There had been a thin... silver.. rosary with small wooden beads hanging from my rearview mirror once. Now there was just a blank place in the space where it used to live.
I took it down a few years ago.
I'm not catholic... Traditionally Im an evangelical.
evangelicals dont trust rosary's
It was a gift from my uncle. I use to keep it as a visible symbol of real humanity to me (among other things).
Imaginatively.. rosaries and the creative process go hand in hand.. though we don't often think of it that way. (Some do). Evidently Andy Warhol was one who made the connection...
A closet churchy. (That's one of the most recent acknowledgments from researchers and biographers). The suggestion is that Andy Warhol with his Byzantine Catholic family background, secretly kept a home altar.. a crucifix.. and a catholic prayer book on his bedside table... as it's also affirmed by Warhol's brother and the Pastor of a church near "The Factory" (his art studio) that the artist visited the church "almost daily"... usually coming in the mid-afternoon.. lighting a candle.. and praying for about 15 minutes before leaving back out into the fame and pop art culture of Andy Warhol's New York City. (1. See link to article below).
If you were to take the artist and his art at face value... the two images would seem paradoxical or controversial at best. He hung mostly with "disreputable characters".. transvestites... and misfits.. friending them and also making use of them in his art. (His "Superstars")..
But that's the problem with the face-value treatment of the modern world. There's always something more under the surface.. something that lives in both places.. doesn't quite match the visual.. the things we're shown.. the things.. sometimes.. we choose to see.
Andy Warhol hung with his superstars because they were two of a kind.. both.. "characters".. living in a pop-artificial world.. keeping the common secret underneath.. of course.. that misfits are people too.
The most powerful thing a person can give is the recognition of another's humanity... that's why I think its interesting that Warhol could have been a churchy.. (though it appears to have been very private to him).. because hanging with the misfits was very Jesus-like. Something religious people don't often get.
1.
http://spacecollective.org/Reckon/3347/Andy-Warhols-Secret
