‘Celebrity is religion’: How Andy Warhol kickstarted our obsession with superstars
In every argument, debate or article about the rise of the modern celebrity, one name always reappears: Andy Warhol. Do you know who first documented the minutiae of their life? Andy Warhol. Do you know who coined the phrase “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”? Andy Warhol. How did it happen? He made it happen. Warhol, the original narcissist; Warhol, the genius; Warhol, the void. He is responsible for the TikTok dancers, the Instagram models hogging the infinity pools, the needy comedians, the intense desire for recognition we are confronted with daily. It’s an awful lot for one notoriously frail man to carry.
I think the main reason why Warhol is blamed for our disposable celebrity culture is because of the superstars. The superstars were Warhol’s set, plucked from relative obscurity to star in his films, circle him and make him interesting, because Warhol’s only real god was work. Some of the superstars were talented; some were not. Some were beautiful; some were bizarre, and that was even better. Some were forgettable but some – and this is crucial – had something special. Charisma, charm, electricity, a presence that defied description. I have my own favourites: Ondine, Candy Darling, Edie Sedgwick. Sedgwick, an actor and model, has, like so many cultural icons, been reduced to parts: a fur coat, a leotard, heavy earrings. This still happens with celebrites. As I write, pictures from the set of the new Amy Winehouse film are circulating. Everything is where it’s supposed to be, how we remember it, but uncanny, unreal. A beehive, a pair of ballet slippers, a once living person made into a costume.
When I started writing a novel set in Warhol’s Factory, I promised myself I would forget everything I already knew about the superstars. I’d treat them like strangers. What consistently surprised me was how funny they could be. Yes, they were vicious – about other people as well as themselves – but they were also perceptive, sharp, laconic. They lived in crumbling and dingy apartments, they set small fires, they made humiliating and very public mistakes, they stole, they took large amounts of drugs. Brand partnerships? You can forget about it. The Warhol films they starred in were alternatively uneventful or pornographic. Warhol himself was openly gay at a time when that was widely unacceptable.
Does any of this sound like today’s superstars, crafting their public personas with military precision, daydreaming quotes for their next inter
view, making overnight oats, prepping their Notes app apology? It may have been vacant but at least it was spontaneous. If anything, it’s Warhol’s frozen 1980s image that crafted what we’re familiar with now – everyone bragging about how ostensibly hard-working they are, rigid, immensely controlled, focused, surprised by the occasional flicker of their own unruly feelings, selling, selling, selling.
When I told someone I was working on a book about Warhol and celebrity they replied, with no small amount of distaste, that they “weren’t really interested in all of that”, the implication being that the idea was tawdry, shallow, unserious. To that I offer one of Warhol’s favourite responses: so what? Look around. Celebrity is religion. We want it even though we know it’s a tragedy, a disaster. Maybe we want the tragedy and disaster most of all.
We’re familiar with the cautionary tales: Britney Spears, Kanye West, the insane and dizzying final third of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. One of the biggest selling books of last year was Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, a memoir about an unhappy childhood spent with an abusive, fame-seeking mother. McCurdy recalls being shunted from audition to audition, until she landed the dream, a role on a Nickelodeon show. If you watch clips of this show, or of her as a bubbly teenager on the red carpet, the dissonance between her public image and her private life at the time is near-unbearable. We know how it ends. We’ve seen it. We see it every week.
Yet many, many people are still waiting to be discovered. On TikTok, in airports, in cafes, restaurants, bars; waiting for an ordinary moment to turn sublime. Celebrity is presented as a hassle-free way of becoming rich. It’s an identity; a way of being reborn. I don’t judge. Life is boring and feelings are unbearable.
I think, although I’m open to having my mind changed, that women are more susceptible to this longing than men. We are used to questing – if I could fix my teeth, change my nose, have this opportunity. We are used to being chosen. We know how to pose; we know how to self-promote. In footage from the Factory featured in Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground documentary, a young woman is seen engaged in conversation. As soon as the camera turns on her she begins performing. She doesn’t look up, she’s given no warning, no instruction on how to behave. She senses the camera and obediently puts on a show. In the same documentary, the film critic Amy Taubin says, in what could be considered a grand understatement, that the Factory wasn’t a great place to be a woman. I imagine for the same reasons it’s not great to be a woman in any environment where you are evaluated on your appearance, your ability to look good in a dress, cause a stir. In any environment where attention and love is at a premium.
The real question is would Warhol like the world as it is now, the world he is so often credited with creating? I think he’d appreciate the repetition: the same restaurant meals, the selfies, the sunsets. As a prodigious shopper, he’d get a kick out of kitschy unboxing videos. But something that never changes across all of Warhol’s biographies (he lied a lot) is that he was born in Pittsburgh and he came from almost nothing. The child of immigrants, not particularly attractive by his own high standards, quiet, strange, a misfit. In the current narrow and bland moment of cookie-cutter superstars, it seems incredible that he managed to define and change a whole culture. I’m sure it surprised him too. He probably surprised himself with the force of his own ambition, the strength of his desire.
You could point to his dictated memoir, The Andy Warhol Diaries, as a sign of how degraded his soul became – the name-dropping, the constant parties, the openings (Martin Amis, in a review of the diaries, said: “It strains you to imagine the kind of invitation Andy might turn down.”) But I’m not entirely sure I believe the persona presented in the diaries. If I wanted to become an icon this is how I would sound too: detached, absolutely cool, untouchable. Isn’t that the great promise of celebrity? It makes you impervious to pain.
Ondine, an actor and Warhol’s close friend and muse, got sober before he died from Aids-related complications in 1989. He found work as a postman. When Warhol saw him at a funeral in 1969 he said: “Being with Ondine that day was strange; it was like being with a normal person.” You could read this as ruthlessness, cruelty, or you could read it as self-protection, a sly remark to mask the hurt of losing a friend. That’s why Warhol endures – you can read him every way.
As for celebrity, the final word goes to actor Cookie Mueller, observing Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol’s protege, across the room at a gathering in his honour. Basquiat, by then, had risen from street artist to art star, had achieved everything it was possible to achieve, what we’re continuously told we’re supposed to strive for. He was king and he was miserable:
“Watching him, I filled in the blanks myself. Maybe he was, for the first time, thinking what a sham this success nonsense was. Maybe he was asking himself if this was all there was. Where was the joy that’s supposed to come with fame and money? Wasn’t life supposed to be fun and glamorous and fulfilling after one was successful and rich and had a beautiful home, famous friends, lovers, esteem, respect? When was the real deal stuff going to start? When came the Fun at the Top stuff? When was the panorama up there going to look better than any other vista? When was it going to mean something?”
• Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery is published by Bloomsbury. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
The “superstars” were vicious about others and themselves, but also perceptive, sharp, laconic