For four decades, New York seemed like Warhol’s city, from his initial splash with Campbell’s soup cans and taboo-shattering movies, through the cerebrum-scorching multi-media assault of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and Velvet Underground, then his post- 1968 shooting role as enigmatic overseer and chronicler of the famous and fabulous at play. Since his death in 1987, Warhol’s stock has risen to see his art prints selling for millions and the production of fantasy biopics. But all this is increasingly tempered by an image which sometimes belittles his place as a genuinely innovative, fearless individual, who did as much Record Collector 109 to chip away censorship restrictions as any of the city’s favourite rebels.
Warhol has been the subject of many books, but this simply-presented tour around Manhattan locations which figured in his life is a good idea, simply but knowledgably executed (and similar in concept to Bill Morgan’s The Beat Generation In New York). Four walks traverse the Upper East Side, first above 70th Street then East 57th Street to 68th Street, Midtown and Downtown. Complete with lists of Warhol’s NYC exhibitions and main players, plus photos and illustrations by his first assistant, Vito Giallo, it makes a fascinating document for anyone interested in both Warhol’s remarkable story and the city itself.
