The article begins describing Warhol’s start in the art industry as a commercial shoe illustrator in the fifties. As a result, his illustrative roots are continuously seen throughout his art as well as his influences by advertisements. These shoe illustrations are actually the first indication of Warhol’s sexuality in that they reveal an obsession with femininity and fashion while reflecting meticulous attention to detail. It is with this concern that brings to attention the phrase “Andrew Warhol, her medal” inscribed on one of his awards. The pronoun “her” indicates a homosexual camp in that it is used to reference gay men as well as women. However, this is a recent research since “art—historical scholarship has all but ignored the links between femininity and male homosexuality in Warhol’s commercial enterprise of the 19505,” so no one actually knew what was going on there.
As the article continues, it is revealed that it was difficult for Warhol to get his works accepted into exhibitions. His works, mostly depicting homosexual imagery, were deemed explicit and immoral and certainly not for their audiences to view. He was urged to keep his work neutral for a maximum chance of getting exhibited but to no avail. His censorship essentially paved the way for the creation of his cool, pop persona. He wanted to remain distanced from the work he created, as he was distanced from the art community, and he thus censored himself, addressing his homosexuality in the form of connotation rather than denotation. Still, his work was censored, as seen in his Thirteen Most Wanted Men. The curious thing is that this censorship didn’t come across as a big deal and was paid little attention. It is with the suspicion that the censorship was due to the double-entendre of title and the linking of criminality to homosexuality.
Reading this article has led me to reflect on my experience viewing Warhol’s Sex Parts series at the UAMA last year. At that point, I had no idea that Warhol was homosexual, so I did not expect to be confronted with a partitioned section of explicit work, I mention that the exhibit was partitioned because it seems as if his work is still being censored today, having to show a guard standing next to a red velvet rope an ID verifying that you are over eighteen to View the work. And yet, it was the most beautiful work I had seen in the entire Warhol collection at UAMAI Sure it was explicit, but it was because Warhol had not shied away from portraying his male studies denotatively. The censorship is a reminder that institutions enforce the notion that homosexuality is something to be hidden (but come on, it is the twenty-first century); if they were silkscreens and photographs of a heterosexual couple in the same mannerisms, I’m not sure they would be censored in the same way.
Thinking about it now, post-homosexual Warhol realization, the sexuality evident in all his work is extremely important in telling the story of Warhol as a forcefully closeted artist. The politics of homosexuality in the fifties, sixties and seventies presented a huge challenge for artists to express themselves, with examples of Warhol and Rauschenberg, Warhol used this challenge to his benefit by creating his cool persona and removing his personality from his artworks and instead replacing the focus on himself with celebrities and popular culture commodities Though his comments on censorship through his work are subtle, I believe he is one of the first artists to politically address sexuality alongside Rauschenberg in the series of new art movements coming to light due to conceptualism, and even feminist art.
