‘Life must be lived moving forward, but can only be understood looking backward.’ Where was it I read this bit of worldly wisdom? Perhaps a fortune cookie, and I have to say, I never discard any fortune cookie fortune, placed there and finding its way to me I’ve always sensed the result of some grand design.
I was thus reminded of this aphorism when I watched ‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’ on Netflix. Reminded, but also made cognizant of its subjectivity. On the one hand, the show, derived from the diaries, is thorough going in attempting to present in his own words a long-ish slice of the artist’s life, but on the other, as a slice it was perforce limited as the scope of the diaries was limited to the later years of Warhol’s life. And when it might arguably be said his fame was in something of an eclipse, not reinvigorated until the publication of the diaries some years after his death. As it was, a number of those interviewed for the Netflix series, in a rather extended epilogue, were critical of the diary’s editor Pat Hackett, with the most common claim that she was selective and subjectively tendentious in her editorial approach. While it may have been Warhol’s narrative, the diary as presented expressed only what of the artist the editor thought she knew.
And herein lies the tale. I am 11 years older now than Warhol was when he died. His own diaries were largely that, a recordation of the minutiae of his everyday life, and it was from them that one would, if one chose to, abstract varying bits of something akin to reflection and from those bits weave together some manner of personal philosophy. Serving as my own exemplar, I can say that it is only in the last couple of years I’ve begun to be sufficiently reflective, poring over the details of my life, recording them in a journal, and the result of my own periodic review, monitor my progress toward the rudiments of a self-knowledge that might form the bases of a personal philosophy. An involved process, or should I say processes, of for me at least many years duration.
Moreover, all of us, every single human, until they die, are the quintessence of a moving target, a constantly filling repository of experience, and some claim that experience and one’s reaction to it carries on beyond death. I do not disbelieve that and place it on a par with fortune cookie wisdom. But as one considers Andy Warhol, what we know of his early life, and what we know of the incident crowded years of The Factory, including Warhol’s near assassination, it would indeed be difficult for even a person deeply reflective to begin to assimilate, much less make philosophical sense, of such an experiential welter. And, frankly, I very much doubt that Warhol was possessed in any large measure of that particular facility. His genius was in reacting in unique, and arguably facile, ways to ordinary human experience. Witness, of course, the pop art that was his initial claim to fame and established him in the canon of art history. Contrast this with the angry and cerebral work of those ab ex artists who barely predated him. Warhol and his retinue were a marginalized group of shall we say misfits and miscreants, but witness their hedonism, arguably less angry, and in fact, where Rothko and Pollock made no headway in exorcising their demons through art, I would argue that Warhol and those denizens of The Factory at least more effectively sought to, expanding the repertoire to accomplish this with not only traditional art, but film, television, and happenings. Remember ‘happenings’? If you do, then you’ll have to admit your age, and hopefully this will spark some reflection that might assist you in personal insight, furthering the development of your own philosophy. You’re welcome.
No diary or biography ever does express or could explain the whole of anyone, even if it extended through and was as long in its recordation as the entirety of the life to which it was attached. And then, too, there are the twin issues of interpretation and point of view. Pat Hackett requires no apologist, but suffice to say what she edited covering only a few years had the inherent problem of brevity, and with how many characters related therein, and how many subsequent readers post publication, yielding innumerable, and deforming, points of view. She did pretty well, all things considered. And a finite understanding of any aspect of Andy Warhol? It might have been available to the man himself, but will never exist for the rest of us. We can agree that he was enduringly fond of Campbell’s Soup. Note for future biographers- I am enduringly fond of arugula.