ARTS The phenomenon that Paul Morrissey, who formerly ran the filmmaking operation at Andy Warhol’s Factory, calls “The Warhol Industrial Complex” roars away. In May “Small Torn Campbell’s Soup Can” went at Christie’s for $11.8m. Earlier this year there was a large Warhol show in Russia and film director David Cronenberg is co-curating a show in Ontario, Canada (Supernova: Stars, Deaths and Disasters, 1962–1964, until October 22). The coming weeks see two important Warhol shows at New York galleries, the “Mao” portraits at L M and the “Skull” and “Hammer Sickle” series at Perry Rubenstein.
Factory Girl, the film in which Sienna Miller plays Warhol’s fragile muse, Edie Sedgwick, opens shortly. Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, a four-hour two-parter, by Ric Burns, maker of the well-regarded series The Civil War, will be screened in September. Collectables authorised by the Warhol Foundation include shouler bags, watches and Levi’s.
Recent publications include Andy Warhol Screen Tests from Abrams and Andy Warhol: Giant Size, a 15lb whopper from Phaidon with 2,000 illustrations, well over half being documentary photographs and celebrity memorabilia.
There’s a similar focus on Warhol-qua-Warhol in the Gagosian Gallery’s $100 catalogue of Early Hand-Painted Works and my own cupful splashed into the tsunami is an introduction to Andy Warhol The Day the Factory Died, a book of photographs by Christophe von Hohenberg.
So platinum-haloed has Warhol become that even for those who were around at the time it’s hard to remember just where his reputation stood during his last decade and a half.
Nowhere much.
“When he was alive he couldn’t get more than $50,000 for a painting,” says Ronnie Cutrone, who ran the factory’s art production. “It was pathetic. Other artists who weren’t nearly as good as he was were getting $ 250,000, $450,000 for each canvas. And Andy would never even get the $50,000, which I found to be a travesty.”
“I was there for all of this, watching. In the mid-1970s you couldn’t give those paintings away. He did the Hammer and Sickle show. They all came back. Not one sold. The Dollar Sign show. Nothing! “The Skull” was a commission. But if that wasn’t a commission, the Skulls would never have sold.
“So we were making no money. And Andy was trying to support the newspaper and all of the salaries. And was getting no money for his art.”
Thus Fred Hughes. It was the dapper, frequently outrageously over-the-top but socially skilled Texan who secured Warhol the portrait commissions that kept the factory going.
They might have brought in no more than $50,000 a pop but at an average two commissions a month Warhol, always neurotically acquisitive, began doing very well indeed.
The cost was to reputation because many of “social Andy’s” portraits and purely commercial undertakings – the Mick Jaggers, the Mercedes-Benz suite – are slick and perfunctory and were so judged in the art world’s upper echelons. “He was put down, he was laughed at, he was considered not important, a put-on, and all of that,” says Cutrone. Nor did he have particularly easy relationships with artists of his own generation.
“He had a nice cordial relationship with Roy Lichtenstein but he wasn’t that much fun,” Cutrone says. “Except for Francis Bacon, Larry Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg and a few others, Andy didn’t really like artists very much. They were boring to him. Because they tend to be full of themselves and sort of insecure and a little scary, you know.
“When Andy and I got our picture taken with all the artists the only artist that Andy and I could hang out with comfortably was LeRoy Neiman! A real nice, sweet man.
“And everybody else was all weird and backbiting.”
Some years ago I had coffee with Irving Blum, the dealer who just sold the above-mentioned “Torn Label” painting, at Three Guys on Madison. “Andy is the most undervalued artist of his generation,” he said. This was not long before Warhol’s death in February 22 1987. Things didn’t quickly perk up. On May 3 1993, 12 early Warhols consigned by Fred Hughes, who was hospital-bound and dying of multiple sclerosis, went on sale at Sotheby’s. Ten failed to sell. Rumours about their authenticity have swirled ever since, being dismissed by many, but the Warhol market suffered for years.
Some collectors were prescient – Jose Mugrabi, a New York dealer, bought in bulk at the bottom of the market – but Warhol’s resurgence came about in the healthiest manner, from the interest of younger artists, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, who collaborated with Warhol on paintings, including a few with Francesco Clemente. In Julian Schnabel’s film Basquiat, Warhol, a man always painfully conscious of his looks was played by David Bowie.
Now the apotheosis. Warhol reigns over both market and art. Picasso is Picasso but his legacy has been a full stop. Only Duchamp is having as continuing an impact on art practices as Warhol, for better, for worse, or for both.
More columns at www.ft.com/hadenguest
