AN AMERICAN RELATIONSHIP

«Andy is a specter. A ghost—of celebrity past, present, and yet to come—who haunts us. He himself was fascinated with death. Raised in a Catholic household in Pittsburgh, he was attracted to images of car crashes; later in his life, he painted shadows. But a Catholic obsession with death is hardly unusual, and it isn’t the main source of Andy-ean darkness. Warhol embodied certain telling paradoxes that also trouble American culture. Consider what he made of sex. In the sixties, Warhol’s “Factory” became celebrated for libertinism. He was the great enabler, cultivating outrageous behavior. (Among his best-known movies is Blow Job, the Warholian joke being that viewers can see only the man’s face.) Yet, Warhol himself appeared listless, neutered, and drained of erotic vitality. With Warhol, you were forced to keep two sensations in mind at once—impotence and excess. They became a cultural pair, inextricably linked. An American relationship.»

-New York magazine
Feb 1 2007