real biography. A set of vignettes from the mid-sixties to sort of give you an idea of what Warhol might have been like in the time his career as an artist was just beginning to take off. It’s not an admirable portrait; it’s about a guy who was making good money as an illustrator who wanted to stop drawing shoes and become a celebrity. And he did. Shows him meeting people early on such as the architect Philip Johnson or Jasper Johns and making use of those meetings to learn how to become Famous. He wanted what they had. And he got it.

I really like reading about Warhol and that period, but this story doesn’t really satisfy, though, for a number of reasons. The art should either be straight up conventional to contrast Warhol’s alternative approach or it should be truly experimental, but it is really neither. The art is sketchy and this might be okay, but you can’t distinguish characters. On any given page you can’t figure out who Warhol is! His boyfriends look like him, and many of his other friends sort of look like him.

Most of the scenes are sketchy, too, just glimpses, vignettes, moments of the edge of fame. The dialogue would seem to convey that they are all bitchy/clever/witty/rude boys in the context of his Entry into the Art World. Okay. I guess that’s kind of interesting. He’s an outsider. But he's not punk. Maybe in this he's a little more like the Kardashians. Though with some talent and an interesting perspective on pop art that doesn't really come through here.

If you know little of Warhol you won’t find out much here. Bertozzi’s purpose seems to be to convince us Warhol is a jerk, and in that he succeeds. And that is a little bit interesting, right?

I guess the reasons I give this 3 stars (and not 2) is because 1) I still am interested in Warhol; 2) I like the idea of a biography that is completely honest and unsentimental about him, that exposes him for the Fame Whore he was and doesn't simply perpetuate the Myths about him that I was (honestly) kinda looking for in this biography.

[Rod Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, this is a mess that fails to satisfy on any level. The art is sketchy and sloppy, making it hard to distinguish characters. I had a hard time picking even Warhol out on some pages. The dialogue is just as vague and sketchy as it meanders toward a point. This is not an engaging story and certainly not a good source of information about Warhol outside the two page timeline at the front of the book. Most of the scenes presented in the body of the book just left me asking why is this happening or how does it matter. I wish I had read a real biography instead.
Wait a second.
Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
There.
I just browsed the Wikipedia entry on Warhol, and it was more satisfying than this book.

[Melybee · Rating 4 out of 5]

¡Todo tan bello!

Tal cuál como su título lo dice, en esta novela gráfica conoceremos el pasado de Andy Warhol desde el momento en que comenzó a tomar fama, hasta convertirse en el gran artista que fue (es).

Me encantó que se incluyeran las personas involucradas en sus distintas etapas y también aquellos momentos donde el fracaso estaba más cerca que el éxito.

[to'c · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book offered a bit biographical background on Andy Warhol in a very accessible format, the graphic novel. As a biography it was very light and not quite so cohesive. I did learn a bit about Mr. Warhol but I think one would have to be fairly fluent in his bio to get a lot out of the book. It seemed to jump from event to event with little connective tissue. It also requires one to know the names of the people involved and a bit of their history in order to achieve a full understanding of events. I actually learned more, I think, from the wonderful timeline given at the beginning.

The graphics were certainly stunning and managed to carry the story along without interfering, as some graphics do. We're told at the beginning to pay attention to the backgrounds. Follow that advice.

[Lisa Macklem · Rating 2 out of 5]

The artwork is pretty. The story is incomprehensible, however. I don't feel like I know any more about Warhol than I did when I started. And while the artwork is pretty, it is also impossible to tell the characters apart at times - admittedly, some of that is the story-telling itself, but a number of characters look very similar....

[MarSJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me he perdido infinidad de veces con los diálogos, pero el grafismo es genial.

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Aims to demystify Andy Warhol by presenting his ‘origin story’ from a bored fashion illustrator to his first and ambitious foray in the rarified world of fine art and galleries, where his first patrons were sometimes unaware of how he was playing them. At first I thought the story was discombobulated, but it paid to be patient-I think the chronicling of his slapdash, dilettante beginnings was a means of graphically depicting the start of his crude and rebellious boundary-breaking career. But don’t skip closely reading the timeline on pages 1-2; I think I’d have been completely baffled without it.

[BookCupid · Rating 1 out of 5]

Andy Warhol started his career as an illustrator and became a legend. Those are the only two things I learned from this book.

You see, I found myself turning back pages and constantly re-reading the scenes. For one, all the characters looked similar and Andy was very vague. There were no indications of where he got his inspiration, or how his relationship was going (were they just having sex?) I felt like I was reading a book with zero outline. I wish Bertozzi would have digged deeper. Perhaps fame changed Warhol's personality and that's why he was vague? Give me something ...!

[Jean J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a huge fan of Warhol as a thinker, and Nick Bertozzi doesn't seem to be either. Warhol's talent here is as a figurehead: he's the name put on art he barely helps put together, the face people can get mad at or celebrate, and the guy who brings home the bacon. He's a vacant man selling vacant art to the vacant rich.

The real star here is Pierce Harigan. This is his first graphic novel, but he shows a strong command of line, characterizing spaces and people by knowing what few details to emphasize. In a decade he could be on the level of David Mazzucchelli.

[SamLevi · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book is really strange and like vague? like if you dont know things about warhol already this will be very confusing and not really help you understand at all. but it is interesting and the art is cool
edit: just learned both the main guys involved in this are straight men so it makes sense its bad lol

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but I felt it was really just touching the veneer.

Although, given that we're talking about a book on Andy Warhol's life - maybe that's appropriately the point.

[Brian Rothbart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is based on the e-book, so it was a little hard to make out all the details on the illustrations, but it was still a wonderful read.

This graphic novel biography begins when Warhol’s is starting to change his career from an illustrator for shoes to an artist through his creation of the Thirteen Most Wanted Men mural for the 1964 World’s Fair. It details how Warhol stood up to his convictions, going against the art establishment into become one of the most iconic art talents of our time. I didn't know much about Warhol before this book and found him a very interesting "character". It makes you wonder who the real Warhol was. It also makes me want to read more about him. I highly recommend this graphic novel if you enjoy biographies, art or just want a little glimpse into Warhol's life and world.

[Glen Farrelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoy Warhol's art and his (in)famous image, so I was looking forward to this book. Other reviewers have pointed out the shortcomings of this book, such as how disappointing the artwork is and that most of characters (including Warhol) look so similar one can't tell them apart.

As for story, there's not a central plot and the characters are poorly defined. If you already know a lot about Warhol then this book offers nothing, and if you don't know much about him then this book is incomprehensible.

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given my complete and utter lack of art history knowledge, perhaps I was not the audience for this book. I found that the narrative jumped around, and I have difficulty keeping track of the different characters, or why I should care about them. The art was quite nice though, which is what led me to pick up the volume in the first place. For people with an interest in this subject, the book seems well-researched; it just wasn't for me.

[S G-W · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is only worth while if you already know everything about this time in Warhol’s life, and who all the characters is, because nothing is explained, there’s no context and the art itself gets short shrift. An artistic and education failure, I’m afraid.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A look at the turning point of Warhol’s career with the creation of the Thirteen Most Wanted Men mural for the 1964 World’s Fair.

[Arnela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book through a goodreads giveaway. Completely forgot it was coming, and was happily surprised this afternoon.

I also completely forgot that it was a graphic novel, which really helped me fit it into my schedule today.

I should mention that the preface explains that this is a book depicting as closely as Bertozzi could based on the historical record of Warhol's life. Meaning there was probably a good bit of artistic liberty with it. Still, I like that he tried to give a more human aspect to Warhol the artist. I can see where Brtozzi is coming from, I've spent plenty of my undergraduate years sitting in lecture halls hearing about artists and what they made, and what it represented, and this and that, and I agree with him that so many times we forget these artists are people with every day lives. They're not all just sitting there in a studio making and creating all day and night like some sort of art machine. They hang out with people, they usually have a day job, they have good days and bad, they can go weeks without a good idea for what to make, and other times they're just cranking out art like nobody's business. I know damn well that a lot of my best ideas come while I'm doing the most mundane bs.

This book looks at Andy Warhol the guy, how he handled his work, what he was doing when he started to make a break in the art world, how he changed, how he changed the same. Or as close as we can get to that. That's the kinda stuff I like to see, just what were these supposedly great people when we just look at them as people, in their every day moments. And I'm deeply grateful that Bertozzi tried to showcase that aspect in this biography.

I gotta give props to the artist/illustrator for the book- Pierce Hargan. I love his style, especially that cover, that cover is basically something Warhol would have made. It's loose, with simple lines, but very emotive with the characters bodies [that's something I really love in a comic, frankly I don't think a comic is worth very much of it's salt if it doesn't convey some good body language]. I also really like the use of one color for emphasis, I wanna call it lavender, it's such a soft shade of purple, but he doesn't just keep it one shade, sometimes it's lighter, sometimes a little darker, but it always give a nice contrast to the black and white and works well with the mood of any situation. Very nice work.

Personally I think that most people would just have fun reading this book, it's interesting like that. Is it completely factual, not 100% [but then nothing is ever 100%]. Does it manage to capture what kind of guy Warhol was, absolutely. I'm sure some people who are die hard fans of his work might look unfavorably at this book, but guess what, an artist is more than just their art. There is a person behind every great painting, every wonderful book, every beautiful song; sometimes they're great, sometimes they're not, sometimes they're just people and we gotta get used to that.

[Dominick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though he was instrumental in the careers of figures whose work I do admire (notably Lou Reed), Warhol himself has never been a favourite of mine. This book confirms my impression that he was more than a bit of a shitheel, exploiting and discarding others. That's not the reason for the rating, though; there can be great books about assholes. I had two problems with this book. First, the art is certainly accomplished enough in various ways, but its somewhat cartoony style did not seem to quite fit the subject to me--and, more importantly, it at times made it difficult to tell who was who. At times, I wasn't sure whether a particular person was someone we had seen before or someone new. This is exacerbated by the highly episodic and fragmented (albeit chronological) narrative. There are very many short scenes, the point of which was often just not clear to me; Bertozzi did not seem to me to be developing anything so much as documenting a bunch of events that he thought were important, though, again, why was often not clear, because there just wasn't enough information. As just one example, the final sequence ends with two young women arriving at the Factory and being treated badly; one leaves, but the other opts to stay. The focus on them suggests that we are to see them as significant--there's no reason I can see, otherwise, for how much attention they get, relatively speaking . I wondered whether we were to take the one who stayed as Valerie Solanas, but she is never named, and Solanas does not appear in the chart of characters at the beginning. Maybe she is supposed to be some other Factory hanger-one that we should recognize, but the information just isn't there in the book. So, basically, disjointed and unelucidating bio of an artist I don't much care for anyway.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't read this expecting a true biography -- this is a curious series of vignettes that show pivotal moments in Andy Warhol's career, the interactions and influences that shaped his identity as an artist. Some of them are amusing, such as getting coached by a friend on how to give confounding interview answers! Others are downbeat, especially when we see many, many exampes of how easily Warhol would pick up and discard other people on his own climb to fame.

Overall it's a bit confusing, and the other people in Warhol's life come and go without much context. Perhaps that's appropriate, but it's also a bit bewildering to read, especially when some of the characters are drawn with a similar appearance. The art style is clearly manga-inspired, especially the works of Miyazaki, which is an interesting twist, but there are often some very awkwardly drawn frames -- especially things like images of the studios, or street scenes with a lot of detail.

[Bimal Patel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you Abrams Books for forwarding me a copy of Becoming Andy Warhol's latest edition. This book is my first comic book and I didn't know if I will end up being a fan of comic books or abandon them forever. Well, I am on a fence with my decision. While the pictures and illustrations are done well, it is hard to figure out the characters and who says what making it difficult to follow the story. Also, the story is fast forwarded version of Andy's struggle with art world and his eventual fame as a pop artist. I personally didn't enjoy it as much as I like a coherent story versus having to decipher the emotions, expressions and verbal tone from graphics. But if you are fan of adult comic books then you might want to check this book out. Keep up the good work Nick Bertozzi and Pierce Hargan.

P.S: I still think I should buy the illustrated/graphic version of American Gods.

[Stephen Schiele · Rating 2 out of 5]

I chose to give this novel a two out of five stars for many reasons beginning with the artwork throughout the novel. Although it was close to Andy Warhol’s work it made the characters throughout the story difficult to understand and hard really understand who they are. This was a large downfall for me as when I read books I like to get to know the characters which was difficult in this novel. The genre of this book was also a downfall for me. This story is created into a graphic novel which does fit Andy’s life very well but made it difficult to fit in necessary information. This caused some parts of the novel to be difficult to understand and confusing. I also do not tend to read graphic novels as this tends to happen within many. I would recommend reading this novel if you enjoy graphic novels but if not I would not recommend reading it.

[Carol Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this graphic book off a Washburn Library display that featured books about gays. I am familiar with Warhol because my son is a huge fan of his. This book covers his early years of becoming famous when he stopped doing illustrations for print advertising and switched to the works which made him famous. It was interesting to read a little about how this happened. However, except for the timeline at the beginning of the book, I thought it was hard to follow. I kept going back to the timeline and to the list and images of "characters" involved in Warhol's life. I felt that this detracted from what I was reading and if a "character" did not have an image with a name, I really didn't know who it was. It is a cool looking book and a Warhol fan might enjoy paging through it.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was drawn in by this graphic novel's premise, which asks how Andy Warhol became an iconic pop artist. However, it had a disjointed feel, and relied on a series of vignettes to sketch an answer to this question.

While I appreciate that there was a lot of research behind the writing and that it focused on a narrow period in his career, I wanted more depth and complexity.

The accompanying illustrations were clearly thoughtfully-composed, but the palette and style of the illustrations didn't seem to mesh conceptually with the novel's subject matter, and at times, were difficult to clearly understand. Additionally, the motif of highlighting the ephemera that inspired Warhol was compelling at first, but lost intrigue with repetition.

[Marta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Becoming Andy Warhol (2016)

La graphic novel si concentra sul periodo 1962-64, ma risulta poco incisiva nel modo di raccontare i fatti, soprattutto se paragonata a Warhol. L'intervista di Adriano Barone che, pur prendendo in considerazione tutta la vita dell'artista e quindi dovendo per forza di cose sintetizzare alcuni passaggi, riesce comunque a introdurre meglio personaggi e eventi. Inoltre in questo libro si percepisce un giudizio di fondo negativo su Warhol, che è in fondo solo uno degli aspetti di un personaggio sicuramente più sfaccettato e volutamente elusivo.
I disegni sono di Pierce Hargan e danno a tutti i personaggi una faccia da patata

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art is really sloppy and not a style I personally enjoy. I couldn't tell the difference between characters, neither from the art or the dialogue, and it was difficult to understand what was going on in the plot because the art was so poorly rendered. If you already know quite a bit about Warhol (important people in his life, moments that led to his success) then you may enjoy this book as an interpretation and retelling of those stories. If you're not as familiar with Warhol (as I am) you may find this book confusing and not enjoyable.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was of two thoughts with this book: either it was a rather vague and unsatisfying quick biography that demystified Andy (letting other people do his hard work as he focused mostly on the social element: yup, sounds like Warhol) or it emulated Warhol's hard-to-classify personality. I think the section that highlights his decision to play it close to the chest and as vague as possible is telling: the biography emulates the artist. And his willingness to discard and hurt the people who helped him achieve fame. Frankly, I wish that element was focused on even more.

[Mark Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a fan of the artwork in this bio-graphical piece. Not terrible, but just seemed vague and New Yorker cartoonish. The visual storytelling was well crafted and the scene setting and transitions well executed. Dialogue good. Sense of time and place mostly good. I guess my main objection was to the man himself. He doesn't come off as sympathetic as the author intended, I don't think. Not at all likeable, which surprised me. Mostly a greedy, selfish little poser.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know much about Warhol and I still don’t. I learned some things that make me want to go read more about him but mostly this book left me confused and needing any context and flushing out of anything. Also at times the illustrations were confusing to try and figure out who was who and what might be going on. The best parts were the beginning intro and the time line at the beginning of the book IMO.

[Amy the book-bat · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars
I got nothing out of this graphic novel. I was interested in Warhol's early days, which this book was supposed to explore. All I got from it was that Warhol was a colossal jerk. The art of the graphic novel wasn't all that great. The "plot" jumped around a lot and it was hard to distinguish who the characters were. Even Warhol blended in and was hard to distinguish at times. I am very disappointed that I actually spent money on this. Maybe I can donate it to the library or somethig.