Ooh it’s a long time since we had an art anniversary – over two years in fact – but instead of a birthday, this one marks an altogether darker event. Fifty-five years ago today, a radical, separatist feminist writer gunned down Andy Warhol in his studio, the infamous Factory. Valerie Solanas – for it was she – was a member of SCUM (supposedly denoting “Society for Cutting Up Men”) a group that believed men should be eradicated. She was especially peeved with Andy since he allegedly lost a script she had written whilst part of his circle.
Now, Andy is a divisive character at the best of times. Some think his work is rubbish, some reckon he’s a rip-off merchant & some just find him plain annoying. I’ve had real arguments in his defence. My firm belief is that whether or not you like what you see, he was a true artist & moved the world of art along. Sure, there’s an element of his ethos reflecting a capitalist nightmare & the commercialisation of art itself to an insane degree, but surely that all that was going to happen anyway? Was he not merely the prophet? Let’s face it, the prophets get a hard time.
On the face of it, Andy’s reaction to his attempted assassination seems somewhat flippant even by his standards, but look again & there’s a realistic & believable profundity to it that reflects his obsessions & visions as an artist:
Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong & real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television - you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot & ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television.
It is said that when Andy died nineteen years later that the shooting was instrumental in his demise; this as well as multiple underlying medical conditions & other factors would have provided significant risks to his life during the supposedly routine surgery he underwent shortly before his death. It is now believed the gallbladder operation that killed him should never have been performed. His family later sued the hospital following the discovery of issues arising from their misconduct but settled out of court. Andy had died in his sleep; if I may use a dubious metaphor, the test card appeared & the TV was finally off.
Skull, 1977
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