Eat Like Andy Warhol

there's an andy warhol you almost definitely know the one of repeating maryland's of campbell's soup

brillo boxes cow wallpaper celebrity portraits and dollar signs there is a ton of writing about warhol

biographies and even a detailed account of his daily life from the mid-1970s

until his death in 1987. warhol surrounded himself with people

who all give competing reports of their time with him

and he provided the world with too many prized aphorisms to count

today we'll work our way through a tasting menu that explores warhol's life

through the food he depicted as well as the food he actually ate

and talk about the human person you might not know the one behind the enigma

the ultimate producer and consumer and product all in one

impossible to capture but oh so fun to try to anyway

we'll start with a little breakfast which for warhol was often cornflakes at

least at certain points in his life we even have photographic evidence of

him eating them here with his beloved mother julia who lived with him in new

york from 1952 to 1970 and here is photographed by bobby

grossman for grossman's late 1970s series of celebrities eating corn flakes

the cereal was one of a number of industrially produced commercially

available products that the artist not only consumed but reproduced and

venerated in his art cornflakes boxes were part of his famous

show at stable gallery in new york in 1964 where he packed the space with brillo box sculptures and box sculptures of

heinz tomato ketchup and campbell's tomato juice as well as

corn flakes leaving only narrow passageways for amused and scandalized visitors to shimmy through

these were not actual cardboard shipping containers but wooden boxes

ordered from a carpenter then painted brown and silk screened with logos by

warhol and his right-hand man at the time gerard malanga

they were some of the first works made in the space that became known as the

factory due to the assembly line like processes that happened there oh and the fact that the building had

previously been a hat factory hmm these are all right enjoyable for

their novelty maybe and a reminder of the strangeness and

glory of industrial produced foodstuffs that took over the american diet after

world war ii kind of exactly like what warhol's box

filled gallery slash warehouse was pointing out our next course comes from a restaurant and boutique where warhol spent a

tremendous amount of time in the 1950s during his career as a commercial

illustrator and into his years as a pop artist frozen hot chocolate actually sorry they spell it this way

is the best known menu item at serendipity 3 which opened on east

58th street in 1954 and quickly became warhol's unofficial headquarters

to begin making it we'll chop up 3 ounces of chocolate whatever kind you

like and put it into a double boiler stirring until it melts then add in two teaspoons of store

bought hot chocolate mix and one and a half tablespoons of sugar

stirring until it's all blended together and smooth remove from the heat mix in

half a cup of milk and then let it cool to room temperature

while that's happening let's look at some of the work andy was

doing at the time he started drinking these concoctions throughout the 1950s he experienced considerable success as an illustrator

for magazines like vogue and harper's bazaar making art for advertisements and window displays

and creating illustrated books with friends all of the cursive script you

see in his works from the 50s was contributed by his mom julia by the way

her fanciful script paired beautifully with his distinctive and blotchy style

of drawing andy's blotted line was much sought after by the art directors of madison avenue

and i'm going to demonstrate roughly how he did it let's take this illustration

he did for a 1952 brochure about rheumatoid arthritis we're going to

trace the illustration itself but warhol would usually work from a photograph of

an object or a drawing and trace the image with pencil onto

tracing paper then he'd hinge the tracing paper to a piece of good drawing

paper and use an ink pen to go over the

tracing one section at a time folding it back and blotting the wet ink onto the good paper warhol used a traditional ink pen

with a nib and not a bamboo one like this

but this is the only one i could get to work even this poorly but warhol would

ink the tracing and transfer the image bit by bit until it was complete leaving a jittery line with dots and dashes and

smudges and smears along the way an old classmate from carnegie tech

where he studied pictorial design says warhol discovered this technique

one night at a restaurant when he blotted an ink sketch with a

paper napkin it was a step in the direction of the automation he would

wholly embrace in due time allowing him to work from a source image

and enlist assistance to do parts of the process he was after a look he described as exactly wrong

making him stand out as an individual in a crowded field

something he had a remarkable knack for throughout his life

now that the chocolate mixture is cool pour it into a blender with another cup

of milk and three cups of ice then blend it up and curse at your

blender which was too expensive to be executing its task this poorly

but serendipity made its frozen hot chocolate so well and still does by the way that warhol spent nearly two thousand dollars there

in 1957 alone he met art directors from ad agencies

there brought friends and fed his assistants from a menu that

did contain things other than sweets okay so when it's smooth pour the

mixture into goblets top with plenty of whipped cream followed by chocolate shavings and enjoy feeling pretty good about our

decision not to have tried to recreate this patriotic ice cream sundae warhol

drew but never made or ate at least as far as we know now let's

clear the palette with a coca-cola or heck let's have a few by the early

1960s warhol was focusing less on his work for hire and more on a way into the

art world making paintings of comic strips and advertisements everyday things and subject matter he

knew very well in 1962 he made two large paintings of

coca-cola bottles one kind of drippy and expressionistic and the other clean edged and asked his friends which they

preferred they liked the hard edge one that looked less like a real bottle and

more like an ad so we went with it capitalizing on

this instantly recognizable image which was emblematic of this post-war

time of automation and abundance the idea was amplified by repetition

made possible through warhol's innovation of techniques including stencils stamps and silk screens he explained his affection for the

beverage what's great about this country is that america started the tradition

where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the

poorest you can be watching tv and see coca-cola and you know that the president drinks coke

liz taylor drinks coke and just think you can drink coke too

cheers another product andy loved was of course campbell's tomato soup

which no warhol tasting menu would be complete without after the coke bottles he was seeking a new subject matter and asked friends for

ideas he did this a lot a gallerist friend of

andy's told him to think of the most common everyday thing he could imagine

like a campbell soup can and so that's exactly what he set himself to reproduce

working from black and white photographs and cutting stencils by hand

his first series of individual can paintings represented campbell's complete product line at the time and it was

exhibited at ferris gallery in la on shelves as a nod to its customary

grocery aisle presentation in the span of a few months in late 61

and early 62 warhol painted nearly 50 soup can paintings in all and eventually landed on silk screening

as the most precise and mechanical way to make them

two of them were part of the 1962 exhibition the new realists

one of the first to identify what would become known as pop art

the same year he explained in his maddeningly cheeky and simplistic way

pop art is a way of liking things by the time of the 1964 exhibition the american

supermarket warhol had become synonymous with the pop movement selling soup can paintings for fifteen

hundred dollars and actual cans of the soup signed by himself

for six fifty each you can likely figure this out on your own but to turn this

concentrate into soup we combine it with a can of water mix it

up and heat it but campbell's soup wasn't just recognizable

it was a fixture of his youth served to him by his mother during his childhood

in pittsburgh he was born andrew warhola to parents who had emigrated from a small village in what is now slovakia

little andy was a sickly child and spent a lot of time in bed reading movie

magazines and making art projects with his crafty and encouraging mom

who always had a good supply of campbells on hand to prepare for her

sons warhol claimed he ate this every day for 20 years often with a sandwich which i'll say this is definitely

calling out for but it seemed un-andy-like to go to the trouble to

make myself it's a good thing i saved room for our

next course mushroom i've called a friend over to help me

with this one and i've asked her if she'll do the honors of slowly consuming

this single raw mushroom this is exactly what warhol asked of his

friend the artist robert indiana in february of 1964. not long after he had begun making films the summer prior

they came up with the idea together connecting andy's new explorations into

film with indiana's preoccupation with the word eat the last words of indiana's mother

before she died and which he included in a number of

paintings and signs the two artists had apparently been inspired by the lustful eating scene in the movie tom jones that had just come

out and indiana had prepared a full spread of food but warhol selected just the one mushroom

and told his friend to quote make it last andy shot

nine silent 100 foot rolls of film at the standard speed of 24 frames per

second assembled them out of sequence so progress on the mushroom is seemingly never made

and then played it back at 16 frames per second

giving it a slightly slow motion effect the complete film is 39 minutes

and when asked why it was so long warhol explained helpfully that that was how

long it took indiana to eat the mushroom there is some action by the way

indiana's cat appears at times but like the majority of warhol's films

it is a game of endurance not even intended to be watched closely

or completely and now we have another single food course banana this will no doubt call to mind the

cover warhol created for the velvet underground's first album released in

1967. the first version instructed you to peel slowly and see the flesh-toned bear banana underneath

hey-o the band first performed as the velvet underground in 1965 and were featured in warhol's traveling

multimedia show exploding plastic inevitable he was technically their manager and paid for their recording sessions but he

didn't really know anything about music but he did let them do pretty much

whatever they wanted which was wise considering their members included soon

to be legends lou reed john kale sterling morrison and maureen

tucker andy added nico to the lineup and the stars aligned to create one of the greatest rock albums of all time

although it wouldn't be recognized as such until much later

we must of course peel and eat our banana which reminds me that warhol also

made two films in 1964 that featured banana eating mario banana number one and mario banana number two

one was black and white and the other in color both featuring one of warhol's

superstars drag queen mario montes eating a banana in that slightly slowed down war hall way

now's as good a time as any to mention that warhol made a fair amount of art

that is sexual in nature starting during his time as a commercial

artist when he made drawings on the side of many subjects including men he

admired and numerous feet a fetish he never tried to conceal warhol was very much involved in the gay

social scene in new york in the 50s and when his circle of compatriots

expanded in the 60s and 70s and he began to make films

sex and sexuality were subjects warhol was unafraid to address

oh and in case you need evidence that warhol ate bananas sometimes

here you are the 1960s were an extremely productive decade for warhol

and they were fueled not so much by food but by amphetamines

warhol took speed namely obatrol which was then sold as a dieting pill

throughout his life he worried intensely about his weight and his appearance in

general taking speed made him not mind skipping meals and also gave him the energy he apparently needed to turn out hundreds

of silkscreen canvases and films make photographs and recordings manage a band and function as the central figure around which an

expanding universe of actors and artists and employees orbited but warhol did eat sometimes he admits in his 1975 book the philosophy of andy

warhol that he would on occasion buy a huge piece of meat and cook it up for dinner so let's do it if only to have one

course other than a mushroom that is savory and not sweet

make sure your steak gets to room temperature and salt and pepper it

sufficiently before plonking it down in a hot pan this reminds me that art directors loved andy's commercial work in the 50s

because it quote sold the sizzle and not the steak

meaning the product itself was less important than the way it was presented

and the lifestyle that went along with it andy carried that intuitive sense for

what cells from advertising into art and he experienced considerable success monetarily and otherwise food is my

great extravagance he explained in his philosophy i really spoil myself but then i try to compensate by scrupulously saving

all of my food leftovers and bringing them into the office or leaving them in

the street and recycling them there when our steak has a nice crust on both

sides we transfer it to a 400 degree oven for a few minutes to finish it off

right before his huge piece of meat is done warhol confesses

i'll break down and have what i wanted for dinner in the first place

bread and jam i'm only kidding myself when i go through the motions of cooking

protein all i ever really want is sugar the rest

is strictly for appearances gawell i guess it really is about the

sizzle not the steak the least we can do is continue to feed

our production team which andy never neglected to do whether it was taking them to serendipity bringing in leftover steak

or taking them with him to the fancy parties that filled his schedule

while we've got the bread out we might as well introduce you to andy's version

of cake his recipe is as follows you take some

chocolate and you take two pieces of bread and you

put the candy in the middle and you make a sandwich of it

and that would be cake i had this giant size hershey bar which i couldn't help

but use in honor of this work by warhol but a thinner one would definitely be

better here this was truly terrible the proportion of chocolate to bread way

off but there's an easy way to make this delicious with save some brioche

fancy chocolate butter and a turn in a hot pan

but would andy do that no we're gonna end with something healthy which was a

turn warhol pretty much had to take in his later years

after his long road to recovery after being shot by valerie solanus in 1968

warhol took to ordering out carrot juice and tea from the health food restaurant

brownies near union square or maybe some sandwiches if he was

feeding the many guests who visited his new place of work around the corner

this one called simply the office it was the hub for andy's many operations

which had grown to include interview magazine and later expanded to tv

shows and commissions and more commissions the guy was always busy and felt obligated to keep his pals employed

i've got a lot of mouths to feed he'd say someone has to bring home the bacon

warhol was warned away from fatty foods because of a bad gallbladder

which doctors recommended he have removed but he put it off until 1987

after his health had seriously declined and after finally submitting to surgery

died in the hospital shortly thereafter at the age of 58.

you're probably noticing our warhol menu is missing some things

like one of the impossible recipes in his cookbook wild raspberries made with

susie frankfurt and andy's love of old-fashioned lunch counters like chock full of nuts where in the 40s and 50s he would eat

cream cheese with walnut sandwiches on date nut bread and the psychedelic tv ad he made for the underground sundae at shraps

there's also his ultimately unsuccessful development of a chain of andy mats

which he called quote the restaurant for the lonely person

you get your food he explained and then you take your tray into a booth and

watch television and yes there's the clip of warhol eating a burger king burger but that was filmmaker jorgen leith's

idea part of lay's 1982 film 66 scenes from america

and it's pretty clear warhol did not enjoy it all that much

but if warhol's actual eating habits tell us anything it's that he was unafraid to enjoy the industrialized foodstuffs that he

and his fellow mid-20th century americans were raised on and that he venerated in his art he liked processed foods

the way they're mass-produced artfully packaged distributed marketed and sold he showed us the machinery that makes it all work

and our critical role as consumers of it it might be ugly and unrefined but it's

the ground that for better or worse we share it was uneasy news to sit with

then and remains uneasy news today when his proclamation still ring true and the world he mirrored for us still

exists all around thanks to our patrons for supporting the

art assignment especially our grand master of the arts vincent appa

if you'd like a warhol history without gaping omissions read some books or start by watching our case for warhol

and if you'd like to learn more about the music theory production history and

culture behind our favorite songs and artists check out soundfield a new music education show from pbs digital studios

hosted by nare seoul and la buckner