CATHOLIC CELEBRITY PROFILE: Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
This famous pop artist, avant-garde filmmaker and so much else was the darling of Hollywood celebrities and the wealthy. He delighted in what many of us would regard as tacky or mundane. I can still remember his Campbell’s Soup Can picture— ah, made me hungry to look at it! Although some thought his work was cheap, many critics today rank him in the same category of creativity with Picasso, although with more diffused interests.
As a child, his family attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Pittsburgh, PA. When he died, his two brothers had the body brought back to Pittsburgh. During the wake, he was posed with a small prayer book and a red rose. The Mass was held at Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church. The eulogy was given by Msgr. Peter Tay. After the Mass, the priest and procession drove to the old family church cemetery where he was buried next to his parents. Another memorial service was later held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
If his work was regarded as peculiar, his personal life was no less enigmatic. Many regarded him as a homosexual and yet it is also said that his personal virginity was unassailed.
I have to wonder if he did not purposely exalt the commercial and secular so that we might better see the naked truth about ourselves and our culture. His juxtaposing a religious message and consumerism in his last works seems to demonstrate this fusion and/or contradiction with which we live. Many of us did not like his work and many of his messages, I suspect, because he pushed up into our faces the artificiality and market-mentality that possesses us. Even Leonardo da Vinci’s LAST SUPPER, has become the stuff of home decoration, with cheap rip-offs but void of true meaning. He took this work and multiplied it over and over again with secular signs added. It was awful— it was our society held up against a mirror.
THE LAST SUPPER (1986)
Many people are surprised to discover that Warhol was a practicing Catholic, although of the Eastern or Byzantine rite. He often went to Mass at Roman Catholic churches. He saw himself as a religious person and personally volunteered at New York homeless shelters. A number of private religious works were discovered in his estate after his death. He went to daily Mass at St. Vincent Ferrer in New York. The pastor reported that he would kneel or sit in the back but rarely came up to the altar for communion for fear of being recognized. It is said that, given some of his art and films, he was afraid to bring scandal upon the Church. One of his brothers stated that he was “really religious” but also intensely “private” about his Catholic faith. The art historian John Richardson in a eulogy noted that he was devout, saying, “To my certain knowledge, he was responsible for at least one conversion. He took considerable pride in financing his nephew’s studies for the priesthood” (Wikepedia).
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Blogger Priest 
Father, this is a very interesting post that I’m only belatedly seeing. My husband and I moved to the Pittsburgh area about five years ago, and we have been to Andy Warhol’s church, St. John Chrysostom, in Pittsburgh a few times. The parish has money bequeathed to them from Warhol’s estate, and because of that, the church is well kept and is one of the most beautiful churches one could ever behold. The icons are overwhelmingly lovely, and the building is an interesting fusion of the Catholic faith in the East and West because, along with the icons, it has Western-style stained-glass windows. For some reason, when we attend liturgy at that church, we feel surrounded by comfort, love, and beauty, and it is hard to walk out. There are a couple of pictures at the following link, though they don’t accurately convey the “feel” of the church: http://www.archeparchy.org/page/directories/parishes/pittsburghstjc.htm
I don’t think God cares wheter someone is a “catholic” or goes to church, or even works in charity kitchens and gives alms.
Devout Jews crucified Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, I believe the previous poster hit the nail on the head in comparing Warhol to Dali. There is a perversity, an obsession (slavery) to pleasure and idolatry (and demeaning cruelty–portraits splattered w/urine; studio 54 drugs & sado machistic sex),
Wikipedia also states his “art” aired in porn theaters and was refused by galleries for being too homoerotic.
No-one who has the light hides it under a bushel basket. Like Dali, Warhol chose to proclaim the lies, darkness and vice of the world–the exact opposite of what Jesus Christ proclaimed.
What he kept hidden was his belief in Jesus Christ. You can’t proclaim both good and evil.
This man’s legacy is on display at the Smithsonian:
http://townhall.com/columnists/PatBuchanan/2010/12/07/naked_men_in_national_museums/page/2
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/prominent-foundation-threatens-to-pull-funding-from-smithsonian-over-ant-covered-jesus-removal/
What surprises me, like cardinals standing up for the Catholicism of Ted Kennedy (the man who slept with 1000 women, criminalized protesting at abortion clinics & spent $10 million buying off bimbo eruptions) is a Father who would be happy to claim Warhol as “Catholic”.
Where were the priests who would tell him the truth instead pf giving him false absolution for money? These priests are as damned as Warhol.
Jesus Christ was a carpenter. When he died he was a laughing stock–not some lionized pop star. Go and sin no more. The wages of sin is death.
I happen to be the kind of person that’s very quick to judge but by HIS grace that’s a thing of the past. I pray Warhol is in the bosom of CHRIST & many of us find our way back to GOD Amen.
When I first saw the painting it seemed sacrilegious. It is a reminder to me of how easily the human mind can miss significance by quickly judging.
How very interesting Father, thanks for posting that. I’ve seen many of his works but I never knew he was an observant Catholic. Another one to hold up to the anti-Catholic- smarter than thou group.
This was something that I learned about shortly after his death, and a tidbit that I remembered for the fact that no matter what the press makes of someone, they can be a total opposite. Farrah Fawcett reportedly became very devout in her faith at the end of her life, and received Last Rites before her death and Catholic burial in the LA cathedral. And Jack Kerouac, the beat writer, was unique among them in that in spite of his writings and alcohol and drug abuse, held himself as a conservative Catholic. And Vincent Price, though he played the ghoul on screen, became Catholic to marry his final wife. Dali seems to have gotten more and more Catholic as he got older, but I think the verdict will never come down to whether he was sincere, or if it was yet another of his send-ups.