Warhol

by Blake Gopnik

“One of the major points in my book is that he’s not at all the kind of holy fool or idiot savant that he still stands as in the popular imagination…He was a deeply sophisticated thinker about art, as much so as other high calibre thinkers like Donald Judd or Pablo Picasso.” —Blake Gopnik

Our interview with Blake Gopnik on the Best Andy Warhol Books was published on March 5th, 2020

The book, according to the author

After spending seven years writing this biography and living with Andy Warhol, as it were, I really did come to think that he is one of the great creative geniuses of our era, or indeed any era.

I started out by being a fan of his work, but over time I became more and more interested in him as a figure. One of the major points in my book is that he’s not at all the kind of holy fool or idiot savant that he still stands as in the popular imagination, and even to a certain extent among art historians. He was a deeply sophisticated thinker about art, as much so as other high calibre thinkers like Donald Judd or Pablo Picasso. Although he wasn’t a propositional thinker – he was an artist not an academic – he was nonetheless a genuine, old-fashioned genius, in the sense that he took on problems and worked his way through them in consistently compelling and innovative ways.

The Best Andy Warhol Books