Jimmy Hill

Dean Wilson

Leadership in American History

24 April 2019

The Story of How One Man Sold the Art World:

There is a tendency inherent in all of us to label, to categorize, to lump together the

people, places, things, and ideas we are surrounded with daily. Language is limited. Building

frameworks through which to visualize the world creates order out of nothingness, out of

complexity. It helps us make sense of who we are, where we are, and why we are there. But it

also limits our ability to understand our surroundings. We suffer from the simplification of

complex issues and the reduction of irreducible concepts. Generalized formulas attempt to say

much, but in the end say little. Our inability to describe something as intricate and convoluted

and beautiful as what it means to lead others has forced many scholars, businesspeople, and lay

persons to stereotyping, reducing, and labeling. Leadership books, the “top ten things you need

to do in order to be a leader” lists from the internet, and peppy talks from “leaders in their field”

are marketed to the public. It is said in order to understand leaders, to be a leader, you must

follow these steps.

The truth is actually far more complicated. It comes from the history of a person. It

comes from their motivations. From their personality. Leadership is a word used to describe a

phenomenon that, in a sense, is impossible to fully describe. It is like trying to describe what love

is. Or faith. The difficulty that arises in trying to describe it do not make it any less relevant to
study; rather, it pushes us to avoid narrowing our perspective, of limiting the way that we see the

world.

The story of Andy Warhol is a complicated one. When viewing Andy (and I will use

Andy throughout this paper precisely because I believe he would appreciate the contrarian and

contrived use of a first name in an academic paper) through the lens of a leader, we have to

remove many of our assumptions as to what exactly this means. Trying to put Andy into any one

box, label, category or other restraining academic device is pointless – his entire goal in life was

to resist such classification. Instead, we will follow Andy through bits and pieces of his life to

see where he matched up with certain theories, where he fell away from others, to what extent

history and personality affected where he would eventually end up, and where exactly he did end

up, with life, legacy, and impact. We will be forced to ask was he a leader? Or maybe an art

leader? A business leader? A cultural influencer? A prophet of a new era? An opinion leader? A

reformer? Each of these grasps at some of who he was, accurately describing a portion of him,

but not all. What we find is a complicated man with a complicated story who sought to make the

world as simple as possible and ended up succeeding in only making it far more complicated.

An Unfortunately Necessary Introduction to Andy

Andy Warhol was born in an immigrant neighborhood in Pittsburgh to two parents with

fantastical stories in 1928. He was the youngest of three children – all boys – and lived in the

slums while growing up. It was an interesting childhood, one that most definitely impacted him,

and led to the person he would be. At this point, however, it is not important enough to go into

detail over. Some components will arise again in the future, some anecdotal narrative pieces, but
the place where Andy first became Andy and where his path to “leadership,” or “fame,” or

“celebrity,” or whatever best refers to his trajectory, came around was at university.

Andy attended college at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he studied art. His

first year he struggled and was very nearly dropped. Some of the faculty stood up for him, and he

was given the opportunity to redeem himself over a semester of summer school. Andy managed

to overcome many of the obstacles that were in his way (one of the biggest being his nearly

complete ineptitude at writing without introducing the slang terms of his Slavic neighborhood),

and in his second year was recognized by the other students for his talent. He was introduced,

and soon a major part of, a group of creatives. They treated him as the “class baby.” The girls

mothered him; the boys protected him. He did not lead, but he was always at the center of

attention. He combined the attitude of a six-year old with the skill of a seasoned painter, and

shocked teachers with pictures of young boys peeing or masturbating, all the while awash in

naivete. Andy began to be a sensational, and at times, purposefully controversial, artist. His flair

for the dramatic and satiric bordering on overtly crass commenced. This desire to be the center of

attention, to have everyone’s love and affection without having to make decisions or have

impact, would later lead to his manipulation of relationships.

The school itself was very influenced by Bauhaus, a novel art school that came exploding

into the art world at the turn of the nineteenth century, altering many people’s conception of

what art was. It was famous for its marriage of art and technology; Bauhaus believed fine art and

commercial art to be one and the same thing.

Andy became something of a famous artist on campus and by the end of his senior year

had decided he was going to move to New York.

The Adventurer – Commercial Art to High Art

Salesmen are not leaders. Their job is to convince, to pander, to create, but they do not

mobilize a group of people, or affect change. A businessman, as Gary Wills says in his book

Certain Trumpets, is not a leader because there is no common goal. They are bartering,

maneuvering around each other to find if they can make a transaction that furthers both

individual goals.1 They follow their own path, only getting in line with others so that it will better

allow them to sell their product.

Andy was not a normal salesman, and at this point he was most definitely not a leader; he

relied completely on the art to make the sell. His shy, quiet nature – while highly endearing – did

not lend itself to defending his work. When he made it to New York in 1949 he did so with the

intention of making art. From his Bauhaus education there was no difference whether he was

drawing for a company or for a gallery. His first connection, Tina Fredericks of Glamour

magazine, had him draw shoes. The first set he did for her was impressive, but depicted the shoes

as worn-in and slightly sexualized. His second batch was perfect, with hard lines and a newness

that would sell. For the next five years he fully immersed himself in this world, spending his

days wandering from magazine to magazine showing his portfolio and offering to work for small

commissions. At night he sat in his apartment and worked on the pieces late into the night.

This ability to learn the art of the “sell” was very important for his development. To be a

cultural or artistic leader, you need to have a product on which to build the platform from which

you can influence and lead. These were his first steps in that direction. Why, Andy was working

so hard mainly had to do with money. We think he was motivated by cash, fame and celebrity,

and to be known and loved, but because of his lack of expression and the hiddenness of his

internal world, most of the conclusions we are capable of drawing come from his actions or the
1
Wills, Garry. Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
opinions of those closest to him. One of his friends, Vito Giallo, said in response to a display of

Andy’s art: “'You just had to more or less guess what he was doing or why he did it, and he

would never discuss other artists in depth either. I was quite surprised that Andy wanted to be a

fine artist because I thought all he was interested in was commercial art.”2

We can assume that high-art was his intended goal because that is exactly where he

ended up. His work, which in the non-commercial context vacillated between the abstract

expressionists’ and the new, fledgling “Pop!” artists’, slowly became more and more well

known. Two art dealers, Ivan Karp and Henry Geldzahler, were both introduced to Andy's work

and fell in love with it. They were extremely unsuccessful in getting gallery owners to take

Warhol. The influencers in the art world thought of Warhol as a cheap, creepy man who would

be better off remaining in the commercial art world. The beginning of the sixties did not go well

for Andy.

The initial rejection of his work would put him forever on the outside. He no longer felt

the need to conform to what others expected of him, or of the cultural standards of the time.

James MacGregor Burns, when dealing with the intricacies of leadership, delves into what it

means to be a revolutionary leader. His analysis is primarily in the context of political

revolutions but can be equally well applied to the art world. The art world is interesting in that its

history is one of revolutions. The evolution of art is the pitiless destruction of the old guard.

Picasso, Matisse, Pollock – all had revolutionized. Burns says three things are required for a

revolution: the leader must be absolutely dedicated to the cause, he must be willing to take risks,

and he must meet the needs and wants of the people.3

2
Bockris, Victor. Warhol: The Biography. Da Capo Press, 2003.

3
Burns, James MacGregor. Leadership. Open Road Media, 2012.
 The first, having absolute dedication, is true because art was Andy’s passion. He was

unwilling to compromise his vision of what that meant and would go to any length to make art

(although whether others viewed it as art is a different question completely). The second, taking

risks, defined his entire career. At a certain point in his life risk was all he knew. He could not be

an artist without shaking the boat. This is where we get his piss paintings, his Brillo boxes, his

hours long movie of the Empire State Building, shot from a single camera angle so it looks like a

picture until the sun starts to rise behind it. He was most comfortable when taking risks. And the

third, meeting the needs and wants of the people, he must have done simply by the lasting legacy

he has left in the art world, if not in the cultural space of the Western world as a whole. In

fomenting revolution, Andy started to walk down Machiavelli’s path of “leader as usurper.”

Revolution, that thing Machiavelli viewed as so dangerous, Andy learned to love. For

Machiavelli, “the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old

conditions, and not very active defenders in those who may do well under the new.”4 For Andy

he had the ability to change the world.

But the process was not quick. One of the first shows that displayed the style of work that

would come to define Andy, the window at Bonwit, was not viewed by contemporaries as much

of anything. As his biographer, Victor Bockris, related: “Naturally, this display received no

attention in the art world. As he lay awake at night, Andy often became so terrified that his heart

would stop if he fell asleep that he grabbed the bedside phone and spent the anxious hours

gossiping with one of his many acquaintances.”5 In retrospect, it is easy to see how unique his

work was given the culture of the time. The art philosopher Arthur C. Danto, when talking about

the window, described it as having the ability to “collectively project an image of the human

4
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. J. M. Dent & Sons, Limited, 1940.
5
Bockris, Victor. Warhol: The Biography. Da Capo Press, 2003.
condition, and that is why they are art.”6 This was not recognized by the rest of the art world, and

his true legacy would only be seen in fits and spurts across Andy’s life.

The Innovator – How Andy Destroyed Art

Wills, the Certain Trumpets academic from earlier, liked to make large bucket categories

of leadership and dump people into them. From a purely theoretical perspective these are

extremely helpful. Wills does not believe that influence and leadership are one and the same. For

him, someone like Nietzsche, who was largely reclusive even as his work was changing the

world, does not count as a leader. He argues that intellectual influencers will often not have true

followers because they will be rejected as they seek ‘truth.’ He states leadership is only possible

when the intellectual excellence is “toward a less exacting but more accessible truth, one more to

be disseminated than discovered.”7 This seems to be a bit paradoxical, if the only thing that

separates intellectual leaders like Socrates and Paul from intellectual influencers like Kant or

Nietszche is special and temporal distance. With art figures this dilemma is again expounded.

Many artists have new ideas, new ways of doing things, and their work is trying to communicate

something to the society at large. Andy had new ideas, and they influenced the culture, but did

this make him a leader?

Art is an interesting commodity. It functions on the same principles as other markets, but

the people who buy and sell it are part of a small, elite group, who’s tastes are whimsical and

subject to change. At the same time, there is a contingency of the old, who’s products you must

first replace, who have risen to god-like status. Economically, the art world is unique [here

follows a brief aside or foray into the convoluted and at times incestuous art market]: Originally,

6
Danto, Arthur C. Andy Warhol. Yale University Press, 2009.

7
Wills, Garry. Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
it was not an ‘art’ market, it was a market of images. And there were a variety of fields one could

work in to produce such images, and many sub-markets to work in. You could be an etcher, a

painter. You might do pieces for churches or be a portraitist for a royal. The image served a

purpose – it was decorative, religious, sacred, documentary. It existed for a reason beyond just

existing. When photography entered the picture, it destroyed the image market. No longer was a

painter needed to capture an image. In response painting became a highly specialized market. It

removed itself from the image market (as it could not compete) and started to describe its

purpose in a variety of ways. Painting was separated from images, the avant-garde from painting,

and eventually, in a rapid reductionist spiral, the artist from the avant-garde. Each artist earns a

name, and that name becomes a monopoly. In monopolies a product’s exchange-value ceases to

exist. Only supply and demand functions.8

Returning to Wills conception of influencer verse leader, Andy became a leader with a

following when he earned a monopoly. The ability of his things to sell proves that he had an

explicit following. The question then remains, what did Andy have a monopoly over? It wasn’t

how abstract expressionism reaches “deep into [the artist’s] unconscious mind and finds ways to

translate what Robert Motherwell called ‘the original creative impulse’ into marks, impulsively

deposited through broad gestures, onto the painting or drawing's surface.”9 It was something new

and unique. This is where Andy destroyed the art world.

Andy learned how to bridge the gap between ‘high’ art’s haughty, disconnected, and

overly conceptual work and mass consumer culture. In the blending of mass culture and elitist art

tendencies he exemplifies the example of the populist spread of the idea of ‘art for everyone.’

When Warhol was a commercial artist, he brought enough of the high artist to his work to be

8
Duve, Thierry de, and Rosalind Krauss. “Andy Warhol, or The Machine Perfected.” October 48 (1989): 3–14.
https://doi.org/10.2307/778945.
9
Danto, Arthur C. Andy Warhol. Yale University Press, 2009.
successful, and then in becoming a high artist transitioned back into the full commercial and

mass cultural form. In depicting such banal things as a soup can or a Brillo box, he sees the

average person, is aware of what it means to live in the United States at that exact moment. In

the grotesque portraits of Marilynn Monroe When it comes down to it, though, Andy always said

there was nothing beneath the surface. The reason he was a monopoly was because there was a

demand – people bought his work, no matter how many may have scorned it as base and

commercial. Andy was a monopoly, and thus a leader – not an influencer – because people

continued to buy his work. Why they did we may never fully understand. Perhaps it was his

radicality. Nothing, perhaps, better explains it then this epitaph from a Warhol Retrospective:

Andy took every conceivable definition of the word art and challenged it… Art reveals

the trace of the artist's hand: Andy resorted to silk-screening. A work of art is a unique

object: Andy came up with multiples. A painter paints: Andy made movies. Art is

divorced from the commercial and the utilitarian: Andy specialized in Campbell's soup

cans and dollar bills. Painting can be defined in contrast to photography: Andy recycled

snapshots. A work of art is what an artist signs, proof of his creative choice, his

intentions: Andy signed any object whatever. Art is an expression of the artist's

personality, congruent to his discourse: Andy sent in his stead a look alike on the lecture

tour.10

The Prophet – A Dissatisfying Look in the Societal Mirror

As the ‘60s began to take off, Andy decided that it was time for him and his assistant,

Gerard Malanga, to find a new studio space. The result would come to be known as the Factory,
10
Andy Warhol: A Retrospective. Edited by Kynaston McShine. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989
a large industrial space where Andy could continue his large output of work – now in the

complicated and labor-intensive silkscreen style. In the same year that he moved into the factory,

he began work on his first major work – the Campbell soup can paintings. The idea for the

paintings has been forever mythologized in the art world. He was sitting with some friends,

eating dinner and bemoaning that other artists like Lichtenstein and Rosenquist were doing

cartoons – and doing them better than him – when Muriel Latow asked if she could offer a

suggestion. When Andy said yes, she responded by telling him that “'You should paint

something that everybody sees every day, that everybody recognizes… like a can of soup.”11 It

said that after this he smiled for the first time all night.

The work was displayed in the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. Every painting was of the

same Campbell soup can, except each was one of the flavors that was offered. They were

arranged in a line, placed on a shelf about a foot from one another and leaning against the wall.

They were the first major works by Andy to show off his three most characteristic traits: they

were “mechanically reproduced ready-made imagery,” used monochromatic color schemes, and

had serial grid composition.12 This style was, as has been described of Andy’s art, controversial

and radical. It said something different, that several pictures of a Campbell soup can could be

considered art. One dealer next to the Ferus Gallery even went to the local market and bought a

variety of soup cans. He displayed them in his front window and offered them at a ‘reduced rate’

from those down the street.

In leadership theory, there is the concept of transformative verse transactional leaders. A

transformational leader seeks to understand his followers, to give them what they need, but in the

process engage in a mutually beneficial relationship that has the potential to turn the individual

11
Bockris, Victor. Warhol: The Biography. Da Capo Press, 2003.
12
Buchloh, B. H. D. Andy Warhol. MIT Press, 2001.
into a ‘moral agent.’ 13 On the other hand is a merely transactional leader. They offer something

in return for the ability to lead. While Warhol had not asked to be a leader in the traditional

sense, by entering the art space that he did with the Campbell soup cans he became de facto ruler

of a large population of people. His cultural clout would be extended for a very long time. With

this newfound authority, however, there was the question of what he was offering his followers.

If he was transformational, how was he engaging those around him into moral agents?

In an extremely prophetic essay from the 1950s (before Warhol or the Pop! Artists had

hit their stride), art historian and philosopher Alan Kaprow laid out what he claimed would be

the art of the 1960s. In his words:

Not only will these bold creators show us as if for the first time the world we have always

had about us, but ignored, but they will disclose entirely unheard of happenings and

events found in garbage cans, police files, hotel lobbies, seen in store windows and on the

streets, and sense in dreams and horrible accidents…. The young artist of today need no

longer say ‘I am a painter’ or ‘a poet’ or ‘a dancer.’ All of life will be open to him. He

will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. He will not try to make

them extraordinary. Only their meaning will be stated. But out of nothing he will devise

the extraordinary, and then maybe nothingness as well. People will be delighted, or

horrified, critics will be confused or amused, but these, I am sure, will be the alchemies

of the 1960s.14

13
Burns, James MacGregor. Leadership. Open Road Media, 2012.
14
Kaprow, Alan. “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Art News 57, no. 6, (October 1958): 56
This vision is frightening in its accuracy. It seems to capture exactly what Andy tried to do. His

later disaster pieces would come directly from “police files” and depicting “horrible accidents,”

his soup cans and other kitchen products from “store windows.” And Andy didn’t try and hide

any meaning in his works. Everything was, as he claimed, on the surface. So, as Kaprow states,

the statement Warhol is making is simply showing us the world around. It is the Campbell soup

cans and later the disasters and the celebrity portraits that make up the average life. The banality,

the grotesqueness, the consumption of everything. We usually want our ‘high art’ to be

something transcendent, something beautifully, at least morally. But Andy doesn’t seek to impart

a moral message. He simply shows it as it is. This may seem like a stretch, to relate that painting

in such a manner, even if unique and interesting, is a demonstration of transformational leading.

It is, however, exactly in the impact that Warhol would have on the rest of the world, in the

emotional reactions – both good and bad – to his work, where we most see that what he had to

see touched on a nerve, forcing many to look with new eyes at the world around them.

The High Prophet – Warhol at Work and the Factory

The Factory would come to be synonymous with the Andy brand, peopled by a unique

group of individuals whose names often became as famous as Andy’s. Warhol's inner circle was

made up of the “Mole People.” These were individuals who were “people of a certain talent,

early users of speed, with a taste for grand opera and a marked anarchistic lifestyle, and gifted

with a rude and cutting wit, a free and open sex life, and a dedication to mischief.” These men

and women were often 'crazy' in the sense that their wild and erratic behavior stimulated

Warhol's creativity. They quickly fell in love with Andy.

 This is the point in Andy’s story where he becomes a more traditional leader. With the

Mole People he has followers, men and women who are willing to move in a direction with him.

One of those who traveled in similar circles was Patti Oldenburg. She related how “the minute

Andy walked into the room you felt really good and you knew things were going to happen. He

was kind of joyous and it was fun to go up and talk to him. He had the kind of strength people

who are leaders have. He was terrific.”15 He began to realize that he had power. The two main

components of power are motivation and resource – primarily relational resource. Burns lays out

what exactly power is.16 It is not the same as leadership. They are interconnected, but not

synonymous. Power is naked and can be used in any way. You don’t need followers to have

power. Andy was given power before he ever had followers. So, when he had them, he did not

always know what to do with them.

One framework to understand power is using Robert Dahl’s idea of distribution, scope,

and domain as related, again, by Burns.17 Distribution is how power is dispersed across a space.

Within the Factory, Warhol had complete authority. While he was not necessarily dominant in an

authoritarian sense, he got his way. Many of his disciples came to need him, but when they had

done something to anger him, he dropped them, as he did Edie Sedgwick, who would be made

famous by Andy as one of the Warhol superstars. She struggled with drug addiction, and her life

slowly spiraled out of control when her connection with Andy was cut. Andy’s word was final,

and what he said went.

Scope is how power is whether power is general or specialized; what is its reach? The

nature of the Factory meant that for many of the inhabitants their entire lives revolved around

their time there. Andy was involved in nearly all of their lives, intensely and deeply. Because of

15
Bockris, Victor. Warhol: The Biography. Da Capo Press, 2003.
16
Burns, James MacGregor. Leadership. Open Road Media, 2012.
17
Ibid.
the strength of the relationships, his power was all-encompassing. He would become obsessed

with someone, a voyeuristic trait that meant he wanted to know everything about you without

revealing anything about himself. Then he would get bored, and you would be dropped.

The final idea is domain. It relates to the number of people who are underneath the power

wielder as compared to those who aren’t. Looking back at Andy’s leadership, there are two

components: the general leader of being a cultural figure of the time and the highly personal

leader as head of the Factory. The actual power he wielded in a general sense was minimal. Most

of it came through connections with other power-wielders but was never used. On the other

hand, within the Factory he had nearly complete control over all who entered.

[A rather morbid example of the scope of Andy’s power, and also the mental health of

many of those who populated the Factory] Valerie Solanas. She was an extreme feminist,

known for her intense hatred of men. She acted for Andy during some of his movies,

eventually giving him a play she wanted him to produce. It was extremely erotic, even for

him, so he didn’t do anything with it. He filed away the script and left it to be. May 31,

1968; Solanas went to the Factory. She travelled up the elevator with Andy; he even

complemented her. They got out into the office, where small talk was occurring, and then

she pulled it out. A small pistol that had been concealed for hours. One. Two. Three.

Andy dove behind his desk, but not before the third shot ripped through his flesh. The

bullet bounced around his body. It tore through bone and sinew, punctured an organ here,

ruptured an organ there, and finally punched out the other side. The surgeon massaged his

heart to bring him back to life. When asked why she’d done it, she responded, “He had

too much control in my life.”18

18
Bockris, Victor. Warhol: The Biography. Da Capo Press, 2003.
 The distribution, scope, and domain of Andy’s power within the Factory was intense. The

death rate for those who spent time in the Factory was high. He encouraged a life of drugs and

sex and art, and they believed in him. “What held Warhol's followers together was the feeling

they had for the importance of what they were doing artistically, and that Andy let each of them

be an artist, and a near-worshipful love-addiction for Andy, the artist who could do no wrong.”19

This “hero-worship” usually ended poorly, either for Warhol or the other, most often the other.

In Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men Willie Stark begins as a naïve, idealistic

youth intent on changing the world. The world has other ideas, and he is pushed down, trodden

on by those with clout but no morality. Their power comes with no responsibility, their actions

done solely to garner more power. When Willie Stark sees the system and brokenness, he

resolves to fix it. But in fixing it he becomes it. There was first morality without power, then

power without morality. The balance is fragile, and difficult to maintain. Andy experienced a

similar evolution. When he was younger, he was described as “whimsical, fey, sweet and

charming, but painfully shy. About the only thing he ever said among a group of people was a

whispered 'Hi!' as he spent long hours sitting in the apartment, drawing like a robot while the talk

flowed around him.”20 As his talent grew, so did the number of people who wanted to be with

him. The Mole People, and the other Warholians who inhabited the Factory, saw in him someone

worth following. Since his ability to lead did not grow at the same level his fame and desirability

did, it meant that he often used and manipulated. He was extremely conflict-averse, and so would

resort to many small machinations to ensure that he got what he wanted. As a leader, Warhol was

a master controller, a manipulator and a hypnotist. At once both so empathetic and distant. When

19
Ibid
20
Ibid
it came down to it, he was emotionally abusive, working out of his own insecurities and using

relationships for what they would give him.

While Warhol had been making movies for several years, one of the most critically

acclaimed was his Chelsea Girls. Here we see the exact type of leader Warhol was. Andy

mistreated his followers, his disciples. They devoted their lives to him, and he manipulated them.

To get them to act better in Chelsea Girls, he and Paul Morrissey (the director), would spread

rumors before they performed. Chelsea Girls was horrible, perfectly reflecting the degradingness

of the Factory. It was a hit. It was the first underground movie to move into the public sector,

where its vulgar, vulnerable performances captured audiences. To some it was hailed as Truth,

that American ideal fallen so short in Vietnam, in the Great Society. For others it was trash, little

more than a pornographic take of humans wandering across a camera frame, lost in a drugged-

out haze. When the factory members watched it, they saw what their lives had become. Ondine,

one of the “Mole People” and actors, had shot amphetamine into his arm on camera for a better

performance. He wanted to make Andy proud, and was nervous for his spot after hearing he

might not be getting as much camera time next movie. He was playing a pope, the head of this

motley crew. A girl, Rona Page, who was meant to come and ‘confess,’ called him a phony. In

his hazy state this was the worst possible insult. He slapped her in a mad rage, rampaging around

the room. Afterwards many of those involved looked back in horrified wonder at what they had

become capable of. One of Andy’s strongest critics, Robert Hughes, described the factory as:

They were all cultural space-debris, drifting fragments from a variety of sixties

subcultures (transvestite, drug, S & M, rock, Poor Little Rich, criminal, street, and all the

permutations) orbiting in smeary ellipses around their unmoved mover. If Warhol's

superstars as he called them had possessed talent, discipline, or stamina, they would not
 have needed him. But then, he would not have needed them. They gave him his ghostly

aura of power… He offered them absolution, the gaze of the blank mirror that refuses all

judgment. In this, the camera (when he made his films) deputized for him, collecting hour

upon hour of tantrum, misery, sexual spasm, campery, and nose-picking trivia. In this

way the Factory resembled a sect, a parody of Catholicism enacted (not accidentally) by

people who were or had been Catholic, from Warhol and Gerard Malanga on down. In it,

rituals of dandyism could speed up to gibberish and show what they had become - a

hunger for approval and forgiveness. These came in a familiar form, perhaps the only

form American capitalism knows how to offer: publicity.21

The Businessman – Some Movies, Music, and Magazines

Andy eventually realized that the culture of the Factory was not particularly beneficial to

his work. That and he had some new lieutenants who were much more business-minded. Fred

Hughes and Vincent Fremont and Paul Morrissey, each of them was savvy in their particular

field. The Factory changed locations and changed styles. Andy created Andy Warhol

Enterprises, under which he had Interview Magazine, a portrait company (that was just him, but

he consolidated the earnings this way), his movies, and at one point his work as manager of the

Velvet Underground, an underground (no pun intended) rock band that made massive waves in

the music and rock’n’roll world of the ‘60s and ‘70s. He was friends with the Jaggers, and with

Truman Capote, and with Allen Ginsberg. He did portraits of visiting statesmen and their wives.

His goal was to make money. Arthur C. Danto noticed in his work on Andy that the shift in

Factories made a major difference. Andy started to see art as business and business as art. The
21
Hughes, Robert, ‘The Rise of Andy Warhol’, New York Review of Books, vol. 29, no. 2, 1982
new Factory had glass tables, business machines and telephones, and a variety of other ‘business’

equipment. Warhol: “Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial

artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called "art" or whatever it's

called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being

good in Business is the most fascinating kind of art.”

Whether or not he was actually a business leader is questionable. His enterprises

sometimes made money, and lots of time just cost him. In their work, Thinking in Time, Richard

E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May look at how you can use history as a way to shape your

leadership. One of their techniques relies on examining what assumptions you have, and then

ensuring that you are acting rationally and not based on those assumptions. Warhol relied on

assumptions. He had a gut feeling that something would work, and so did it. But he never learned

from his own mistakes. Several of his movies failed, even as they were improving in quality.

This would become a point of contention because the primary cause of these failures was bad

distribution deals, and this problem continually happened. Neustadt and May created a simple

test to do to limit failure. Action occurs in relation to a situation that prompts it. Identify what is

actually occurring in the situation. Look at all the actor's motivations, find loci of action, identify

assumptions and ensure their accuracy, and avoid analogies as calls to specific solutions. List

known, unknown, and presumed. Focus on this type of question instead of what to do. That will

naturally flow out of an understanding of the situation itself. After analogies are identified go

through them and examine likenesses and differences. Look at the issue history - ask the

“journalistic questions” of who, what, when, where, why.22

Andy, because of his impulsiveness and rashness, did not ask any of these questions. In

looking at the first question, assessing actors’ motivations, he failed to take into account the self-
22
Neustadt, Richard E. Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. Simon and Schuster, 2011.
motivation of the distributors, and regularly short-changed himself in deals. When looking into

the knowns and unknowns, he failed to ever see the companies’ histories or morality. He never

looked at who, what, when, where, or why. More than that, he never even looked at the failures

that occurred before, in the exact same way with easy solutions. He lost millions of dollars in this

way.

At times Andy was a business leader who knew what he was doing. At other times this

was the farthest thing from the truth. His biographer, Victor Bockris:

Andy always said the best art was good business and he did have the ability to focus on

the essential parts of a business deal, but he was not a classically good businessman

because in order to achieve his unique results he needed to work against the grain, to

create negativity, to pull the rug out from under someone just before they reached the

goal he had been promising them, to refuse to accept what was offered him unless it was

done 100 percent on his own terms.23

This need for control was monumental. In Gordon Woods’ moving portraits of the Founding

Fathers and their leadership, he asks the question, what made George Washington a good leader?

The answer he decides, was not his intelligence, not his strength, not his witticism, it was his

character. “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the

way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off

from other men.”24 The ultimate proof of this was in his abdication from a third term as

president. He set the standard for what it means to lead by removing himself from power. Andy

23
Bockris, Victor. Warhol: The Biography. Da Capo Press, 2003.
24
Wood, Gordon S. Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different. Penguin Press, 2006.
could never do this. He required, as Bockris stated, “100 percent” control. Andy was a lesson in

contradictions. His creativity, work ethic, and the people he surrounded himself with meant that

he would make money. When he died he was worth $100 million. At the same time, this could

have been several more million if he had not made silly decisions. He was not a classically good

businessman, as Bockris said so succinctly. But maybe you don’t have to be classically good, or

even make the right decisions most of the time, to get you and your people where you want them

to go.

“Goodbye”

Here is a brief thought experiment: You have a round ball, or you have a cube, and they

are both on a hill. You did not choose which you have. You place it on the ground and push it

down. In the first case, the ball goes very far down the hill. In the second, the cube slides down a

small bit. In this example the ball and cube are your genetics. You did not choose them – they

were given to you. The hill is the environment. The length of distance your object went depended

on whether you had a ball or a cube. This theory is called canalization. Nature and nurture are

not mutually exclusive but work together. In some instances, the nature is stronger (you have a

cube). In other instances, the nurture might play a bigger role (the hill is very, very steep). These

cannot fully be parsed out but work to complement each other.25

Warhol was many things. He was a shy, artistic, homosexual boy with emotional

difficulties. He was also from an impoverished family, experienced a distant father, and was

sexually stunted with his inability to demonstrate affection physically. His nature and his nurture
25
This idea comes from the lecture notes of the class Human Cognitive Evolution, taught by Professor Brian Hare
worked together, playing off each other, sometimes pushing him towards fame and fortune, and

other times appearing in emotionless displays of complete apathy and disdain for humanity.

Warhol died in a hospital because he was too afraid to go to earlier after his father experienced

terrible mistreatment at the hospital in Andy’s childhood. He went against the art world; he went

against typical gender and sexual norms; trying to understand his influence, his leadership

capacity is difficult at best. It is my hope that these brief snapshots, each only a moment in the

life of Andy, can show some of the ways that he did and most definitely did not lead. In a

cultural sense, he was a revolutionary. He was occasionally a business leader, at times more

effective than at others. With those closest to him he was like a child, emotional and

manipulative, but with enough power to truly hurt people. He learned how to create a myth

around himself, and when it was all said and done, he had sold the world that myth. He was an

enigma. Some elements of his leadership can be categorized, others cannot. Some models he fits

at certain times in his life, but not others. In the end, Andy is Andy. And Andy just wanted to be

a machine.
Addressing Why Things Are, or Are Not, in My Paper

The first and primary concern that many of my fellow students will have with regards to

my analysis of Warhol is that I fail to incorporate anything of his early life. As I relate in my

final paragraph, I believe that the canalization theory of what makes a person is the most apt.

From this, situations build and mold and impact, but that is not the whole story. To say that one

event “caused” another, or at least the way a person responded to it, is to make assumptions that

may not always be true. For example, when Andy was younger, he was sick and did not want to

go to school, but a neighbor thought he was just throwing a tantrum and so picked him up and

dragged him to school. Andy felt very violated, and his biographer attributes this event to Andy’s

later responses whenever violence is present. While this may be true, it does not explain why

Andy had such an intense reaction to being picked up? There is some causal variable behind that

too, and eventually, we run out of explanations to understand why someone did something in that

particular way at that one point. There probably is a reason, or reasons, and a trail to figure it out,

but I do not necessarily think it is my job to find it. Andy pursued art because Andy loved art.
 At the same time, I do realize that a full portrait can also be enlightening and interesting

and did not include some stories merely because I did not have time or space. I would have liked

to go much more in-depth about the originality of his artworks, what made them stand out at this

time and make Andy possibly the greatest artist of the twentieth century. I would have liked to

spend more time on his relationships with the Velvet Underground and Jean-Michel Basquiat,

William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg and what patronage looked like. The way that he ran his

underground film studio. The people involved, the philosophy, the style. Each of these show

other components of his leadership and are not present because they did not quite make the cut

(only about 25% of original outline did). The goal of this paper was not so much to describe how

Warhol became the leader he did, so much as to describe what his leadership looked like at

different points in time and how he fit into certain categories of leadership, while at other times

he didn’t. It was to create a portfolio of the different Warhol’s – their style, their goals, their

relationships with their followers.

In the end, I wish I could have added a lot more to this paper and taken all of the critiques

and recommendations into account. I have never said that about another paper and won’t say that

about another one ever again. Thanks Professor Wilson for a great year.