The religious art of Andy Warhol

Abstract

In the two years before he died, Andy Warhol made 70 paintings based on Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, this text explores the sources and manifestations of Warhol's spiritual side. The sources are to be found in Warhol's childhood in a Slovakian ghetto of Pittsburgh and in the rich rituals of its Byzantine Catholic Church, but particularly in his devotion to his mother, Julia, with whom he lived for almost 40 of his 58 years. The manifestations are to be found mostly in the paintings of the last decade of his life: his skull paintings, the prints based on Renaissance religious paintings, the cross paintings, and the large series based on da Vinci's Last Supper.