ANDY GOES TO HOLLYWOOD
How a 1963 trip to California on Route 66 helped turn Warhol into the inscrutable pop culture icon.
In her new book about Andy Warhol’s 1963 cross-country trek from N.Y.C. to L.A., writer Deborah Davis quite convincingly makes the case that 1963 was the year when “everything changed,” not only for the famed American pop artist but for the United States as well.
It was the year JFK was assassinated, which played its part in America’s dizzying descent into sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, and madcap pop art. As Davis notes, America was never the same after Kennedy died; and American culture was never quite the same once Andy became the art world’s ultimate superstar. But the inscrutable sphinx-like Warhol of popular lore — his passive impenetrable persona being arguably his greatest artistic creation — was itself, apparently, the endgame of his 1963 bicoastal trip. In “discovering” America, Warhol seemingly discovered himself, or at least the persona that would define him ever after.
Warhol’s fame is today so pervasive that one of the interesting reveals of The Trip, Andy Warhol’s Plastic Fantastic Cross-country Adventure is just how suddenly he became so famous.
In 1961, Warhol was a highly successful illustrator hankering for the success that a new generation of American artists was beginning to enjoy. But as a commercial artist, no one in the art world took him seriously until he had his light bulb moment.
In January 1961, Warhol purchased a sketch by Jasper Johns entitled “Light Bulb,” and he found the idea of turning such a common object into a work of art “inspirational.” Taking inspiration, Warhol transformed “the lowest of lowbrow images” — a Campbell’s soup can — into one of the most iconic images of the 1960s.
Within a year, Warhol had his first oneman show at the influential Castelli gallery in New York. Among the side benefits of his new-found fame were introductions to the celebrities he idolized. Among them were actor Dennis Hopper and his Hollywood-royalty wife, Brooke Hayward.
Hopper issued Warhol a challenge: Come to Los Angeles for the opening of Hopper’s show, and he would host “a genuine movie star party” in Warhol’s honour.
Warhol and his three-man entourage decamped from Manhattan on Sept. 24 and arrived in L.A. days later via Route 66, the “hipster’s highway.” One of Warhol’s travelling companions, actor Taylor Mead, took the admonition to heart, literally charming the pants off the hunky young gas jockeys he encountered on the road. Warhol was mesmerized, according to Davis, “by the neon signs and billboards that lined the road . . . they were giant-sized pictures, primitively rendered in primary colours, just like his pop art creations.”
But the real action unfolded when they arrived in L.A. with the endless parties, openings and encounters with movie stars and — here’s the cool part — Warhol’s decision to direct his first “Hollywood movie,” a prankish romp titled Tarzan and Jane Regained . . . Sort of, starring Mead.
Still, what is ultimately the most intriguing revelation in The Trip is Davis’s belief that his visit to L.A. ended with Warhol assuming an emotional stance that would define his personality — and his art — for the rest of his life. Warhol’s maddening impassivity had been evident before, but it reached a new crescendo in California on the set of Tarzan. As Davis notes, “Andy came to understand that his greatest talent was to stand by impassively and inscrutably letting his subjects reveal themselves.”
After 1963, Andy was never the same again. As David Dalton, a young friend, noted at the time, “I noticed Andy consciously shutting down, becoming more elusive and secretive.” Adds Davis, “Like Garbo, Andy cultivated an air of mystery: the more withholding he was, the more interesting and desirable he seemed.” Still, not everyone bought the act. Novelist Truman Capote once quipped, “Warhol’s a sphinx without a secret.”
But no one can question his enduring fame — and influence. At his 1963 L.A. show, someone bought a “Silver Liz” for peanuts only to return days later demanding a refund. Today’s price?: $25 million. Robert Collison is a Toronto editor and writer.