Andy Warhol’s Two Secrets

Few people manage to turn obvious weaknesses into strengths.

One of these exceptions was Andy Warhol, the famous creator of the pop art style and trendsetter of world fashion even today, although 27 years have passed since his death.

In his youth, he adored jam sandwiches, and when his friends swore in front of him, he blushed. He could not go into the school toilet – it stank so much there, and endured it until he returned home. He was embarrassed to buy constipation pills for his father at the pharmacy and returned home empty-handed. In short, in the brutal mining Pittsburgh, many considered him a weakling.

It seemed that the sweet tooth and weakling had no chance to succeed in the stone jungle of New York, where he went in 1953 at the insistence of a friend – he himself was shy. However, after three years, Andy began to earn one hundred thousand dollars a year. Huge money in those days. He is only 27 years old! How did this become possible?

Perhaps two mysteries can be considered solved.

At first, Warhol decided to get his own scent.

He had the scent of a wild boar.

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• Show your creativity

“When I walk around New York,” writes Warhol, “I always notice smells around. Rubber floor mats in office buildings, upholstery in movie theaters, pizza, Orange Julius, espresso, garlic, oregano, hamburgers, dried-out cotton T-shirts…” This monstrous list goes on for several pages. The range of descriptions is astonishing: from the greasy smell of wax from the booths of the shoe-shine booths to the sweaty stench of horses at the Plaza Hotel mixed with steam from the laundromat of an apartment building… and crowning this Babylonian mountain of scents is the chill of a diamond hair clip in the hair of the charming liar Toxie, in which Andy was platonically in love in those years. Diamonds smell like a mirror shine of wealth.

Then comes a page-long list of perfumes that Warhol adores. The list is opened by perfume Guerlain Sous le Vent.

And the output is like a shot to the temple:

“There is only one way to take up more space – spirits.”

Here it is – the first key to conquering the world.

In that post-war period, American men smelled of sweat and leather, and it was an indecent lot of prostitutes or old women from high society to emit a scent. And the youth went to the hippies. Warhol, on the other hand, ridiculed the dirty hippies, was the first to break this taboo and stepped into the jungle of the yellow devil with the bold gait of a chic expensive whore, spreading the scent of victory. By the way, he was still poor and lived in an apartment for seventeen people in the basement at the corner of 103rd Street and Manhattan Avenue. Cockroaches became the nightmare of his life. Here he was in the office of the editor of the elite magazine Harper’s Bazaar Carmel Snow to show a portfolio of his drawings, but damn it! The briefcase released the cockroach on the table. Carmel recoiled, but … but Warhol smelled so wonderfully, and she could not understand the brand of his fragrance (secretly sniffing at the secret), that, taking pity on the bungler, she gave him a large advertising order.

Chanel No. 5 smoked on Andy’s skin.

“I am sure that male hormones can make this fragrance masculine,” Andy claimed. He understood that the smell is the same wayward monster, like a bull in the arena, and in order to subdue it, one must fight with it, between the smell and the skin there must be a fight, a dispute, an exchange of arguments (a sword against meat), lie down under the smell To succumb to advertising means to deprive yourself of individuality.

In understanding the intricacies of smell, Warhol reached perfection.

He wrote: “the smell of roasted peanuts completely drowns out the hum of air conditioners.”

Even snobs can envy this phrase.

So, becoming a cloud in his pants, Andy took his first step towards fame, mentioning his name becomes fashionable:

Today I saw Andy Warhol!

– O!

But Warhol’s second move in New York was even more radical: he decides to age immediately! I believed that I would gain a lot by going gray: (1) I would have problems of old people that were easier to deal with, (2) everyone would be surprised at how young I looked, (3) I would free myself from the obligation to behave like a young person, I could to be eccentric and it won’t surprise anyone because of my gray hair. When you have gray hair, every movement seems “young” and “peppy”. You seem to have a new talent. So I dyed my hair gray when I was 23.”

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• Happy age

This recognition is costly.

In a country where everyone is obsessed with youth, in America, where the cult of the young body has become a national mania, and the fear of old age and death has become mass hysteria and the first phobia among psychiatrists, the decision of a youngster to play the role of an old man is, of course, a brilliant act.

Here the genius of self-promotion showed a wolf grip.

So, let’s remember two secrets of Warhol: there is only one single argument that does not use words, but works flawlessly – this is your smell, and in order to look young, you need to skillfully age yourself.

E. Warhol “POPism. Autobiography ”(Amphora, 2009).