Was Andy Warhol racist?
 

I'll get back to you later, I have something else to do. Poll on the way.

Race war!

oh god.

i don't know. however, he was a good artist.

Andy Warhol wasn't racist, but he was obviously emo

Well, everyone's at least slightly racist, even if they won't admit it. So I suppose Andy Warhol was no different.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatently

Not as much as Hitler.

like someone mentioned, he was emo not racist.

some people say that Andy farmed out labor to Chinese peasants. he was making designer dresses that sold for hundreds while he was paying his slave children pennies.

nevermind....maybe that was Kathy Lee.

I have no idea

he probably was.

Maybe...but I bet he experiened plenty of good-to-honest Afro American cockage....then again, he was a voyeur rather than a participant - who knows? I'm not too sure if he was racist really, the only colour he really liked post- Valerie Solanas was green...

Probably not in the sense that most of us think of the term.

Why would you want to smear the good name of Andy Warhol, Mr. Porkapottoumus.

He was such a racist, he used bright colors except black as a complete canvas.

I don't know and I don't think that I really care enough, just curious.


Anyway, I have a book that that has a section that documents with words and pictures a trip of Warhola to the Bronx. All these black kids were being friendly to him and he was terrorized and wouldn't want to have anything to do with black people in the area.

I've also always found it odd that even though NYC certainly didn't have a shortage of gay black artists/activists in the 60's, the factory virtually had no blacks visiting it or forging artistic alliances in it.

Who knows, maybe he wasn't a racist at all.

I think your point about the Factory being largely white says more about racial divides within certain scenes than it does about individuals. Lester Bangs wrote a rather smug, but no less interesting article about the underlying racism in the 70s NY punk scene. Most scenes are a bit racist in one way or another.

Saying that, Warhol always came across to me as a deeply conservative person and so it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he harboured certain racial prejudices above and beyond those of his circle. Not racist in the gas the fuckers kind of a way, more, "ooohhh, I dunno, they're just so weird and kinda scary" sort of a way. Also, it's difficult to judge people from the past's racism by today's standards. Otherwise my dear old nan would be up for a Nuremberg hearing. Different values for a different age, and all that.

He was from Pittsburgh, Pa.
This fact is totally irrelevant.

I don't think of myself as racist, I've lived a black person, had consensual sex with a black person, and just happily voted for a black candidate for president. However, if you got me as hopped up on as much speed as they used to take in the Factory and took me on a walk through the Bronx in the '70s I'm pretty sure I'd be tweaked and paranoid to no end too.

Which isn't to say that he couldn't have been racist. It's just that using an anecdote about being a skinny little fairy fried on speed in a notorious ghetto, so scared that he didn't notice the residents found him interesting in a less than threatening way, isn't much proof.

I voted "Can't Tell" in the poll, because who can ever tell what the fuck Warhol was really thinking?

oh really?

Not true I'm afraid, madame Keg - me and a mate of mine were at a pub in Old Compton Street (Soho's Homo Street supreme), and we were muttering disgustedly at various gay types wearing fascist T-shirts and sporting neo-fascist tattoos - stupid fucking twats. Also, notorious Combat-88 member Gary Crane was secretly into the gay scene in a big way, stewarding Gay Pride rallies and the like (he died of Aids in the early 90's). And if you want to look further into the field of "homosexuals with dubious fascist tendencies", you need look no further than some of the witterings of Death In June's Douglas Pearce.

And that's just to start with.

i am pretty sure that he wasnt racist.

warhol even looks a bit like hitler, if didn't bleach his hair and had a little 'tache you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart

that whole early 80s scene was full of neo-nazi flirtations, people were so dumb back then

On the Victor Bockris's biography it says that when he lost weight in the mid-60's he started dressing like an SS soldier. The plot thickens........

i was just reading a website that says david tibet had ties to the far right

Mr T&B - was that on the Stewart Home site by any chance?

Anyone in Death In June and Sol Invictus probably, but David Tibet, of all people?

yes, is he a nutter?

Yes, just a little bit. He's made a load of daft accusations about various people being fascists. Tibet's about as fascist as I am the King of Belgium. He's tried to paste various Whitehouse members as being pro-fascist, which is a joke and a half. Having said that, he did manage to embarrass Tony Wakeford about his National Front membership (which got him canned from Death In June), so fair play to him on that. That aside, Mister Home should stick to art pranks and writing wildly homoerotic fiction.

Didn't David Tibet also have something to do with the fact that Death In June are largely ignored on the ''England's Hidden Reverse'' book by David Keenan? I remember reading a letter about it on The Wire a while ago.

i think it was that death in june didn't respond to david keenan's request to interview them, and that certain things about DiJ had to be taken out of the book for libel reasons.

I think I remember reading the same account years ago.
Was he overtly racist? No, but he obviously preferred white hustler types to other poor people who he wasn't too keen on in general.

Although, he obviously loved his mother, a poor person. He never did much for his brothers as far as I know.


Good thing Henry Geldzahler never saw him in the outfit then.

I vaguely remember reading the same account.

White hustler types were just culturally more likely to be among his circle, but, in general, Andy wasn't too keen on poor people. It's likely he was extemely nervous to be in that neighboorhood.

Although once very impoverished himself, he had managed against the odds to elevate his social status via hard work and moxie. He cared, as all know, immensely for his mother, but, as far as I know, never did much of anything for his siblings while alive.


It's a good thing Henry Geldzahler never saw him in the outfit then.

i think you missed the irony in her post, but still, interesting picture you paint in yours.

Well, he was also a close friend and collaborator of Jonas Mekas. I was generally wondering about the lack of blacks at The Factory, nothing to be blown out of proportions. I'd say the vast majority of people at The Factory were most certainly not who you'd call a racist.

It's also a fairly safe bet that most Factory denizens were extremely self-centered and more than a little delusional. Disdain for "outsiders" just flows naturally from that. Obviously, a degree of paranoia was present due to the drug use as well.

In turn, the people at The Factory were probably viewed as freaks by many blacks.

The Sixties saw the less-than-smooth birth of the Civil Rights Movement and the late sixties the rise of the Black Panthers. Andy may have avoided blacks for that reason. He didn't see violence as a vehicle for social change.

Did he not give his nephew some work, at one point? I'd count that as someone who somehow is doing something for his siblings. He also kept in touch with them sporadically. Maybe he just loved them without feeling like they had anything in common, which I find more likely.

The story I heard about him giving a painting to his nephew was that, while I think he eventually did, he was really reluctant to do so. At least that's the nephew's account.