The definitive biography of a fascinating and paradoxical figure, one of the most influential artists of his&;or any&;age

To this day, mention the name &;Andy Warhol&; to almost anyone and you&;ll hear about his famous images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. But though Pop Art became synonymous with Warhol&;s name and dominated the public&;s image of him, his life and work are infinitely more complex and multi-faceted than that.

In Warhol, esteemed art critic Blake Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions. &;The meanings of his art depend on the way he lived and who he was,&; as Gopnik writes. &;That&;s why the details of his biography matter more than for almost any cultural figure,&; from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing as the child of immigrants to his early career in commercial art to his total immersion in the &;performance&; of being an artist, accompanied by global fame and stardom&;and his attempted assassination.

The extent and range of Warhol&;s success, and his deliberate attempts to thwart his biographers, means that it hasn&;t been easy to put together an accurate or complete image of him. But in this biography, unprecedented in its scope and detail as well as in its access to Warhol&;s archives, Gopnik brings to life a figure who continues to fascinate because of his contradictions&;he was known as sweet and caring to his loved ones but also a coldhearted manipulator; a deep-thinking avant-gardist but also a true lover of schlock and kitsch; a faithful churchgoer but also an eager sinner, skeptic, and cynic.

Wide-ranging and immersive, Warhol gives us the most robust and intricate picture to date of a man and an artist who consistently defied easy categorization and whose life and work continue to profoundly affect our culture and society today.