We visited the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh last weekend. Warhol was as much a cultural phenomenon as an artist - some say he was more a phenomenon than an artist. I appreciated the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of his artwork, and found more to it and in it than I had anticipated.
Warhol was born and raised in a working class family in Pittsburgh, and was baptized in a Byzantine Catholic Rite church. He considered himself a Catholic all of his life, and attended daily mass. There’s a picture of him in an audience the Pope. Warhol was buried in a Catholic ceremony with his family in Bethel Park, a Pittsburgh suburb.
Warhol profited greatly from mainstream culture, but was an icon of New York City’s counter culture. The museum’s notes tell of drug use and of a succession of male sexual relationships. Many of the videos he made are at the least edgy.
But when it came to the possible healing power of crystals, Warhol wasn’t so sure. He was afraid trusting crystals to heal was contrary to his Catholic faith.
How many ways we have of fitting all the pieces of us into one human frame!
And we do not have to be artists to know we are puzzles whose pieces often overlap, leave gaps, get bent out of shape, and sometimes never really find a place to fit in.
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