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back to 1974: ANDY WARHOL PAINTS HIS MOTHER

Andy Warhol's Portrait of his Mother

Bob Colacello:

"The last portrait Andy [Warhol] painted at the old Factory in 1974 was of his mother, Julia Warhola, who had died two years before, though Andy avoided telling anyone about it, including Jed [Johnson]. Julia had been in a Pittsburgh nursing home for nineteen months before she died... Andy had avoided mentioning that fact, too, and Jed was under strict orders not to say a word. Andy paid for the nursing home, but never visited her there. He called her every day and she begged him to come see her.

'She hunted for him, under the dressers, in the basement', his sister-in-law Ann Warhola later told me. 'They found her out on the highway looking for him.' Andy paid for her funeral, but he didn't go to it. 'He was afraid of death,' Anne Warhola later said.

Andy often said the same thing about death that he said about sex - it was 'abstract'. And that's how he painted Julia, her photographic silkscreen image faint and faded under layers of squiggles and squishes, gobs and goops, painted on by her son's fingers." (BC266)

back to 1974: ANDY WARHOL PAINTS HIS MOTHER

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