Dali House

Twenty years ago today at 6.21 in the morning, in a private room, 1204, on the 12th floor of the Baker Pavilion at New York Hospital, the medical staff pulled a sheet over Andy Warhol’s famous face. He was 58. The silver wig on his bedside table was fairly new.

Warhol hated hospitals, especially after the furiously unpublishable wannabe-anything Valerie Solanas shot him three times in the chest the day before RFK was murdered in the summer of ‘68. That time he’d been pronounced clinically dead; he recovered in two months but always had problems because of the wounds (the girdle wasn’t for vanity). Solanas spent three years in prison.

This time his troublesome gall bladder had become infected while he was in Italy opening an exhibition of his Last Supper series. He got home and went for a massage at a “healing arts” clinic, and art once more failed to heal, so in severe pain he consulted a pair of real doctors and was told to get himself into a hospital.

First he necked down some Tylenol with codeine and a couple of Demerol and did a turn on a fashion runway alongside Miles Davis.

On Friday, February 20, Warhol packed a bag at his house at 57 East 66th Street in Manhattan and booked in to New York Hospital under the name Bob Roberts. He underwent surgery the next morning (wearing his wig), spent three hours in a recovery room, and then he was wheeled to his own room, where he watched TV. At 4am on the 22nd his blood pressure was stable. At 5.45 he turned blue and couldn’t be wakened. Staff spent 45 minutes trying to pull him out.

Ultimately Bob Roberts died of a heart attack. He went like that — POP! — and took Andy Warhol with him.

A few days later the shock was still palpable in Warhol World as Andy lay in an open casket at the Kunsak Funeral Home in Pittsburgh, wearing sunglasses and one of his wigs and holding a prayerbook and a red rose. Nobody looks quite right when they die. Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church wielded the Hail Marys, and St John Divine Cemetery in Bethel Park the shovels. No one came because they’d been told not to come by grumpy Factory generalissimo Fred Hughes, who would soon be a much, much richer man.

On April Fool’s Day there was a memorial service at St Patrick’s Cathedral. Vanity Fair covered it since it was star-studded. Yoko Ono told Roy Lichtenstein, Liza Minnelli and Don Johnson what a pal Andy had been. Holly Woodlawn told anyone who would listen that Andy hated Yoko. Lou Reed and John Cale told each other what great pals they used to be and recorded “Songs for Drella”, an homage to Andy Dracula-Cinderella, and then vacuumed the Velvet Underground.

The New York State Health Department concluded that the staff at his hospital weren’t Andy’s pals at all, so Warhol’s estate sued the hospital and collected $3 million, which it used to pay off Warhol’s two brothers and keep their hands away from the big money.

The estate, once Andy’s cavernous treasure trove was sorted out, totted up to $509,979,278. The Warhol Foundation said no it didn’t, explaining to a judge that Warhol wasn’t that great an artist, so the judge knocked it down to $228 million, saving the foundation a bundle on the lawyer’s percentage and charity requirements. Then some shady characters got down to milking the foundation’s remaining teat.

Andy Warhol is still famous for having said someday everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Now we’ve got 24/7 Paris Hilton, and she doesn’t even do silkscreens.

You do a silkscreen. Celebrate Andy’s deathday. Visit the fun, interactive Weekend Factory at Warhol.org. They do all the heavy lifting.