Worshipping With Warhol

Mark Judge reminds us that the artist was a serious Catholic:

Andy Warhol’s family was Byzantine-Ruthenian, and in the early 20th century they came to America, settling in a Catholic section of Pittsburgh. Warhol’s mother Julia was deeply pious, attending St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. She took her children to Mass, and encouraged Andy, who was sick a lot as a child, to learn how to draw. Warhol drew pictures, went to church, and cut out magazine pictures of movie stars. In those three elements we find his entire life’s work.

Warhol moved to New York in 1949. He then went on to become the most famous artists of the latter 20th century. Warhol is associated with irony, disco, Pop Art paintings of everyday objects like Campbell’s soup cans, and cool. But he never lost the faith. Even during his high-flying Studio-54 days, Warhol would appear at Mass at St. Vincent Ferrer several mornings a week — and as a volunteer at soup kitchens. When his mother moved to New York to live with him, Warhol would warn visiting guests not to curse. Warhol also paid for his nephew to go through seminary and become a priest.

A good, if rare, overview of Warhol’s faith is Jane Daggett Dillenberger’s book The Religious Art of Andy Warhol. There is an entire section dedicated to the over one hundred drawings Warhol made of the Last Supper. When Warhol died in 1987, his eulogist John Richardson said that there were “two Andy Warhols” — the whimsical Pop Art celebrity and the shy and pious Christian.

(Video: Warhol biographer Bob Colacello discusses the reissue of his Factory memoir, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up)