Andy Warhol’s Mother: The Woman Behind the Artist

Rusinko (editor of God Is a Rusyn), a professor emerita of Russian at the University of Maryland, blends ethnography and biography for this eccentric portrait of Julia Warhola (1892–1972), the mother of Andy Warhol (1928–1987). Drawing from interviews as well as research on Slavic immigrant groups, Rusinko reconstructs the peasant community in Czecheslovakia where Warhola (then Zavacky) was born, raised, and at 17 married off to 20-year-old Andrii Varchola. After the couple moved to America in the early 20th century and changed their name to Warhola, Julia gave birth to three sons and endured poverty in the slums of Depression-era Pittsburgh. Rusinko overlays the story with detailed background on the family’s Carpatho-Rusyn heritage, contending that its “theatrical” folk culture shaped Julia’s innate “artistic sense” as well as her son’s campy aesthetic, and drawing a direct link to Andy’s artistic practice of lavishing cinematic attention on everyday objects. Unfortunately, those intriguing parallels are weakened by speculation on Carpatho-Rusyn influences on Julia’s mothering style and even Andy’s distaste for doing laundry (“Like so many Carpatho-Rusyn men of his generation, Warhol had not learned basic housekeeping skills”). Despite some enlightening moments, this doesn’t quite come together. Photos. (Nov.)