More than one seemingly religious person's secret sins have been exposed at their death; Warhol's secrets were that he went to church and served at a soup kitchen. <BR>
The article raises many interesting points. I must confess to being a cultural illiterate. Without being able to see the cited art of Warhol, I find the claim that Warhol's art is intrinsically Catholic hard to accept.
I tend to agree, but I haven't studied Warhol in depth either. There is a sort of disdain towards Warhol in particular from those disaffected from pop art in general that I'm guilty of (though not wholesale, as it were). Quite honestly, his work has always seemed flat, maybe a layer deep, but more slightly clever than deep (gold dust for a rich man, gaudy makeup for a beauty).
If this article's right, though, his work jumps into three dimensions. Taking a look at the Last Supper portraits linked to from the article, one of the first things you might notice is that the closups of Jesus have three colored films, which immediately makes a Catholic think of the Trinity. And so it could be a discrete acknowledgement of Christ's intimate union with the whole Trinity (via the personage of the Word). Symbolism of this sort is probably a bit beneath or beyond, depending on your viewpoint, pop art, however. Especially if you try to extend the analogy to the whole view of the Last Supper. Perhaps a trinitarian view of God working in things, right? But there's four colors. The green is stark and individual, perhaps that should be the human apart from divine, something divorced from what's going on there. Judas! Yeah, that would explain it. But Judas is actually intersected with purple and yellow, as is Jesus and Peter and John... (if I remember my Who's Who correctly)
Rather, to me, it simply seems to outline the different groupings in the picture according to whose eyes/hands are directed towards Jesus and how. And at that, not completely. So...what?
Maybe if we knew how he used color it would be clearer. There are other possible explanations, but they rest on being totally convinced that they actually *mean* something. I simply have no idea.
This article for me - a Slovak Ruthene (just like Andy was) is a very helpful source of knowledge about Andy.. I really have not known that he was religious.
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God Spy is a good and helpful forum and source. Thank you.
The fact that Warhol went to church was well established even at the height of his early fame. But nobody would investigate this aspect of his life due to the "bad boy" persona necessary to becoming a famous artist in those days. Thirty years later, it is good to see that new art historian/critics like Jane Daggett Dillenberger, author of the forthcoming "The Religious Art of Andy Warhol," are willing to explore the profound complexities at the core of Warhol's predicament. It appears that his priest/advisors were willing to abide with him rather than judge him or pressure him into orthodoxy. Whatever else he might have been, he changed the art world by allowing himself to become a screen for other people's projections. Prior to his career, artists were philosophers and their works were emblems of their beliefs whether or not they were in control of thier lives. After Andy, that changed. Now artists became more passive about what we make of them.
November 12, 2003 1:55 PM
