«I LIKE TO WORK WHEN I'M NOT WORKING»

Warhol’s recipe for success combined hard-driving ambition and a nonstop work ethic with supreme alienation. This alienation, the authors argue, probably grew from Warhol’s self-consciousness about his working-class upbringing in Pittsburgh, as well as his looks; he also was plagued by chronic skin problems and a condition that affected the appearance of his genitalia. Born Andrew Warhola in 1928, he began his career in New York as a commercial artist, making his name drawing ads for shoes and clothing. Yet he wanted to conquer the fine art world. Dalton, who worked briefly as an assistant for Warhol, and Scherman quote one Warhol friend describing the artist’s aggressive networking: “Anything Andy had to do with anybody was to get more work. . . . Every friend he had, every contact he made, was for what he could get out of it.’’ In the hyper-competitive New York art scene of the early 1960s, Warhol was the most competitive of all.

-Boston Globe
Feb 5 2010