Andy Warhol, Brooklyn, NY (2022)

What can I possibly add to the thousands of words that have been written about Andy Warhol (1928-1997), the visual artist and filmmaker that many, including a number of art critics (but not collectors), love to hate? I only weigh in from the personal: I’ve always been a fan—as an art lover and cultural historian. He had a crazy wide and varied artistic career (illustrator for women’s magazines and greeting cards, filmmaker and arbiter, critic and some high priest of the Pop Art movement), but it was his skill at creating visual artifacts that served as cultural commentary (real or imagined) that I admire.

While I have yet to visit his eponymous museum in Pittsburgh—his hometown—I’ve seen so much of his work around the world. These shots were taken closer to home at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.(1) I love the figurative and literal sharpness of the knives and lines of the crosses in this work, which appeared at a retrospect at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. All seemingly slicing through the clutter and artifice of life.

(1) I lifted this paragraph on Warhol’s religiosity written by the Brooklyn Museum’s curator Jose Carlos Diaz to accompany the Revelation show, as it summed up the artist’s religious roots: “The connection between Warhol’s religion and his artistic production was not deeply explored until after he died in 1987. While his Byzantine Catholic background and religious practices had been previously acknowledged by friends, family, and employees, it was not often publicized to the media. One exception was an Esquire magazine article from 1966, in which Warhol’s pious mother, Julia, boasted to the reporter, “He [is a] good religious boy.” Published after his death, The Andy Warhol Diaries reported the artist’s daily activities for decades, with more than fifty mentions of his going to church. In Bob Colacello’s memoir Holy Terror, the former insider described the artist doing “all the Catholic things . . . taking holy water, genuflecting, kneeling, praying, and making the Sign of the Cross” when they visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. In that moment Colacello realized Warhol’s devotion was not an act but a fundamental part of his life. “ Source: https://www.warhol.org/warhols-relationship-with-catholicism-was-far-from-simple-still-he-evoked-god-through-his-art/