THE RELIGIOUS ART OF ANDY WARHOL

«In focusing on the explicitly religious themes that pop up throughout his career, Jane Daggett Dillenberger goes even further, making the case for a moral dimension to Warhol's work. In The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, she traces the roots of Warhol's recurring religious imagery to his upbringing as a Byzantine Catholic. She asserts that his faith never left him, even when it came into conflict with his sexuality and his immersion in the drug-soaked milieu of the New York underground. Most importantly, she sees Warhol's final series, which involved reworkings of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, as "a kind of last will and testament."

Dillenberger is an emerita professor of visual arts and theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., and has written several books on Christian themes in art. Here, she takes her cue from John Richardson's eulogy for Warhol, delivered at a crowded memorial service at Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Apr. 1, 1987. Richardson presented the assembled mourners with surprising evidence of Warhol's spiritual commitment. He noted the artist's regular attendance at Mass, his service at a soup kitchen, his financial support of a nephew's religious vocation. Refuting the more common perception of Warhol as parasitic voyeur feeding off the self-destructive impulses of his followers, Richardson instead styled the deceased as a latter-day Prince Myshkin, Dostoyevsky's holy fool.

Dillenberger assumes the task of fleshing out this picture of Warhol's spiritual life, delving into biography and iconography for evidence of, as she terms it, "another Andy Warhol." She recounts Warhol's lifelong devotion to his devout Slovakian mother, the string of childhood illnesses which fed his morbid sensibility, and his continuing attachment to his mother's crucifixes and devotional pictures.»

Art in America
6/1/1999
Review of «The Religious Art of Andy warhol»