One of his portraits of Marilyn Monroe is expected to shatter records at auction next month. But was Andy Warhol just an ‘affectless hero’ of the media age? Or was he the greatest and most profound artist of his era?
Andy Warhol: obsessively commercial pop artist, the patron saint of reality television, Facebook, Instagram, selfies, TikTok and every other imaginable fulfilment of his prophecy that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. Or so it might appear. But that is not the real him. Warhol was a seer whose surfaces conceal mysterious waters. “What people think is Andy Warhol isn’t Andy Warhol,” says Tracey Emin.
Try an experiment to understand this. Start recording video and sit in front of the camera for three minutes. You are not to speak. You are not to leave your seat. Just look into the camera. “Be yourself.” But who is that?
