Book Review: "POPism" by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett

You have probably read my review of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and if you haven't then you probably want to get yourself over there. POPism is a much longer book and has more of Andy Warhol himself in it - it is less about his philosophy and more about his life. It begins in a pretty odd place and sometimes he even talks about getting shot. At the moment, I'm pretty confused about the state of Jackson Pollock but on the whole, I've enjoyed this text. Don't worry, there's no narrative about weird stuff I find in a book to go with this one. But the book itself is a whole different story...

Andy Warhol's collective memories of an era now gone are some of the most entertaining and strange you will read. He describes how the revolutionary thinkers of the 1960s and the revolutions they brought with them turned a corner and allowed for 'pop art' to flourish. It is true that Warhol is usually detached from regular folks' reality but there is something strangely intimate in his voice. He manages to draw us into his world by also leaving us on the outside at the same time. Instead of taking the trajectory we all thought was the rage - from avant-garde artist to commercial artist, Warhol seems to do the opposite. He goes from being a commercial working artist doing drawings for companies, to being an avant-garde artist with a whole philosophy. You know it's real when an artist has a 'philosophy'.

Warhol is like art's court jester. Instead of doing what everyone else is doing, he's busy satirising them, making fun of artists who criticised his work for lacking meaning and being mechanical. He draws soup cans to challenge what people actually believe is 'depth' with something that definitely comments on the nature of American consumerism. This is where we get into the nature of 'The Factory' - Warhol's group of misfits who once lived in Manhattan. Honestly, I believe the 'Factory' idea was a total failure but it definitely depicted Andy Warhol's philosophy of creativity and excess managing to exist in the same space in an appropriate way - and that was through chaos.

Warhol recounts his pivot from painting to filmmaking, beginning with minimalist experiments like Sleep (a six-hour film of a man sleeping) and Empire (an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building). He describes these works with his characteristic understatement, as if making a film about “nothing” were simply the next logical step. Eventually, he moves into narrative films like Vinyl, Chelsea Girls, and Flesh, featuring his "Superstars" (factory regulars) as actors. The book’s film chapters blend production anecdotes, drug-fuelled improvisations, and social commentary, showing how Warhol blurred art and life until they were indistinguishable. Some people may think he was crazy for doing this stuff but his pivot into filmmaking definitely did show one thing - the filmmaking world of the 1960s and 70s was ready for new and innovative ideas - which is a far cry from what film is nowadays.

The artist writes, with eerie calm, the 1968 shooting that nearly killed him. Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist writer associated with The Factory, shoots Warhol at close range, believing he has stolen her work. He describes the event briefly and without melodrama, his tone emotionally flat but haunted. The shooting becomes a symbolic end to the free-spirited 1960s era of The Factory; afterwards, the atmosphere changes irrevocably. Warhol becomes more cautious, both personally and artistically, signaling the end of his most experimental decade. Warhol definitely becomes more reserved after this and describes early on in the book, what it was like reading the headline of his own shooting in a newspaper. There's something really dark and strange about this part because you can feel the emotional numb flavour of the book and how the whole tone and atmosphere changes and dies down.

All in all, I thought this book was fantastic. Do I have anymore books on Andy Warhol to read? Not right now. But I wil definitely be seeking out anything else he has written - especially if it is about himself. The art and music, and even the film world of the 1960s and 70s allowed for creative expression and of course, some say that reading this kind of stuff is a longing for when creatives were actually respected.