Book Review: America by Andy Warhol

Title: America
Author: Andy Warhol
Publisher: Penguin UK/Penguin Modern Classics
Genre: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780141193069
Price: £14.99
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Who is Andy Warhol? This is one question which is very difficult to answer. No really is it. From a movie-maker (pseudo, but what the heck, we all are in some way or the other) to a cultural pop icon to a writer to a philanderer to a weirdo and to a very successful painter – Warhol was probably everything rolled into one. Andy probably saw things which no one else did and that was the beauty of his observations coupled with this simplistic writing skills.

My fascination with Andy Warhol started when I first witnessed the Campbell soup can display and wondered: “Well, here is a man who is selling this to the public and they are eating out of his hands. This is exactly what he wants and he is getting it as well. This is Andy Warhol, I guess”. And maybe that’s who he was – a charmer. An intellectual in his own right – a person who was somewhere down like a child – wanting acceptance and a little insecure deep down and always wanting to satiate his curiosity and in the bargain producing brilliant works such as, “America”.

“America” is an introspection on almost everything American and what makes and breaks it – from images, celebrities and their guises to what does it take probably to just be human. What I liked about the book was the fact that Andy not once gets preachy about anything. Everything is a summation or just a mad and random observation and he has the need to let us know what it is.

For me the book was a revelation as I always thought of Andy Warhol to be self-obsessed and maybe he was that to a very large extent. It is just that with this book I got to experience another side of the artist and the mad genius that he was.  The book is very well-written, but of course however most of the book is full of pictures clicked by Andy and the images are wonderful. The madness is clearly visible and one thing is for certain: You cannot remove Andy from America and America from Andy.

You can buy the book from Flipkart