Inventors (4)

In the Sixties the Pope of Pop predicted that “in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes”. He was not mistaken.

The body of art work left by Andy Wharhol, art that broke the mold and hangs in many of the world’s most important museums, pales when compared to that self-fulfilling prophesy.

Campbell Soups atMoMA

Way before anyone else Wharhol saw our world today. The post- Pop world where the Reality Show is king and every Tom Dick and Har opens an Instagram account takes a selfie and showcases each aspect of a not-so-interesting-life. Or uploads a choreography in TikTok that in one instant -forget the 15-minute delay!- goes round the globe and is viewed by 15 million people. Not bad for a kid born in Pittsburg –not a softie kinda place- in a family of Slovaks with a father who worked the coal mines till he dropped dead at 53. Andrew Wharhola once thought about becoming a teacher but instead enrolled at Carnegie Institute of Technology to learn commercial art. He then moved to New York in search of a life not only in tune with his dreams but more in synch with his ambition.

He was in instant success in the world of fashion, designing shoes and windows but the almost albino young man –the result of a childhood sickness- was headed elsewhere; celebrities fascinated him and he was just in time to cash on the celeb cult.

Halston, Bianca and Andy at Studio 54

He read the New York mood like an oracle; life outside the Big Apple never interested him. Wharhol was at the start of the boho-chic-cocaine-fuelled-decade bringing together high society, stars, junkies, gays and artists. That heady mixture propelled an era of artistic creativity and hedonistic living compared only to pre-War Berlin. (All that was whitewashed by Giuliani’s during his 90´s cleanup). It also brought Studio 54 to the pinnacle of its fame awash with the grit and glitter of toy boys and high society women –and some men reconverted today into staunch Republicans- sharing more than just lines. AIDS took care of all that jazz and the city went into deep mourning.

Wharhol was there but barely, more of a voyeur than an acteur. Every morning Bob Colacello his right-hand man would call to report the news of the night before, who slept with whom, who broke up. Every day Andy would call his assistant Pat Hackett and dictate his activities in minutae. It started as a tool to keep track of expenses, tips included -he was famously mean and never threw out anything- a sort of Excel for Andy that ended in a vast volume of diaries depicting an era we can hardly imagine today. Entry for Wednesday April 20, 1977: “Went to Iranian Embassy (cab $3) Hoveyda* looked nervous. Sat next to Mrs. Astor”.

Andy lived in perpetual fear of being poor. He was frugal and worked everybody, including himself, to the bone. From The Factory, his mythical studio, he pushed his employees to the limit, to get more clients to order portraits, to move more Campbell Soups, to place ads in Interview, his magazine. He died alone and vastly rich. The nurse who admitted him at the hospital told that she was surprised he knew his insurance policy number by heart -the reflex of someone who fears that the world he has conjured could disappear from one minute to the other leaving him with nothing.

She’d never come across that before.

*Hoveyda was the Shah’s Ambassador. His brother had been Primer Minister of Iran for more than a decade. The Shah was about to be toppled; Hoveyda’s brother would be executed shortly after. No wonder he looked nervous.