Andy macho gay
Many gay artists in the 1950s and ‘60s hid their sexuality behind macho appearances, fake girlfriends, and snide remarks about effeminate men.
Not Andy Warhol.
Pittsburgh’s native son openly expressed his sexuality through his drawings, paintings, and films, becoming one of the first notably gay artists to reach mass attention. His early commercial work—often punctuated by angels, cupids, butterflies, and flowers and accompanied by the swirly, handwritten script of his mother, Julia Warhola—defied the hyper-masculine sensibilities that defined Madison Avenue. Never mind that he got pushback from a society where homosexuality was criminalized in most states and a major social taboo.
“It was a different time, so he didn’t hold a push conference and come out to the world,” says Grace Marston, a gallery educator at The Andy Warhol Museum. “At the same time, he didn’t do anything to convince the world he was straight, which set him apart from other male lover figures of the era,” including fellow American painters Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.
In some cases, artists seemingly picked on Warhol to insulate themselves from similar attacks. “They rejected Warhol because he was too
RETROSPECT
Warhol: The Bloke I Knew
Andy Warhol was not a weak, whiney, limp-wristed gay man. Quite the opposite, in fact: he had different personalities for different people. To his nieces and nephews, he was your normal uncle Andy; they loved him and wrote a storybook about how they would wake up their wigless Uncle Andy—surprise, surprise. It described how he gave them all tasks to perform because work was the most important thing. So why did he put on this bizarre, non-human, often silent front for the public?
He was recognizable for being low-cost, but that couldn’t be true: He had a warehouse full of stuff he impulsively bought for himself. It was whispered that he was homosexual, which was not accepted at that time. Well, he wasn’t just queer , he was over-the-top gay, dragging around three of the most fabulously obnoxious drag queens—Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn—to every public event he attended, where they embarrassed everyone.
At first glance, Warhol seemed weak and non-confrontational (actually timid) due to his covert gayness. All of the other macho artists who were gay in personal (Rauschenberg, Johns) maintained their straight facades. Andy was the only one w
Celebrating Pride Month – Andrew’s story
Our tenant Andrew, who is also a Progress Lifeline customer, is the founder of Lytham Let Exist, an LGBT+ friendship group based on the Fylde Coast.
He lives with his husband John in St Annes and shares his story of coming out in the 1980s and finding love.
Meeting John #LoveIsLove
"I met my now-husband John 20 years ago, and we were friends for a while before I knew he was gay! It was New Year's Eve in 2001, and we were standing chatting at the bar of the Lord Derby in Lytham St Annes. I'd secretly fancied him for ages, but until that night, I'd presumed he was linear. That night when he told me he was lgbtq+ as well, it was like fireworks went off between us; S Club 7's Reach for the Stars was playing, and we've been together ever since!
"When it became legal to possess a civil partnership, we had our wedding in Blackpool, followed by a beautiful reception in St Anne's. It was the most beautiful day, surrounded by all our family. We've been through a lot since, but it has just made us stronger."
Growing up and coming out in the 1980s, #TheyAlreadyKnew
"I came out in 1985 when I was 19, although my family told me they already knew! A
Mustard Gas/Macho, Tough, and Gay/Don't Leave Home
60 Minutes
- Episode aired Aug 29, 1993
- TV-PG
"Mustard Gas" rebroadcasts a segment on how the Navy experimented on U.S. servicemen with chemical weapons. "Macho, Tough and Gay" rebroadcasts a segment on homosexual officers who live open... Scan all"Mustard Gas" rebroadcasts a segment on how the Navy experimented on U.S. servicemen with chemical weapons. "Macho, Tough and Gay" rebroadcasts a segment on homosexual officers who exist openly as a part of the Dutch army. "Don't Leave Home" rebroadcasts a segment on how sightseer... Read all"Mustard Gas" rebroadcasts a segment on how the Navy experimented on U.S. servicemen with chemical weapons. "Macho, Tough and Gay" rebroadcasts a segment on homosexual officers who live openly as a part of the Dutch army. "Don't Abandon Home" rebroadcasts a segment on how sightseers own been leaving behind a trail of pollution and destruction around the earth. "Andy Ro... Read all
See production info at IMDbPro
Andrew van der Vlies
In a 1963 ARTNews magazine interview with the critic Gene Swenson, Andy Warhol famously stated – apparently in all seriousness – that ‘everybody should be a machine’. The same interview included other pithy responses: everyone ‘should like everybody’, and pop art was, in essence, about ‘liking things’.[1] Warhol’s personal reputation as reticent and fond of gnomic or evasive answers, and his professional reputation as an painter fascinated with commodification, mechanisation, seriality and the surface, have long relied on soundbites such as these. And yet the published account of this interview omitted, apparently at the behest of a bigoted editor, a crucial framing context. Swenson had opened with a leading question: ‘What do you speak about homosexuals?’[2] In the full transcript, Warhol’s responses can thus more fully be seen for what they most likely were: performatively affectless statements, offered in a knowing, ironically flat manner, cultivated to subvert the art world’s predilection for exaggeratedly unbent (and straight-talking) male designer personae.
The full transcript also includes interventions from three associates, including studio assis