When Warhol arrived in New York in the late 1940s as a ‘shabby art student with mismatched socks’, his sexuality was apparent, not only from his ‘swish’ manner but also from the style of his drawings. Many who viewed his portfolio judged the whimsical images of butterflies and dainty curlicues as feminine. A rejection letter from the time is addressed to a ‘Miss Andie Warhol’.

Warhol’s sexuality, implicit in so much of his work, deserves to be reassessed. Gopnik tells us that Warhol was an outsider as a young closeted man in his hometown of Pittsburgh, but that in New York he was welcomed into the burgeoning gay scene. He had constant companions, strikingly handsome boyfriends, and live-in lovers in the house he shared with his mother. He was an occasional, if not enthusiastic, participant in back-room orgies. His desire to merely observe got him kicked out of at least one. Queerness and queer culture inspired and propelled his explorations, and the works he created from them would still be an affront to conservative hetero-normative communities today.

Andy Warhol in 1968 (A.F. archive / Alamy)

Warhol copied, borrowed, and stole directly from photographs. This process raised questions about appropriation and originality. In his early illustrations, the blotted line work is taken from the more expensive artist–illustrator Ben Shahn. The looping cursive, complete with misspellings, came from his mother, while Nathan Gluck, Warhol’s first assistant, replicated his commercial style, all the work still being attributed to Warhol.

Just as his career as a commercial artist began to offer security and prosperity, Warhol pivoted into fine art, with forays into what would become Pop Art. He was not the first to investigate this new representationalism after the dominating influence of Abstract Expressionism, but he quickly became the focal point. In 1962, thirty-two Campbell’s Soup cans appeared, one for each flavour, confounding and angering the art community. Each was meticulously painted to give the impression of mass production. They are displayed together like everyday products in a grocery store. When asked about the inspiration for the work, Warhol claimed that he had drunk the soup for lunch every day for twenty years. He lied.

Later that year, Warhol investigated photographic silkscreens, creating a new form of expression. He began a production line of myriad Marilyns, Elizabeth Taylors, Elvis Presleys, car crashes, electric chairs, wanted men, and flowers. They were reproduced, transformed, and multiplied in series after series of ‘paintings’ that simultaneously reflect and critique society.

At the acme of Pop Art, Warhol abruptly declared painting dead, put away his ‘brushes’, and became a filmmaker. The following work was no less incendiary. Sleep (1963) is eight hours of his then boyfriend John Giorno asleep. Empire (1964), eight hours and five minutes long, is a single static shot of the Empire State Building. Warhol would go on to produce and/or direct around 150 films. The radicalness of these explorations cannot be understated, though, if he ever received an unreservedly glowing review for these works, it’s not to be found in Warhol.

In 1964 Warhol established the first of his Factories, with an open-door policy. The silver Factory attracted gangs of misfits, fuelled by amphetamines and egomania, who could be employed to sweep up, create art, or be elevated on a whim to stardom. In 1968 this free-spirited scene would culminate in Warhol’s first death at the hands of Valerie Solanas, author of the radical feminist S.C.U.M Manifesto. Gopnik’s retelling of this incident is as darkly comic as it is tragic.

In Warhol, Andy is artistically confronting, sardonically clever, and very funny. As an artist he offered a wry, tongue-in-cheek commentary on society, commerce, value, consumerism, sexuality, and what constitutes art. It is a conversation that continues to this day.

Each aspect of Warhol’s output is given equal attention in the book: Commercial Art, Pop Art, Photobooth Portraits, Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Brillo Boxes, Video Art, Film Work, Raid the Icebox, Time Capsules, Shadow Painting, Camouflage Paintings, Piss Paintings, Oxidations, Torsos and Sex Parts, and Business Art. No period or avenue is missed.

Gopnik reveals a restless, inventive mind, a penny-pinching boss, a shopaholic, a rabid collector, and a techno-savvy innovator. He was both mean and generous, a provocateur, a starry-eyed fanboy, a caring son who didn’t attend his mother’s funeral. An avid consumer of books, media, and music who was well versed in the minutiae of his profession. A man who could be shy and inarticulate expressing the simplest ideas about his work but who could move, when he chose, with ease through all levels of society, from the high to the low. The book also reveals a ceaseless worker with a camera always ready, one who constantly sought new technology to advance his conceptual ideas. Warhol achieves, through intense scrutiny, a far more rounded, exacting, and human portrait of its purposefully enigmatic subject.

There is an enormous life housed in these pages; Warhol remains fascinating throughout. Gopnik’s access to more than 100,000 documents, hundreds of interviews, boxes of ephemera, and the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh enables him to track the days and nights of the man. Gopnik pinpoints where Warhol was, whom he was with, and sometimes even what he ate. However, the spirit of this genius proves as elusive as ever. The closer you get to the screen the more difficult it is to see the image.

All the disguises of this protean artist are exposed in Warhol, but they remain effective in concealing their creator. Andy Warhol is no less a mystery on the last page.