My feelings about Andy Warhol

I just read a really interesting interview with Berkeley art historian Jane Dillenberger. She mentions a book she had written about Andy Warhol, researching his religious art, which was informed by his Christian Orthodox faith. Here's the link to the interview.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/05/findrelig.DTL

***
I was a big fan of Andy Warhol. In fact, some of his iconic art has influenced my own art, as I am fond of using an image that repeats with use of different color palettes. I admit, I could not relate to his film work and his celebrity crowd, but that only underscores that one can be faithful and edgy at the same time (though in a violent and crazy society, the edginess is too much of a risk). But I'm sharing my reminiscences and feelings about him to illustrate that a good Christian-a devout person-can also be an edgy artist. And such a person can be admired by, and even influence, someone like me. I was terribly shocked and disappointed when he died in the hospital at such a young age. I'm not one to point fingers, but he is on the list of people I've often thought that "it really should not have gone that way." Hospitals and illnesses have become too much of a random crap shoot in our society. I remember there was a breakthrough book many years ago, before I had personal hospital experience, by a heart doctor who was shocked once HE became a patient and received insensitive, degrading and sometimes quite wrong treatment. As I remember his book was the first popular book on this subject, where "the shoe was on the other foot," where a doctor sees what a patient has to endure. It seems that while many things are better, the bad things are getting worse and worse by the year. So I often think with sadness about Andy Warhol and I do wonder about him.

But I know he'd be pleased that he influenced many of my amateur art efforts!