You know Andy Warhol, pop culture icon. His nephew’s mission is to share the story of Warhol, the family man
Donald Warhola remembers phone calls with his Uncle Andy every Sunday throughout his childhood. He and his two brothers answered questions about school, their grades and how Pittsburgh was because their uncle lived in New York City.
Despite that closeness, Uncle Andy declined every invitation to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter with the family. But, since the rest of the world knew “Uncle Andy” as pop art and pop culture icon, Andy Warhol, the family didn’t think much of his absence, assuming he had other celebrity-laden plans.
But they were wrong, as they found out when Warhol died unexpectedly in February 1987.
The family held a funeral in Pittsburgh, which was kept private, in part, due to Warhol’s business manager Frank Hughes’ idea to plan a public memorial service in New York City a few weeks later.
At that service, the Warhola clan was stunned by what they saw. Yoko Ono spoke. Liza Minelli, Raquel Welch, Richard Gere, Grace Jones and other celebrities attended. But they expected that. The shock came when homeless people mingled with the elite, a presence the prayer card explained.
In bold and all caps, “A lesserknown element in the portrait of Andy Warhol.”
Below that, it read: “Five hundred homeless and hungry New Yorkers will assemble on Easter Day at the Church of the Heavenly Rest. … They will also be saddened by the absence of one who, with dedicated regularity, greeted them on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Andy poured coffee, served food and helped clean up. More than that he was a true friend to these friendless …”
Only then, did the Warholas know why their attentive uncle never joined them for a holiday meal.
“It speaks to the person he was,” Donald, 58, of Cranberry, said. “He didn’t want credit.”
These “lesser-known” eleJoshua ments of Andy Warhol — he
shortened his name early in his career — are what make Donald’s role as a board member of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, based in New York City, and a liaison to The Andy Warhol Museum, a Carnegie Museum on the North Side, of vital importance to preserving all aspects of the artistic and cultural icon, who was “just Uncle Andy” to his family.
“Donald is so willing to share his very unique personal experience with Warhol and his relationship, and it’s this incredible story that you can’t get from literally anybody else,” said Danielle Linzer, director of learning and public engagement for The Andy Warhol Museum. “He has this effect where he just instantly humanizes the figure of Warhol, which everyone comes in with some preconceived notions about who Andy Warhol was and what kind of life he led.”
‘Just Uncle Andy’
Sample any available Warhol media, and it’s easy to concoct ideas about who he might have been: art that repeats images of handguns, knives and those who epitomize fame, films that distort reality and challenge perception and his group of friends and acquaintances — a subculture unto themselves — who frequented his workspace called The Factory.
But his family knows the other sides of that same man.
“Uncle Andy was just a different person all the way around,” Donald said. “I grew up in an era where kids were to be seen and not heard. But for Uncle Andy, that wasn’t the case. He wanted to hear from you. He didn’t dismiss us as ‘kids.’ ”
Acknowledging his nephews as equals meant unconventional, “awe-factor” gifts such as a 4-foot-tall chocolate bunny at Easter, a baseball glove signed by a major league player and sharing the goods he’d earn through sponsorship deals. It also meant speaking his mind without an age-related filter.
Donald’s brother, Mark Warhola, 61, of Cranberry, remembers his uncle noting when he’d gained a few pounds and needling him about what he’d study in college. “Business” wasn’t an acceptable response.
“How come you don’t become a doctor? How come you don’t become an engineer?” Mark remembers him asking. To Warhol, those professions weren’t reserved for those imbued with exceptional intelligence: Anything was accessible to those who worked hard enough. He was proof.
‘College material’
Warhol grew up in South Oakland. He was the child of immigrants and overcame a childhood illness and the death of his father at 13 years old. While he was one of three boys — including Donald and Mark’s father, John — he was the only one who attended college.
Donald is sometimes asked whether that opportunity attracted jealousy from the other two brothers, but it didn’t. Warhol was “college material,” while the other two brothers had their own abilities. “Uncle Paul” was a lifelong entrepreneur after spending some time in the military, and John, Donald’s dad, was a blue-collar worker with a reputation for reliability.
As a kid, John was known to save his extra change and tuck it behind the family’s radio rather than spending all he had.
When the Warhola patriarch passed away, John was viewed as “the man of the house” because Andy was younger and Paul was headed to the military.
That reputation followed him to Warhol’s will. It stipulated the formation of The
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which allowed him to appoint one family member to its board of directors. He chose his brother, John.
History repeated itself when John passed away in 2010. With two brothers successful in other arenas, Donald was his father’s undisputed successor and someone his brother, Mark, calls “perfect” for the job.
Donald, who minored in art history in college, learned the foundation’s ropes by working alongside his father informally from the time it formed in 1987. But he brings another type of expertise to the museum: He’s a licensed clinical social worker who spent much of his career working with behaviorally and emotionally challenged children, a demographic the museum works hard to includein programming.
To groups of children, with or without differences, he likes to talk about all that his Uncle Andy overcame. Perhaps those trials are why Warhol unapologetically nudged his nephews toward what he viewed as the highest achievements.
“He never lost sight of his dream,” Donald will tell his gallery groups. “I’m not gonna say you’ll be the next Andy Warhol, but he persevered.”
The most important person in the room
As teenagers, Donald and Mark couldn’t help but to ask their uncle what Mick Jagger or John Lennon were like, but despite their uncle’s playfulness with the concept of fame in his art, he sidestepped those conversations in private. “He would turn the subject back onto you because you were the most important person in the room,” Mark said.
On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, Mark and Donald will think of their Uncle Andy, but, as opposed to many recollections of their close-knit family, it’s his absence from holidays that will have the biggest impact, knowing he spent them among the “friendless,” “walking the walk rather than talking the talk,” as Mark described.
Andy Warhol’s art cannot
separated from celebrity, celebrities, The Factory and its role in moving the pop culture needle. But for scholars, at the Warhol museum and elsewhere, the picture is incomplete without the Uncle Andyside of Andy Warhol.
“Uncle Andy was famous for a lot of his quotes. One of my favorites is ‘I’ve never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty,’” Donald said. “If you sit with that for a little bit, if you want to know who Andy Warhol the person was, that speaks volumes, and it was reflected in his life.”