In the Film Warhol Explains the Subtleties of His Art Superstar the Life and Times of Andy Warhol
Review/Film; Warhol: The Man Behind the Can
- Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol
- Directed by Chuck Workman
- Documentary, Biography
- 1h 27m
See the article in its original context from
February 22, 1991
,
Section C , Folio
eightPurchase Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the starting time of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles every bit they originally appeared, The Times does non change, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other issues; nosotros are continuing to work to better these archived versions.
Why does Andy Warhol's work reveal and then little about the artist? "Well there'southward not very much to say about me," drones Warhol, in an quondam interview that Chuck Workman has included in "Superstar," his witty and enterprising documentary about Warhol and his earth. The film itself, which spans the same wild extremes that Warhol's life did, offers strong evidence to the contrary. Information technology bears out the thought that Warhol, described by one of Mr. Workman's many interviewees as "this crazy peasant who somehow is the heart of the storm," was indeed a person about whom others -- and he himself, in "The Andy Warhol Diaries" -- could speak volumes.
Mr. Workman, using many conversations with Warhol'due south friends and associates, also every bit frequent glimpses of his films, paintings and early advertising illustrations, has a singled-out visual reward over the artist's impress biographers. He uses it well. "Superstar" displays much of the lively eccentricity that so captivated Warhol and likewise stops to annotation the artifice behind it (which is never difficult to spot in any of the artist'due south pet luminaries). So Ultra Violet makes a betoken of painting her cheeks with a beet while being interviewed. And Sylvia Miles, never shy about these things, turns upward wearing equally much merchandise bearing the Campbell Soup logo every bit she tin.
Putting this fully in perspective, Mr. Workman begins the movie with glimpses of other media luminaries (Donald Trump, Geraldo Rivera, Jim and Tammy Bakker) abreast whom Warhol'southward celebrity makes perfect sense. And he ends with televised scenes of stars (including Don Johnson) showing up at the creative person's funeral. The motion picture'due south opening montage besides depicts the manufacturing of silk-screen portraits in the Warhol style, which makes artistry quite indistinguishable from merchandising.
These and other efforts to provide a context for Warhol's life and fable are deftly constructive. "I couldn't believe it -- I never thought he would die," says Steve Rubell.
Deemed "as genuine as a fingerprint" by the editors of his loftier school yearbook, Warhol devoted the rest of his life to proving them wrong. But the creative person'south cousins and brothers, who are interviewed by Mr. Workman, attest to his homey side. "When we read his philosophy, we laughed out loud considering we didn't know we were so much like him," says one of Warhol's cousins. A cousin besides tells of making contact with the creative person's New York set when she met Calvin Klein and "asked him whether he was going to design jeans for the heavy woman, like me."
The film'due south glimpses of the Pittsburgh neighborhood where Warhol grew upwards make understandable his eagerness to escape and also his need to continue his past at a distance from his nowadays. "I guess Andy sort of kept usa away from some of the people that he had," says Paul Warhola, ane of the artist's brothers, who is interviewed on a farm. Mr. Warhola adds, in the film'southward later segment on Warhol's dearest affair with the Campbell soup can, that Campbell was indeed the family's favorite make. A spokesman for the Campbell Soup Company is more than guarded, saying, "I think there were a lot of people in the company who were leery about having this kind of person involved with our make image."
Circling carefully through the morass of opinions about Warhol's life and piece of work, Mr. Workman interviews art dealers and critics about what, if anything, was at the core of Warhol'southward inventiveness. Irving Blum, who exhibited Warhol's work very early in the artist's career, attests to Warhol'south industriousness no matter what was going on effectually him. Henry Geldzahler calls him "a highly intelligent blotter" with "an infinite longing for having the familiar codified in some way." Tom Wolfe describes the Warhol outlook on American civilisation equally "Oh, information technology'due south and then horrible, I dear information technology." According to Hilton Kramer, "The argument he was making in his work was something like 'Ha, ha, ha.' "
In addressing Warhol'south film piece of work, which is shown here in snippets and at times in split-screen images, the movie elicits conflicting thoughts on what his directorial part actually was. Warhol himself says of film making that it's "just easier to do than painting. The camera has a motor, and you only turn it on and walk away." Dennis Hopper agrees and demonstrates his own approach to having been filmed in such a style. "He wasn't even there nigh of the time," says Candy Darling, ane of the artist's former film stars . Warhol offers i of his own characteristic thoughts about cinema by maxim that he thinks today's film stars are more glamorous than those of the past "because you can run into them."
While Mr. Workman's portrait of Warhol is as vibrant (and deliberately two-dimensional) as whatever of the artist's celebrity images, it avoids the gaudier aspects of Warhol's life that have been so enthusiastically chronicled elsewhere. The artist's peculiar strain of voyeurism is alluded to only in an chestnut about Warhol's having been lent the original Hello Doody doll for his serial on pop-cultural myths, and having felt the need to undress it.
The gossipy revelations of Warhol's diaries are also avoided, equally is the diaries' editor, Pat Hackett, whom Viva accuses of having made upward the whole thing. Most of Warhol'southward later on companions are also absent, no uncertainty moderated past the diaries' hateful-spiritedness and notoriety. Halston is heard saying that Warhol "would go to the opening of a drawer." Just beyond that, Mr. Workman is clearly more interested in Warhol every bit an artist and an enigma than as a fixture of New York nightlife.
"Andy's genius to me was his fingerpointing," says Dennis Hopper, who cites Marcel Duchamp's prediction that the artist of the future will merely betoken his finger and designate art rather than create it. "Andy made fame more famous," Fran Lebowitz observes. "Oh, I'k speechless," says Warhol himself, giving his favorite kind of answer to a direct question. Mr. Workman's fascinating portrait has the insight to reconcile these differing points of view. SUPERSTAR: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ANDY WARHOL Directed, written, produced and edited past Chuck Workman; director of photography, Burleigh Wartes; released by Aries Films. Running fourth dimension: 87 minutes. This film has no rating. Interviews with: Viva, Dennis Hopper, Ultra Violet, Tom Wolfe, Sylvia Miles, Irving Blum, Paul Warhola, Fran Lebowitz and others
burgesstragstenk1950.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/22/movies/review-film-warhol-the-man-behind-the-can.html