One of the key figures in the history of the pop-art movement and, more broadly, modern art, Andy Warhol, in his book “POPism,” describes the brightest decade of the last century—the 1960s.
The decade after which the world changed forever—never to be the same again. It was shaken by the arrival of the Beatles and the sexual revolution, by Gagarin’s flight and the Cuban coup, by the murder of John Kennedy and the landing of a man on the Moon.
With his characteristic audacity, humor, common sense, and dislike for pomp, Warhol tells what was happening before his eyes in those crazy years.
“POPism” isn’t about cultural processes in general and not even about an art period, but about the ever-valuable—and worthy of respect—ability and courage to make choices; about the logic of those choices; about how and on what basis to be—anywhere, anytime, the main thing is who.
In this unusually sentimental and touching book, Warhol recalls the best time of his life, reflects on why and how it began and чем and because of what it ended, recounts amusing or tragic episodes from his own life and from the lives of his “stars” and acquaintances.
As he builds his life like a collage from hundreds of characters (only in this book there are about seven hundred)—from little-known semi-criminal marginal folks from the streets of the Village to the cream of high society, millionaires, first ladies, and symbols of the era such as Bob Dylan and Ken Kesey—Warhol creates a unique space, similar to the famous American patchwork quilt: sweet and tasteless, a patchwork of “everything pop,” as he will put it in the book.