- [Narrator] Some people can't help
but march to the beat of their own drum.
In this case, a very rainbow drum.
Hello and welcome to an episode of
Historical Icons Who Weren't Actually Straight.
Today's icon made a can of soup famous.
It's Andy Warhol.
He was a visual artist, film director, music producer,
and queer person credited with creating the concept
of 15 minutes of fame.
Warhol exploded into the sixties art scene
as a dominant force of the pop art movement.
His intriguing persona and intense relationships
are as famous as his Maryland diptych prints.
Up first.
Some fast facts!
Andrew Warhol born Andrew Warhola in 1928,
grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
His parents were working class
Ruthinian Catholic immigrants
and Warhol remained religious for his entire life.
As an eight-year-old, Warhol had to stay home
for an extended period due to illness
and spent his days with his mother
drawing and collecting images of celebrities.
A time, which he later credited
as an awakening of his artistic personality.
In the late 1940s, he moved to New York,
drop the A off of Warhola
and became a successful commercial artist.
Warhol began showing his own art in the early sixties,
but conscious of comparison to rising pop art artists
like Roy Lichtenstein, you know, the cartoon dot guy,
he strove to be different.
His collection of everyday objects shown in fine art spaces
threw critics into a tizzy making everyone question:
What is art?
Warhol rented a huge lot that became known as "The Factory."
It was both his working art studio and a social hotspot.
The rent was only $100 a year.
Good Lord.
Intellectuals and influential artists like David Bowie,
William S Burroughs and Liza Minnelli
mingled with the Warhol superstars,
a group of creators Andy personally promoted,
including a band you may have heard of
called the Velvet Underground.
On June 3rd, 1968, Warhol was nearly killed
by radical feminist Valerie Solanas over a dispute
around a manuscript.
The traumatic event reinforced the feeling
of disconnect in Warhol.
"Before I was shot,
I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there.
I always suspected that I was watching TV
instead of living life.
Right when I was being shot and ever since,
I knew that I was watching television.
The channels switch, but it's all television."
In the seventies and eighties,
Warhol focused on other areas of business,
even as he continued to be an active member
of the New York art scene
and had close relationships with upcoming artists
like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Basquiat and Warhol instantly connected
and inspired each other,
working and collaborating together
until Warhol's untimely death in 1987,
aged only 58 from unexpected surgery complications.
♪ Now onto the queer stuff! ♪
While Warhol have never publicly declared his sexuality,
he had prominent and public relationships with men,
including the poet, John Giorno,
artist and photographer, Billy Name,
interior decorator, Jed Johnson,
and Paramount executive, Jon Gould.
Warhol blurred the lines
between his romantic and professional relationships
and often used his partners as artistic collaborators.
For example, Billy was famous for silver-ising The Factory
and was The Factory's documentarian
and archivist for six years.
John Giorno, an outspoken free spirit,
chronicled his many famous affairs
in his poetry and writing and was a regular at The Factory.
Jed Johnson also met Warhol at The Factory
while making a delivery when he was only 19
and was hired on the spot to sweep the floors.
Though, there were ups and downs to their relationship,
they were together for 12 years,
during which Jed rose to prominence
as a renowned interior designer.
With Jon Gould, Warhol's last affair,
he lamented love in his diary in 1981.
"I should try to fall in love,
and that's what I'm doing now with Jon Gould,
but it gets so involved."
Tragically, Jon died of AIDS at just 33,
a year before Warhol's own death.
Despite his many male partners,
rumors swirled that Warhol was asexual, possibly due
to having several intense platonic relationships
like with Basquiat, Brigid Berlin, Candy Darling,
and socialite Edie Sedgwick.
Past lovers noted that he could be shy and awkward in bed.
According to his former assistant, Vito Giallo,
he once even took sex lessons from a straight couple.
Warhol featured homo erotic themes in his early art
and several galleries rejected those submissions
for being too explicitly gay.
The artist continued exploring sexuality
throughout his career, like in his avant garde film Sleep,
which showcased a naked sleeping John Giorno.
Other works were directly inspired
by the gay underground scene,
including portraits of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli,
the film Lonesome Cowboys,
and his vibrantly colored 1975 exhibition
Ladies and Gentlemen,
which explores gender and identity
through powerful portraits of drag queens.
While it can be easy to view the sixties and the seventies
as a time of freedom and liberation,
it's important to remember that for queer
and marginalized individuals, this came at a great cost,
fighting for their rights.
♪ In conclusion! ♪
So there you have it.
Andy Warhol became one of the most important artists
of the 20th century and he was queer.
Now that's an icon.
Check out the next episode
of Historical Icons Who Weren't Actually Straight here.