Andy Warhol’s devotion was almost surreal

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Yeah, I knew that he went to mass at a Byzantine Catholic church, but he also seemed to engage in a lot of activities (or encouraged those around him to do so) that wouldn’t be considered pious, exactly. I concluded after reading about him that he led a double life.
 
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Ultimately, he had a conscience. His own upbringing was tortured - one of terrible suffering. It is a grace that he retained his faith, at some level, throughout his life. Very public. Very controversial. Very worthy of our prayers.
 
He was no - Michelangelo - that’s for sure - lol -

I wouldn’t travel the next town over - to see 'his exhibit ’
 
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Five will get you ten that Andy was drifting from his Catholicism through most of the “Factory years” and rediscovered it in a big way after he was nearly shot to death by one of the wack jobs he attracted.
Just a hunch on my part.
I agree that a lot of his artistic output and activities during the 1960s was definitely not godly. Often quite the opposite. He was surrounded by people engaging in all kinds of excess and some people blame him for the deaths that occurred.

The Warhol museum in Pittsburgh is worth a look see, I enjoyed it anyway.
 
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po18guy said:
His own upbringing was tortured - one of terrible suffering.
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I don’t know about that. Everyone has trials and troubles, I don’t think Mr. Warhol’s were any worse than average. Son in an immigrant family, he got an opportunity to attend a top college, his entire family did pretty well. Some of his kin here in Pittsburgh own a recycling business.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Five will get you ten that Andy was drifting from his Catholicism through most of the “Factory years” and rediscovered it in a big way after he was nearly shot to death by one of the wack jobs he attracted.
Just a hunch on my part.
I agree that a lot of his artistic output and activities during the 1960s was definitely not godly. Often quite the opposite. He was surrounded by people engaging in all kinds of excess and some people blame him for the deaths that occurred.

The Warhol museum in Pittsburgh is worth a look see, I enjoyed it anyway.
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I think he was also very close to his mother and she was very pious and so he may have gone to mass daily as a way of honoring her.
 
po18guy said:
His own upbringing was tortured - one of terrible suffering.
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Where are you getting this from? He had a physical illness for a while as a child, his father died when he was relatively young, and he struggled with SSA. The illness and parent dying were very widespread experiences in his day when medical science wasn’t as advanced and people worked very hard just to put food on the table. About the only thing that would cause terrible suffering was having to deal with being gay in an era when you really couldn’t come out of the closet. I’m sure he had lots of company with that issue, especially in art school.

He had a loving family, he went to college, and had a very successful career as an illustrator even before he started doing his art.

Not seeing the whole "tortured artist’ thing here, sorry.
 
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Andy Warhola was a Ruthenian Catholic. His parents coming to the US from an area that is now in northeastern Slovakia. My favorite photo of him was shaking hands with Pope John Paul II.
 
I’ve read a lot about Andy Warhol, and have never found a source that presented him as having a very hard, unhappy life. Sure, he had some hardships, but about on the same level of everybody else, and balanced with quite a lot of success and good things.

I’m sure he had his ups and downs like many of us do, and he likely had some mental issues, but he was overall pretty functional and not miserable.
 
Well, such a worldly life of dissipation only fails to satisfy and leads quite often to despair, drug use, overdose death or suicide.

He managed to hang on, even if only by a hair, to his faith. It was the only anchor in his life.
 
If it’s too good to be true… then it’s too good to be true.
Contemplating deceased bodies - that is how Anton LaVey started too.
 
I wonder, with him being an artist, how much of his attraction was to the very strong aesthetic ‘smells snd bells’ elememt of the faith.
 
I think having your parent die young is form of suffering. I am not sure how common that was during that area though. It’s still pretty sad nonetheless. If he had an illness like polio or reoccurring pneumonia or tuberculosis that’s definitely suffering.
 
It wasn’t uncommon. If it wasn’t your parent checking out then it was a sibling who didn’t live to grow up.

Cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, simply didn’t have the treatments then that they have now, and they got a lot of middle-aged moms and dads.
 
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