Call me a philistine, but I never quite understood the whole thing about Warhol's soup labels or Monroe's portrait.  They're cool, but not my idea of art in terms of Art of the Ages.

 

But boy, do I love his cats!  This short, 10 minute read is full of Warhol's gorgeous, whimsical drawings of cats and this is the art I can get behind.  If I were amongst the money-to-burn crowd, I'd bypass Warhol's Mao and opt for his Meow.  (Sorry, had to be done.)

 

Each exquisite feline is coupled with a quote of Warhol's, and while they're not bad, the cats are better.

I didn't know Warhol used Candy Darling, a transgender woman, in his movies!  I know little about Warhol: he was weird, he was brilliant, he painted soup cans in realistic colors and movie stars in fabulously neon colors and made movies that were either praised lavishly or panned by those who were bored or confused by them.   He had a factory, a warehouse, and he hung out with other brilliant eccentrics.   

 

His work - his painted work - spoke to me, particularly the pop culture work.  I mean the movie stars.   

 

I didn't know much about him, and was only vaguely interested.  Not enough to pick up books about him, although when so many came up for free during the Open Road Media sale, I picked up a bunch.   This was one.  I was fascinated by Candy's life, but the forward gave me more than anything else.   The diary entries were too scattered, too short, and too haphazardly picked to give me a real sense of Candy. 

 

When her friends speak of her, then she shines through: she's described as highly intelligent, funny, generous, larger than life.   That comes through in some of the longer entries, but the hair dye tips and the food recipes didn't give me much of a sense of her as a person.  She's also described as depressed, but she was a transgender woman when this wasn't at all accepted, or very much understood.   No wonder she felt so poorly about and towards the world at times!   She wanted things: a husband, children, a stable life, and yes, fame.   She wanted to be one of the glamorous movie stars of a bygone era.   

 

Also, she's described as he in one of the forwards, and it turned me off.   When I say one, I mean that there's a forward, the diary entries, then another forward, then the diary entries again. 

 

I'd like to know more about Candy - but I think a biography would do more than this would to give me a sense of her as a person, to be honest.   Disappointing in many ways, but also fascinating and enlightening in many.   Not sorry I picked it up or read it, but...  I wanted more in the end.

 

 

Trying to figure out why this is the e-book: 

 

Foreward

 

Journal entries

 

Another forward

 

Journal entries repeated.

 

Um, what now?

Andy Warhol is a complete artist and the interviews with him are both revealing and witty.

Becoming Andy Warhol - Nick Bertozzi,Pie... Becoming Andy Warhol a book written by New York Times bestselling writer Nick Bertozzi and artist Pierce Hargan is the beautiful, captivating graphic novel of the first steps of this pop artist in the environment. It will be published by Abrams at the beginning of October.

Black, white and purple the colors used for this graphic novel divided in chapters. You will find it surely interesting.

Andy Warhol has been the most known artist of pop art of XX century and the most venerated icon of the sector, inspiration for hundreds of painters and creatives. What a wonderful portrait of this young man!

No sure why I have always had the impression Warhol had to be a hard man. In this book a completely different character. Sometimes a shy person, pretty introvert, in love for his mom, an enthusiast of his work.

His visions different from the creations of the past decades, at the beginning misunderstood.
Maybe the idea of buying a piece of art of a suicide not so attracting...
With the time Warhol abandoned the idea of painting. He loved to use pictures, manipulating them, pressing them, coloring them (remember the famous painting of Marylin Monroe?) for create art.

Warhol and his art recognized in every corner of the world.

This graphic novel is very beauty because it doesn't give the idea of the immensity of this talent but the one of a young boy called Andy, who, with all himself wanted to arrive. It's a fresh, young, funny graphic novel.

The book concludes the adventures of young Andy Warhol with the creation of the Thirteen Most Wanted Men mural for the 1964 World's Fair. This work launched him in the Olympus of the most known artists and painters of the XXth century.
All the rest is known...

I thank NetGalley and Abrams for this book.