The Andy Warhol Museum on
the World Wide Web for some additional views of Warhol materials.
"It's hard work to look like the complete opposite of what nature made you and then to be an imitation ... of what was only a fantasy ... in the first place."Andy Warhol
From "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol", p.54
During the course of his lifetime[1] he witnessed the enormous changes within the gay community which occurred between those years, most especially the formation of what historians now call the "gay identity". The gay men of Warhol's generation were the first to see homosexual orientation as a delineation of commonalty and homophobia as the oppressing factor in their lives. This realization over the course of the thirties, forties, and fifties precipitated an exodus of gay men and lesbians from rural areas to urban centers such as New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. With the anonymity of the city came the opportunity for a subculture to form which was both self-sustaining and self-defined. Warhol himself participated in this flight to the urban centers when he moved to New York in the summer of 1949 from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was a member of New York's gay drag subculture at the time of the Stonewall riots in 1969; in which his friend Candy Darling participated. He saw the blossoming of the gay community in New York in the 1970's and the beginnings of the Aids crisis in the 1980's. The assumption that the experience of having lived during these formative years would have no effect on or place in his work seems naive.
In considering Warhol's experience we must recognize that his cultivation of a public persona and emotional distance, the desire to assume another identity, as well as his dislike of his own body and a desire to change it were common to other gay men of his generation.
Psychologists who have studied gay psychological development point to the formation of a hatred of self in young gay subjects known as "body shame", [2]the hatred of one's own body. They link this to the subconscious realization that one's body is one's primary means for experiencing pleasure and, if one is taught by society that one's desire for same-sex pleasure is unacceptable, this translates into the belief that one's body is unacceptable. Photo's from Warhol's private collection from the early to mid-fifties show him with his profile altered to show a smaller, turned-up nose and fuller hair. Warhol later underwent facial surgery to reconstruct his nose, an operation which he was ultimately not pleased with.[3] In his introduction to the Warhol Retrospective catalogue, Kynaston McShine notes that two of Warhol's first works Advertisement /image is not yet available/ [figure 1] and Before and After /image is not yet available/ [figure 2] draw on newspaper material which is concerned with self-improvement. "Promoting devices and products promising improved posture and silhouette, fuller hair, broader shoulders, and bigger arms, these ads touch the core of Warhol's physical insecurities."[7]
While it may in fact be true that Warhol admired Rauschenberg for his ability to transcend poverty to rise to the pinnacle of stardom, I am compelled to add that it is likely that Warhol admired him as well for the triumph of having overcome the stigma of being gay. Warhol was certainly aware of Rauschenberg's homosexuality and both had had the experience of growing up gay as well as poor. Given the knowledge that Rauschenberg possessed many of the things which Warhol wanted, notably fame, wealth, and beauty, it is tempting to ask if there might not be a certain amount of erotic fascination suffused within the work.
Warhol also actively cultivated a large and grand public persona, the legacy of which is still with us. On one level this can be read, as McShine does as " Warhol want[ing] most of all what he lacked by birth: beauty, wealth, or any other obvious avenue to fame."[8] There is something odd about the type of fame which he sought, though. While many men of the fifties may have desired the wealth and fame of stars such as Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Marlon Brando; emulating to the best of their abilities those actors' bodies, speech patterns, and dress, Warhol's desire for glamour is decidedly feminine. We see this most clearly in his personal photos from the fifties where he echoes the poses of the actresses Greta Garbo and Bette Davis.[9] Later in his career we find him in drag himself in several personal photos on display at the Warhol museum and in the photo Andy Warhol, Altered Image of 1981 by Christoper Makos. Tied to Warhol's pursuit of feminine glamour, is a repeated desire to assume an alternate identity, to transcend himself. Two of Warhol's first five paintings exhibited as backdrops in the Bonwit Teller speak to this end. Of the three using comic-book imagery, two feature comic characters who change dramatically: Superman, who is the double of Clark Kent, and Popeye, his power fortified in time of distress by his spinach.[10] Moreover, these are both characters who change from regular men into ultra-men; one by changing his clothes, the other by consuming a packaged product. Within the gay subculture of the time, the desire to become another person was relatively common. Psychologists connect this to the bi-cultural nature of gay experience caused by the difficulties in leading a double life; both "passing" as straight and being gay. The desire to change identity is the extension of a desire to escape oppressively homophobic climate.[11] It is interesting to add that drag is itself an alternate form of identity -- an outlet for the creation of the fantasy-self.
The prints which first thrust Andy Warhol into the artistic limelight in the early sixties were his Marilyn, Liz, and Elvis series. By reexamining the prints in the light of contemporary gay and lesbian theory on the phenomenon of drag, one can construct an argument for the presence of a drag subtext in them. It should be noted that themes of drag in his work appear both subtlely, such as in the Marilyns, and overtly as in the Ladies and Gentlemen series. Though his portraits of African-American and Latino drag queens followed his Marilyns by 12 years, they deserve examination first as the more straightforward.
In his Ladies and Gentlemen series, Warhol took photographs of African- American and Latino men in drag, and overprinted them on vibrantly colored backgrounds. The double-entendre title alerts the viewer to the gender play going on in the work. The images are coarse, and the men are inadequately concealed in their attire. In this case, that we are looking at men disguised as women need only be hinted at before we make the connection.
By definition, the term "drag" refers to the putting on of apparel and make up to transform oneself into something one is not. Drag is not limited to merely trans-gender transformation, but occurs any time one uses surface to change perceptions about oneself. [12] Carole-Anne Tyler would argue that the process of clothing oneself, particularly with the implied connection between fashion and status, is an act of drag which most of us engage in every day , however unconsciously.[13] It is also important to realize that Warhol's social circle at The Factory in the early sixties included drag queens. He even featured them in several of his films in feminine roles, notably Candy Darling in Women Revolt of 1972 and Ondine in Chelsea Girls of 1966.
In considering the Marilyn series, we must first ask ourselves the question "Who was Marilyn?" She was Norma Jean Baker, discovered by Hollywood during the making of a wartime PR film at the aircraft assembly plant where she worked. By the application of hair dye, makeup, and the trappings of a starlet, she became the persona of Marilyn Monroe. She is by definition the very embodiment of drag. She was a factory worker who by altering her surface became the fantasy sexpot starlet. While Hollywood perhaps asked the public to believe in this new persona, one needed only pick up any one of perhaps hundreds of tabloid accounts of her life to realize the transformation which had taken place. Additionally, her "drag" was that of the ultra-woman, more woman than the work-a-day world permited. She was heralded as the quintessential sexpot -- the modern extension of the odalisque/kept woman who did nothing but luxuriate and provide sexual release. Again we must ask ourselves, "how far was this fantasy removed from the her reality as the factory worker?".
In the first image Warhol creates, Gold Marilyn Monroe, [figure 4] the image of the starlet appears diminished within its gold frame. The compositions harkens back to the treatment of religious icons and relics, often far outweighed by their precious frames. He is portraying her as an icon of American culture. It is important to notice how the image evolves until 1967; the registration becomes less precise and the colors more unreal. In the Turquoise Marilyn [figure 5] the play of colors is almost grotesque. Her lips and eye shadow are misaligned to her face. Her hair appears wig-like and too blonde. Even the background, a garish turquoise too intense to be an interior color, creates a sense of a perverse or unreal space. Given the knowledge that Warhol is a printmaker with the skill to create Brillo, Heinz, and DelMonte boxes indistinguishable from the originals, what do the misalignments suggest? One should realize that part of the effect of drag is the shock involved when the audience is first made aware of the true sex/nature of the performer/subject. At the end of a drag show the performer frequently removes his wig, or lifts his dress, to drive home the point that what you see is not what you get - heightening the audience's awe at the illusion. Additionally, Tyler has advanced the point that one of the characteristics of traditional drag, part of its "camp" humor, has to do with impersonation of "un- naturally" bad taste - like that of the working class, ethnic, or racially "other" woman. It is this conception of other which has a critical knowledge of what counts as "natural" femininity: namely white, Anglo, and bourgeois.[14] Carole- Anne Tyler says of drag: "It is only from a middle class point of view that Dolly Parton looks like a female impersonator; from the working- class point of view she could be the epitome of genuine womanliness."[15] Camp humor seeks to exaggerate the womanly characteristics of the subject: the bushy blonde hair, the large breasts, the painted lips, the thick eye-shadow. Warhol's later Marilyns exhibits all of these characteristics, prompting the question "are these to be taken as the true image of Marilyn or a camp exaggeration of her features and image? It is also of interest to note here that starlets, such as Marilyn and Liz, along with Mamie VanDoren, Doris Day and Bette Davis, were frequent subjects for female-impersonators. There is a historic president within the gay community for the drag representation of Marilyn which was connected to her image of ultra-woman rather than the heterosexual male erotic desire for her.
In the print Marilyn Diptych[figure 6] of 1962 we are confronted with 50 representations of Marilyn, all of them slightly different from each other and none of them convincing us that this is the true image of the starlet; the lips are too red, the hair too blonde. One is struck in this case by the similarities between this image and the effect of multiple drag images of the same subject. Not infrequently competitions are and were sponsored by the drag community to see who can/could do the best impersonation of a given star, or stars. To the audience, each of the performers appears different enough from the others to be recognized as such, though none of them is the performer herself. The effect, particularly if the contestants are skilled, is quite disturbing, a quality shared in Warhol's composition.
In Marilyn Monroe's Lips of 1962 Warhol presents a composition similar to that of the Marilyn Dyptich. In this case though he has disembodied her lips, making veiled reference to female labia and teeth which might be argued heighten a sense of castration anxiety. Given the equation that power is phallic, advanced by Freud, the castration is the quintessential loss of masculine power. Within the social climate of the time, same sex contact was grounds for the loss of masculine status and power, a symbolic castration. Freud theorized that homosexuals desired the penis of another to compensate for their psychological castration; the masculine version of feminine penis envy. In this model the drag-queen invert becomes consumate castrating woman.
Moving on to the Liz series, we see similar characteristics to those of the Marilyns, notably the garish coloration and the mis-registered printing process. Along the same lines as the Marilyns it could argued that this is a representation of the "Liz- drag". It is particularly interesting to note that in the Blue Liz as Cleopatra, /image is not yet available/ [figure 8] Elizabeth Taylor is herself pictured repeatedly in drag, namely that of the queen of the Nile, Cleopatra. Again there is the disturbing quality of the images in which each is different from the other and none is the true Liz. In this case there is a double separation from subject which is quite interesting: the first is that Elizabeth Taylor is not Cleopatra and the second that Cleopatra was almost certainly not a white, Anglo- Saxon woman. In this case the image of Liz as Cleopatra transgresses the boundaries of our suspension of disbelief, and we are left with the image of Elizabeth Taylor in African drag (remember Tyler's point about the camp-humor of exaggerating the "otherness" of ethnic women).
In Warhol's Triple Elvis and Elvis I and II, /image is not yet available/ [figures 9 and 10] we are presented with an image of the rock and roll star as cowboy. The initial point that Elvis is a musician not a cowboy, and therefore we are seeing an image of Elvis in cowboy drag, is given further homoerotic content by the cheese-cakey stance of the subject which suggests pin-up art. In this case Elvis is shown with a gun pointed at the viewer, an extension of his phallus. He is ready to penetrate, a conclusion furthered by his aggressive stance, tight pants, and the proximity of the gun to his genitals. Just as the feminine qualities of a subject were exaggerated to the end of camp humor, so too were the butch/masculine qualities. These images read to a gay audience as parody of butch/masculine sexuality, the result of the play between the image of Elvis as "ultra-masculine" and the fact that he is portrayed in cheese-cakey drag.
As a gay man living in both pre- and post- Stonewall America, Andy Warhol undoubtably was forced to "pass" as a heterosexual frequently. Considering that passing is itself a form of drag, I am intersted in tying his self portraits into my consideration surface and the self that lies behind.
In the first Self Portrait /image is not yet available/ [figure 11] of 1964 we see a double image of Warhol, with different backgrounds for identical image. In this case the metaphor might well be that there are two Warhols, and what we see depends on the context in which we see the artist. I would argue that this is an allusion of the phenomenon of passing, a common experience to gay men and lesbians. The process of concealing one's homosexuality and representing oneself as heterosexual is the response to a need for self preservation in an environment hostile to gays. While undoubtedly a denial of self, with its own psychological pitfalls, it was normal for men of Warhol's generation to live double lives: a public life passing as a heterosexual and a private one where one engages other members of the gay community both socially and sexually. I would read the differing backgrounds with identical figures in the foreground as referent to the heterosexual and homosexual spheres.
In the Double Self-Portrait /image is not yet available/ [figure 12] of 1967 Warhol has repeated his twice with differing combinations of colors but identical color blocking. The pose is very different from the first; in it he appears much more reserved, with his hand over his lips, the gesture of the removed observer. By contrast the first appears much more like a mug-shot. Even more important than the pose, though, is the use of color ,which makes the work appear very flat, very much concerned with surface. Additionally, half of Warhol's face is hidden in shadow, suggesting a hidden part of self. These are also not realistic images of the artist, given the garish coloration, and seem to borrow from the Marilyns and Lizs in their suggestion of the drag of persona, in this case the drag of heterosexual man, rather than the real self.
The Warhol's other self portraits of the same year are flatter still, with less contrast between the shaded and unshaded halves of his face. The registration is less sharp than in previous versions, and the very flatness of the composition evokes the idea of an abstract composition rather than a realistic portrait of self. In this case Warhol appears to have made his portrait even more concerned with surface than before, and less referential to the actual man represented.
In his Self-Portrait of 1978 /image is not yet available/ [figure 13] he has used both the double composition of his self- portrait of 1964, as well as a negative image and multiple images of his face within that image to create even more play with the idea of surface and the man beneath. The solarized quality of the print, which reads almost as an x-ray, suggests that this is a negative, the reverse of what the reality is, while the floating profile to the right of his face reads as a type of mask. I would argue that this is an even more direct play with the issues of concealment and passing, perhaps made more poignant by the difficulties encountered by gay men who achieve celebrity status. Even if the public is aware that Warhol is a homosexual, it is still very likely that he would have to curb his effeminacy, given the general discomfort with men who embody cross-gender difference.
In the Myths Series /image is not yet available/ [figure 15 and 16 (detail)] of 1981, Warhol includes himself in the lower, right-hand box. This is not his image exactly though, as is evidenced by the detail, but rather the image of his profile which carries the visual information. Again his actual face is cropped more or less in half, suggesting the hidden self. Moreover the profile, created by the silhouette is in itself a type of negative image. It is formed by the absence of the light blocked by Warhol's face, which is again a play on the idea of surface and concealment. Perhaps more importantly what is the significance of a gay artist, now having reached the level of icon status, including himself in a series of images concerned with American myths? Are we to interpret this as the assertion that what we know of him is myth, that is, if we believe in the drag he produces in the same way we believe in Santa Claus or the Wicked Witch?
In Warhol's Camouflage Self[figure 16] of 1986 the artist has obscured himself in the overprinted image of jungle camouflage. I think this image is very poignant because it appears as the most direct engagement of homosexual passing in his self portraits. What is the significance of a gay artist representing himself in camouflage? It seems obvious that the process of concealment of homosexual self is a process of camouflage;and moreover, just as soldiers camouflage themselves for purposes of survival, so to do gay men. In addition, gay men have been able to directly engage the place of gender within culture and its pastiche re-interpretation though drag. Warhol's portrait prints are a similar engagement of those same themes. We must re-examine the gaze which we use to interpret Warhol's works and include the gay eye within those interpretations.
The Andy Warhol Museum on
the World Wide Web for some additional views of Warhol materials.