56 Fun Facts About Andy Warhol

In which US city was Andy Warhol born in 1928?

Pittsburgh: a grade-school teacher spotted his talent and arranged Saturday drawing classes for him at the city's Carnegie Institute.

Warhol's parents came from Miková, a village in what is now which country?

Slovakia: his father left the village in 1912 to escape conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army, and his mother, Julia, could not follow him to America until 1921.

Which nervous-system disorder kept Warhol in bed for long stretches when he was eight?

Sydenham's chorea, a complication of a streptococcal infection, causes involuntary jerking movements. Kept home in bed, he drew and filled scrapbooks with pictures from Hollywood magazines.

Which Manhattan nightclub, opened in 1977, counted Warhol as a regular alongside Halston, Bianca Jagger and Liza Minnelli?

Studio 54 had Warhol as a regular from the April it opened, but his boyfriend Jed Johnson never liked the scene and said that things changed between the two of them after that.

As a student, Warhol won a prize for sketching customers from which summer job?

Selling produce in the summer of 1946 put him in front of everyone from the newly rich to struggling families. He called the job a wonderful experience and said 'people are funny'.

Warhol earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1949 in which subject?

Pictorial design was the degree Warhol took at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. That summer he moved to New York with classmate Philip Pearlstein to work as a commercial artist.

Warhol's first solo exhibition in 1952 consisted of drawings based on the writings of which author?

Truman Capote had been getting fan letters from Warhol, who later said he wrote to the author every day for years, until Capote's mother phoned and told him to stop.

Warhol's 1950s drawing technique, combining printmaking and pencil work on paper, was known as what?

Blotted line meant inking a pencil drawing and pressing it onto fresh paper while wet. Because the step could be repeated, he could bring a client several versions of one illustration.

Which shoe manufacturer's advertisements did Warhol illustrate from 1955, winning an Art Directors Club award the following year?

Israel Miller had made his name with shoes for dancers and actors and died in 1929. It was the company bearing his name that hired Warhol a quarter of a century later.

In 1956 MoMA politely declined Warhol's gift of a drawing called Shoe, citing what?

Limited storage space was Alfred Barr's polite excuse, and his postscript asked Warhol to come and collect the drawing. That same year a Warhol shoe drawing hung in the museum's Recent Drawings U.S.A. show.

Whose calligraphy did Warhol often use alongside his drawings in his self-published 1950s books?

His mother's ornate script was admired enough that her lettering for one of his album covers won a design award, made out not to Julia Warhola but to 'Andy Warhol's Mother'.

Warhol's first Pop paintings were shown in April 1961 as a backdrop in which store's window?

Bonwit Teller was already a client of Warhol the commercial artist, so his new comic-strip and advertisement canvases went up as window dressing, behind mannequins in spring dresses.

What did Muriel Latow, paid $50 for the idea, tell Warhol to paint because he loved it most?

Money, in one of several tellings of that evening; what they share is the $50 cheque he wrote her. The dollar bills he painted soon afterwards were among his first silkscreens.

Warhol's 1962 Ferus Gallery show hung 32 canvases, one for each variety of what?

Campbell's soup came in 32 varieties, and each canvas stood on a narrow shelf, like groceries in a store. Warhol said he had eaten the same lunch every day for twenty years.

Which dealer gave Warhol his first solo New York Pop show at her Stable Gallery in November 1962?

Eleanor Ward, by her own account, had a November slot fall open when she dropped another artist. The architect Philip Johnson bought Gold Marilyn Monroe from the show and later gave it to the Museum of Modern Art.

Warhol's 1962 Marilyn silkscreens were based on a publicity still from which film?

Niagara supplied the face: Warhol cropped a 1953 publicity still for the film and began the silkscreens shortly after Monroe's death in August 1962.

Who fired a pistol through a stack of Warhol's Marilyn canvases at the Factory in 1964?

Dorothy Podber asked if she could shoot the stacked paintings, and Warhol agreed, thinking she meant with a camera. She drew a pistol and fired, and he asked that she not be let back in.

Who covered the Factory in aluminium foil and silver paint in 1964?

Billy Name had already covered his own apartment in foil and silver paint. Warhol saw it at one of Name's haircutting parties and asked him to do the same to the new loft.

Warhol's mural Thirteen Most Wanted Men, made for the 1964 New York World's Fair, met what fate?

It was painted over in silver days before the fair opened, after state officials objected to the mugshots. Warhol offered portraits of the fair's president, Robert Moses, instead, and those were refused too.

Warhol's 1964 Stable Gallery show filled the rooms with stacked sculptures of what?

Commercial cartons such as Brillo boxes were really plywood copies: Warhol ordered plain wooden boxes, silkscreened the packaging onto them and stacked them until the gallery looked like a warehouse.

For his 1966 Castelli show, Warhol took dealer Ivan Karp's 'wonderfully pastoral' suggestion and papered a room with which animal?

Cows, but hardly pastoral ones: Warhol printed a huge cow's head in bright pink on yellow and had it made into wallpaper. Karp was shocked, then declared the result 'super-pastoral'.

Warhol's eight-hour silent film is a fixed view of which New York landmark?

The Empire State Building was filmed from an office in the Time-Life Building through one July night in 1964. Warhol then slowed the projection, so six and a half hours of footage last just over eight.

Warhol's 1965 film Vinyl was a loose adaptation of which novel?

A Clockwork Orange reached the screen through Warhol six years before Kubrick: he sent the novel to his screenwriter Ronald Tavel and added Edie Sedgwick to the all-male cast, where she never speaks a line.

Which band did Warhol manage, providing the cover art for their 1967 debut album?

The Velvet Underground took on the German singer Nico at Warhol's suggestion, and early copies of the album let buyers peel back his banana sticker, labelled 'Peel slowly and see'.

Warhol's 1966 multimedia shows with his house band at the Dom were called what?

Exploding Plastic Inevitable grew out of a stunt that January: invited to address a banquet of some three hundred psychiatrists and guests, Warhol brought the band and its dancers instead of a speech.

How was Warhol's 1966 film Chelsea Girls designed to be projected?

Two reels side by side on a split screen meant two projectors, and they never ran in exact sync, so every screening of the film came out a little different.

In 1967 Warhol sent an actor to impersonate him on a speaking tour of which venues?

Western colleges in Oregon, Utah and Montana got the actor Allen Midgette, powder in his hair, in Warhol's place. Months later Warhol admitted the switch, refunded the fees and went back in person.

Who shot Warhol at the Factory on June 3, 1968?

Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, fired three shots at Warhol; one passed through his lungs, spleen, stomach, liver and oesophagus, and he spent nearly two months in hospital.

After he was shot in 1968, what did Warhol have to wear for the rest of his life?

A surgical corset kept his stomach from distending when he ate, because a second operation the year after the shooting left his abdominal muscles improperly repaired.

Which magazine did Warhol found in 1969 with British journalist John Wilcock?

Interview was launched in late 1969 as inter/VIEW: A Monthly Film Journal by Warhol and John Wilcock; copies of the magazine were tossed into his grave in 1987.

Warhol's cover for the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers (1971) featured what working element?

A real zipper opened to show underwear beneath, and it caused real trouble: in stacked shipments the zip pull dented the vinyl, so, by the sleeve maker's account, copies went out half unzipped, the pull resting on the label.

Warhol's 1972 print of a green-faced Richard Nixon urged a vote for whom?

George McGovern appears nowhere in the picture made to help him. Warhol took his opponent's face from a Newsweek cover and sold the prints to raise funds for the Democrat's campaign.

What breed were Warhol's beloved dogs Archie and Amos?

Dachshunds: Archie, named after the TV character Archie Bunker, went with Warhol to the studio, parties, restaurants and Europe, and Amos joined the household a few years later.

Warhol travelled to which country in 1976 to paint a portrait of its empress?

Warhol flew to Tehran, Iran, in 1976 to photograph Empress Farah Pahlavi for a commissioned portrait; the Shah's court was a client of his portrait business.

Warhol's Oxidation paintings of 1977-78 were made by exposing metallic paint to what?

Urine from Warhol, his assistant Ronnie Cutrone and the occasional lunch guest reacted with the copper paint, and Cutrone's turned the canvas 'a really pretty color', Warhol wrote, because he took lots of vitamin B.

How long did Warhol reportedly take to paint his 1979 BMW M1 Art Car?

Under half an hour, reportedly: earlier artists in BMW's series designed on scale models for technicians to copy, but Warhol painted the real car himself, and it then raced at Le Mans.

Warhol's 1980 series Ten Portraits depicted what group?

Jews of the twentieth century was the dealer Ronald Feldman's commission, and Feldman, not Warhol, chose the ten sitters. Warhol's own nickname for the series was 'Jewish geniuses'.

After his relationship with Jed Johnson ended, Warhol signed with the Zoli Agency to do what?

Modelling became a late career: he signed with Zoli in 1981 and later with Ford, and five days before his death he modelled in a New York fashion show alongside Miles Davis.

Warhol's poorly reviewed 1985 joint show Paintings at the Shafrazi Gallery was with whom?

Jean-Michel Basquiat reworked the logos and headlines that Warhol laid down first. When the show opened, a New York Times review said the younger painter had become an art-world mascot.

At the 1985 launch of which computer did Warhol digitally paint a portrait of Debbie Harry?

The Commodore Amiga 1000 stayed in use at his studio after the launch, and in 2014 a team at Carnegie Mellon recovered a dozen unknown Warhol images from his old Amiga floppy disks.

Warhol played himself in a 1985 episode of which TV series?

The Love Boat cast Warhol as himself in October 1985. In the story a passenger played by Marion Ross spends the cruise avoiding him, wanting to forget that she was once in one of his films.

Which computer company's logo appeared in Warhol's 1985 Ads print portfolio?

Apple's rainbow logo came from a Macintosh advertisement. Warhol had first tried the machine at Sean Lennon's ninth birthday party, where Steve Jobs showed him the mouse and he drew a circle.

Warhol died in February 1987 the morning after surgery to remove what?

His gallbladder had troubled him since a gallstone was found in 1973, but he feared hospitals and put surgery off for years. His family's lawsuit against the hospital was later settled out of court.

What was Warhol wearing on his head in his open casket?

A platinum wig went with him into the bronze casket, along with a black cashmere suit and a paisley tie. At the graveside a friend dropped in a bottle of Estée Lauder's Beautiful perfume.

One of Warhol's first films shows the poet John Giorno doing what?

Sleeping, for over five hours, though not through one unbroken night: the film loops a handful of short shots again and again. Giorno was Warhol's lover at the time.

Which Warhol work fetched a then-record $195 million for American art at auction in 2022?

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn was sold for charity: the proceeds went to the late owners' foundation for children's health care and education. Accounts differ on whether the 1964 bullet ever struck this canvas.

Factory regulars called Warhol 'Drella', a blend of Cinderella and which other character?

Dracula and Cinderella made Drella, and the name outlived him: in 1990 two musicians he had once managed released a whole album about him called Songs for Drella.

Which musician played Warhol in Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic of a fellow painter?

David Bowie had history with his subject: in 1971 he played Warhol his new song 'Andy Warhol' in person at the Factory, and by Bowie's account Warhol had absolutely nothing to say about it.

What did Warhol's home city rename in his honour in 2005?

A bridge: the Seventh Street Bridge, which leads to his museum, was renamed to mark the museum's tenth anniversary. In 2013 volunteers wrapped it in 580 knitted and crocheted blankets.

In 2012 the International Astronomical Union named a crater after Warhol on which world?

Mercury's craters are named for artists, writers, painters and musicians, so Warhol's shares the planet with craters honouring Picasso, Matisse and Beethoven.

Warhol's oceanfront estate Eothen, bought in 1971 with Paul Morrissey, was in which Long Island community?

Montauk sits at Long Island's eastern tip. The compound of white clapboard cottages had been a family fishing camp, and in 1975 the Rolling Stones rented its main house as a rehearsal space.

Which 1963 Warhol painting sold for about $105 million in 2013, then an auction record for the artist?

Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) belongs to the Death and Disaster series, which began, Warhol said, when Henry Geldzahler laid a newspaper on their lunch table with the headline '129 Die in Jet'.

Away from the party scene, where did Warhol regularly volunteer in New York?

A church soup kitchen. Warhol helped feed homeless New Yorkers at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, and he slipped into Mass several times a week, sitting at the back to avoid notice.

Warhol's 1986 Last Supper paintings were shown in January 1987 in which Italian city?

Dealer Alexander Iolas commissioned the Last Supper series for a show at Milan's Palazzo delle Stelline, across the street from Leonardo's original; it opened in January 1987, weeks before Warhol died.

Warhol's 1970s commissioned portraits each began with a shoot on which camera?

Polaroid. Warhol snapped his sitters on instant film, picked one print and had it enlarged onto a silkscreen, so each painted portrait began as a snapshot.

Rather than a soup can, what image appeared on the 2002 US postage stamp honouring Warhol?

A self-portrait. The stamp reproduces his 1964 painting Self-Portrait, so the artist who made icons of soup cans and film stars ended up as the picture on the envelope himself.