Disease, Death, and Disaster: Andy Warhol’s Hidden Legacy
Andy Warhol, Marilyn, 1967, screenprint on paper
The mention of Warhol–or a Warhol–evokes thoughts of colourful Marilyns, silkscreen printed and mass-produced to signal beauty, sensuality, and eternal youth. The same associations are incited by everything the artist created and surrounded himself with: from his portraits of Liz and Elvis to his establishment of the Factory, his celebrity-hotspot studio. Throughout his life, Warhol (1928-1987) consciously staged a spectacle, inviting fame, glamour, and perfection to play whilst pushing unfavorable actors—like disease or vulnerability—out of the spotlight. The question is - did the latter troupe ever make it beyond the curtain?
Andy Warhol, Liz, 1963, screenprint on paper
Born Andrew Warhola Jr to a family of poor Polish immigrants, Warhol grew up in circumstances that contrasted his idealised image of life. His parents never acculturated to the American way of life, with its glossy magazines and idealised blondes, but instead maintained their Slavic traditions, living frugally and frequenting the John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Pittsburgh. Andy, on the other hand, lusted after the American dream, grabbing any chance he got to flip through the pages of a magazine and study the icons that inspired him. He, too, wished to be one.
Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (Camouflage), 1986, paint on canvas
To iconise the self, however, he had to curate his persona with the same meticulousness he would later pour into his portraits. He had to glorify the good and paint over the flawed. He had to camouflage his humanity, vulnerability, and sickness behind a veneer of nonchalance. It is no wonder, then, that we forget the very struggles that made Andy human.
Among them was his disease. Andy suffered from chorea, a rare neurological condition also known as St. Vitus' dance, which developed in the aftermath of rheumatic fever. It caused involuntary, jerky movements, which made young Andy uncomfortable and kept him isolated for long periods. Confined to the home, he had to shift his attention away from “normal child things,” like soccer and hide-and-seek, and focus on something more manageable: art.
It was during one of Andy’s most physically crippling periods that his mother, Julia, purchased art supplies and encouraged him to paint. As his brothers recall in interviews, while they were out jousting, he remained inside, drawing. He painted elephants and butterflies. He also illustrated all kinds of flowers, their brief journey from bloom to wilt evoking life’s fleeting nature—a theme certainly inspired by Andy’s first-hand experiences with debilitating disease.
Darker themes of this nature bore their way into his later art, populating his otherwise glamorous Marilyns with hints of human fragility, vulnerability, and transience. These, his portraits seemed to suggest, were two sides of the same coin. This balance between flawless and flawed, however, was shattered the moment he survived a near-fatal shooting in June 1968, the psychological aftermath of which made his art increasingly macabre. In creating the Endangered Species series, he seemed to insinuate he himself was one. Or so he felt. Whether due to his disease or brush with death, he was endangered. He had also grown preoccupied with mankind’s destructiveness—of the natural world and of itself. It is no wonder his Death and Disaster Series followed, exploring morality, fragility, and desensitization through images of car crashes, suicides, and disasters.
Andy Warhol, Ambulance Disaster, 1963, and Pine Barren Tree Frog II.294, 1983, screenprint on paper
While Warhol started out with a striking longing for glitz, glory, and glamour, this darker, imperfect aspect of human life—the flip side of stardom—preoccupied him until his death in 1987. But he did not let it show. Andy obscured his vulnerability behind a silk screen of artistic stardom. He played it cool, diverted attention away from his disease, and fabricated his unbothered, dandyish persona. “I have a Social Disease,” he once teased, “I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.” Through provocations like this, he revealed how he wished to be remembered. As a star, undimmed by things that were all too human.