https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/warhol-life-in-art-blake-gopnik

A splendid life of Andy Warhol claims him as the most influential artist of the 20th century, and isn’t shy of exposing his private life

There are so many Warholian moments in this superb biography that it’s hard to know where to start. There is the time someone turned up to a party at the Factory dressed as a box of Brillo. Or the great man’s habit of answering a routine “How are you?” with a whispery “I’m OK but I have diarrhoea.” Or the social nightmare of being invited round to watch the unwatchable Sleep, a home movie consisting of five hours of a naked man snoozing. How to get through the ordeal without dropping off and starting to dribble on Andy’s shoulder? (Actually, this would never have happened – Warhol hated such physical contact and was capable of throwing out any guest who overstepped the mark.)

It is a testimony to Blake Gopnik’s skill that he is able to acknowledge how silly these provocations sound while simultaneously insisting on their enduring art historical significance. Dressing up as a box of Brillo may count as a stunt, but Gopnik, a veteran critic and contributor to the New York Times, sees it as the logical extension of Marcel Duchamp’s gesture 50 years earlier when he exhibited a porcelain pissoir as art. Responding to someone’s standard greeting with a detailed report on your bowel movements may be childish but it also pointedly disrupts the genteel discourse of a rapidly capitalising art market. The fact that today we are inclined to roll our eyes at such anecdotes is evidence not of Warhol’s nullity, but of his continuing ubiquity. Whether we like it or not, we are still living in his world. This spring’s Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern is one of the most eagerly awaited of recent years.