What I Have In Common With Andy Warhol

Day 10-This is part of an article that I wrote:

Commonalities between a "Superstar" and a small town girl can exist. I feel that I connect with Andy in many ways, more than the average Warholian fan. Andy Paperbag is "abstract" and seems "superficial" or rather an empty/void, but I find him relatable on many levels.

Andy did not like to be touched. He liked to be a voyeur, an external observer, and physical contact seemed obscene. Andy would have liked to touch, but he did not like to receive touch in return. This is how I feel. I do not like to be touched. I don't like to even be touched by my mother. When someone attempts to hug me, I kind of cringe and shrink away. The physical connections between people seem irrelevant. I like to connect with people visually and through the abstract way: words. When I go out dancing, I do not like to be touched by the other people dancing around me(which is difficult at a club). I like to dance in my own world, with my own frame of reference. This is how it is-you can look but you cant touch. And if you touch, it is because I have allowed this physical interaction to happen.

Andy felt like a prisoner in his own body. Much like the Portrait of Dorian Gray, Andy felt like the disfigured painting of something that once was beautiful.

Andy liked Repetition. Take the soup cans,coke bottles, the Marilyns, polaroids, etc.

Andy liked the trashy and obscene. He liked to showcase it, flaunt it. Decadence.

Andy was the director. He was the true artist. Coming up with the concepts and ideas, and getting others to act them out, paint them, make them into reality.

Andy liked celebrities and Fame. He had a fascination with their faces(silk screening them onto a canvas) and their lives. He took his friends and made them into mini celebrities, Making them famous on their own accord; making them into "Superstars".

Andy liked to take photographs. He liked how they portrayed "reality" or his version of staged "reality". He was always taking polaroids of friends and things around him.

Was Andy decadent? Did he live to excess. I think he had lived quite a simple life at home. The Factory/studio was his playground. Perhaps the people around him were extravagant and he was just a pawn, an illusion of decadence.

Was Andy a dandy in his own right? Did he live like Oscar Wilde as a peacock displaying his feathers. I don't think so. I think what appears to be decadent of Andy is actually the props he used to hide his insecurities (ex- his trademark silver wig).