THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 30, 1995 TAG: 9501280008
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 171 lines
ENVISION ANDY Warhol, the famous Pop artist who painted Campbell's soup cans, on a whirlwind tour of Virginia.
There he'd be, in the halls of Monticello, or strolling along Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg - Warhol, in his ever-present white fright wig, perusing the land of powdered wigs and primitive portraits.
Truly, it happened. Last week, the man who gave Warhol the idea reminisced about the bizarre visit.
It all started when Portsmouth native Tom Armstrong, then director of New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, saw Warhol reading Antiques magazine. Surprised at Warhol's interest, Armstrong suggested they go antiquing in Virginia, and visit some art friends there.
So, off they went. Besides Warhol, Armstrong brought along an exotic coterie that included architect Robert Venturi and Warhol biographer Bob Colacello, then editor of the artist's Interview Magazine.
On Tuesday, Armstrong - who directs the new Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh - was in Williamsburg to lecture at the College of William and Mary in connection with a show of 20 Warhol silkscreen prints at the school's Muscarelle Museum of Art. The prints are from the collection of Wesley and Missy Cochran of La Grange, Ga., and date from 1974 to 1987.
Bow-tied and affable, Armstrong was reminiscing after his midday talk, which attracted several hundred students and art lovers.
Warhol's 1975 escapade encompassed Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Colonial Williamsburg, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond and the Virginia Beach Oceanfront, where the New Yorkers stayed at the beach home of Richmonders Sydney and Frances Lewis, major collectors of contemporary art.
The entourage also stopped by The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, where they met with Walter P. Chrysler Jr., the museum's chief benefactor.
Chrysler had presented Warhol's rock band, The Velvet Underground, in Provincetown, Mass., where Chrysler housed his collection until 1971.
Armstrong recalled that ``they were very warm toward each other. Walter had given him an opportunity to show his work when no one else would. And Andy was very, very admiring of that.
``Of course, Walter was very rich. And Andy looooved rich people.''
Strolling through the museum, Warhol came upon his huge mid-1960s silkscreen on canvas, ``Flower Series.'' Chrysler had purchased the piece in 1967 from a New York dealer, just seven years after Warhol switched from commercial art to fine art.
``It's in such good condition,'' Warhol said, vacuously, after eyeing the work.
Warhol was 47 then, but said he was 39. A reporter with The Virginian-Pilot described him as ``a small man with a double chin beginning to sneak out. His voice is terribly soft, and he drifts off at the end of too-simple sentences.''
By 1975, Warhol had firmly established himself as an innovator on many fronts. He was a key figure in overthrowing the abstract expressionists who had dominated the art scene, replacing those elite Bohemians with artists who reflected everyday popular culture.
It was in the early 1960s, after seeing Roy Lichtenstein's paintings of comic book images in a New York gallery, that Warhol found his focus. Soon after, he made his ``Campbell's Soup Cans,'' which became an ``overnight rallying point'' for a new esthetic, wrote Henry Geldzahler, Warhol's friend and a former 20th century curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Warhol mirrored a society excited by television, celebrities and convenience food. Among his subjects: Marilyn Monroe. The Kennedy assassination. Annie Oakley. Brillo pads. Astronauts. Mick Jagger. Geronimo.
In rendering these subjects, he developed a new fine art technique - photosilkscreen on canvas. Often, he would print the same image again and again, like lookalike soup cans on a grocery shelf. Or, like the same video clip of a real-life disaster shown again and again on television.
He made avant garde silent movies, such as an eight-hour film of a man sleeping. They marked film history, though few saw them.
Besides producing a rock group - The Velvet Underground, with Lou Reed and John Cale - he started Interview Magazine, featuring celebrities interviewing celebrities.
Yet, during that March 27 visit, Warhol announced his occupation was ``traveling portrait painter.'' He called himself a ``millionette,'' a term he wouldn't explain.
Even among those who spent time around Warhol, few understood him. He presented himself in an oddly direct way.
He once said of himself: ``If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, there I am. There's nothing behind it.''
Writer Truman Capote, whom Warhol chased for years before earning his friendship, seemed to buy into that description. He dubbed Warhol ``a sphinx with no secrets.''
Dead wrong, Armstrong said, chuckling. ``Oh, he had a lot of secrets.''
Pause. ``I never went to his house. I don't think more than 10 people ever went in that house.''
Everyone saw Warhol out on the town, or at The Factory, which is what he called his studios and offices. His days began with lunch, followed by an afternoon of painting and shopping. Nearly every night, he went out - to an art opening, a party, an auction or some other event.
Yet, in public, he maintained an aloof posture. ``He played the role of voyeur, and sort of watched. When he was with you privately, he relaxed,'' Armstrong said.
``It was all part of his art, I think.''
Warhol legitimized silkscreen as an art medium, and made mass-produced imagery like soup can labels and news photos an acceptable source for fine art.
He made a third contribution to art history, according to Geldzahler.
``Personality. Through his `dumb blond' persona, he quickly became associated with the new Pop movement. It is rare in our country and in our century for an artist to gain the recognition of the man in the street,'' he wrote.
Household name artists make for a short list: Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Jackson Pollock. Then there's Warhol.
From his childhood in Pittsburgh, where he was sickly and poor, Warhol (he changed his Czech name from Warhola after moving to New York in 1949) yearned for glamour, fame, money - all of which he achieved. While in bed suffering from St. Vitus' dance, a nervous disorder, he cultivated his imagination and read fashion magazines.
For his high school yearbook, Warhol posed just like Greta Garbo did for a famous 1929 portrait by Edward Steichen. His pale face weighs heavily in his palms, pale fingers wrapped around puffy cheeks.
``Oh, Andy was very theatrical,'' Armstrong said. ``From the time he was young he collected little photographs and cards of movie stars. I'm sure he struck what he figured was a glamorous, theatrical pose.''
Warhol died on Feb. 22, 1987, following a gallbladder operation. He was 58, a fact not so easy to come by, since he changed his birthdate various times through the years.
When the Andy Warhol Museum opened in May, it became the nation's most comprehensive museum devoted to the work of a single artist. Among its holdings are 900 paintings, 77 sculptures, 1,500 drawings, 500-plus prints and 400 photographs.
Also in the collection are 608 boxes called ``time capsules.'' Warhol never threw anything away. If his desk became cluttered, he simply brushed everything into a box. Once the box was full, he would seal it and store it away.
For 30 years, he did this.
Armstrong takes these ``time capsules'' very seriously, as seriously as the paintings. ``No one has an archive like this. The great challenge will be to catalog the archive and make it accessible to people.
``When that happens, it will be a great resource for the study of the popular culture of the second half of the 20th century.''
Meanwhile, the Warhol museum is averaging 400 visitors a day. Already, the museum has lent a new identity to Pittsburgh, which Armstrong attributes to the ``enormous international press'' upon opening.
Yet, those who knew Warhol feel he would wince at his life's work being housed in his hometown. He spent his life trying to get past his roots.
Growing up, the working-class people he knew felt dominated by the wealthy families that ran the steel town - the Fricks and Carnegies. Warhol longed to be like them, Armstrong said.
Friends say he maintained a lifelong fear of poverty. He remembered times when, night after night, soup would be the main course. That sad detail from his youth may have prodded him to endlessly repeat the soup can image.
Warhol refused to be too illuminating on his art. He would answer questions with curious comments.
He'd say, ``Buying is more American than thinking and I'm as American as they come.''
Or, ``I feel very much a part of my times, of my culture, as much a part of it as rockets and television.''
Who could say what he really thought?
``What you have in this story is a complicated, really difficult life to approach,'' Armstrong said.
But he ended up a millionette, with a handsome townhouse on East 66th Street - just five blocks from the Fricks. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Andy Warhol
Photos of "Geronimo" (1986), "Moonwalk" (1987) and "Annie Oakley"
(1986)
Robert P. Ruschak, The Carnegie Museum of Art
Tom Armstrong, director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, in
front of Warhol's ``Elvis (Eleven Times).''
by CNB