Andy Warhol's toys
We recently visited the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. I have an interest in the life of the late Byzantine Catholic artist and hoped to learn a bit about him during the visit, and I did. The museum is organized chronologically top to bottom, starting at the seventh floor, where visitors find family photos and information about his devout Catholic family, Carpatho-Rusyn heritage, and upbringing. 1
About his art … As you descend floor by floor his creative work is presented by decades, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s.
There is a 16mm B&W film, about 12 minutes in length, from the mid 1960s, where Warhol filmed—about 4 minutes each—Bob Dylan, Dennis Hopper, and Lou Reed, separately, just sitting and looking into the camera. That’s it. Dylan smokes a cigarette, Hopper just stares into the camera, and Reed drinks a bottle of Coca-Cola. It’s weird, but captivating, which I guess is the point.
Suffice to say I found his early work of commercial advertising in the 1950s and his more creative work of the 1960s interesting, but beyond that not much caught my fancy.
What did capture my attention was his toy collection—cool, vintage, things of beauty. His great passion was other artist’s work. Much of his vast assortment (10,000+) of Art Deco and folk art was auctioned one year after his death, but much of the remainder is on display at the museum. Here is a sampling.
It’s a wonder these items didn’t sell at the 1988 auction. Warhol was born in 1928 and died in 1987 due to complications following gall bladder surgery. His mortal remains are interred in Saint John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. May he rest in peace.
For more on Warhol’s Catholicism, here is a link to Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s 2022 essay in America Magazine, The Secret Catholic Life of Andy Warhol