After twenty years of employment in a creative field, I am struggling to find work. I know I’m not alone in this. But I had time to visit with The Andy Warhol Diaries yesterday, and his sadness helped me with my own. He was often heartbroken, and he failed a lot. I’d gotten into the mindset that he was the gilded robot he’d always wanted to be, pumping out success. But of course he suffered, too.
It’s his failures that are encouraging me to create today. He was often lonely, heartbroken and ridiculed from childhood and throughout his career. He got the adulation he wanted, but for the most part it arrived after he was dead.
While he was alive, things often didn’t turn out. When they made a mold of his face for an actual robot prototype, he felt like he was suffocating under the plaster. And when it was finally dry, the “robot people” dropped it on the floor. It shattered, and he didn’t want to do it again.
In the 21st century, we see this icon of iconography doing it all and selling it all for millions at Sotheby’s. But while he worked, art critics called him “stupid.” His Ladies and Gentleman series didn’t sell for years. People criticized him harshly for the Nancy Reagan Interview cover. Some of his collaborators hated him and, famously, one shot him. And he hated how he looked, save for his scars, which he called “kind of beautiful.”
It’s easy to forget all of that when there’s a museum in his honor that catalogues his used undergarments. If god or whoever asked me if I’d want that level of notoriety, I realize I don’t know what I would say. I’d start to get bogged down by the idiotic task of comparing suffering and measuring success.
Andy’s friends say he tried hard to hide his vulnerabilities. And he found all of these colorful, beautiful, and glamorous ways to do that, but he didn’t keep his own secrets or get rid of his humanness. Maybe that’s been his appeal all along, and I’m just now seeing it.