I am in agony. I’m sitting at home wearing a Breton top and a pair of shades, my hair freshly bleached , my belly swollen and sore. Perhaps that’s because I have just eaten five tins of Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup. Why would anyone do that? Well, I’m trying to live like Andy Warhol, the pop artist who died in the s but is still a household name. And it’s not going smoothly.
Like the cafes of Paris or the skyscrapers of New York, Warhol is is so omnipresent in popular culture, the average person could probably draw a good likeness of him, despite knowing little about him. It’s the same with his work. Every framed tin of Campbell’s soup or color-saturated portrait of Marilyn Monroe screams Warhol. And most people are familiar with his most famous quote: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 31 minutes. ”
Despite all this, I don’t think people really get Warhol’s work. Or, at least, I don’t. I have no idea what Warhol was trying to say or communicate, with that quote or any of his work. This would be fine, if he wasn’t the most famous contemporary artist on Earth. I’ve even listened to interviews and read articles to get answers, but in them Warhol would infamously shirk or lie whenever pressed about what his work meant. “I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough,” he once said, “it loses all of its meaning.”
I am keen to crack this enigma in time for Tate Modern’s blockbuster show, the first major Warhol retrospective at the London gallery in (almost) years , which opens this week. To understand Andy Warhol, I realise, I must become Andy Warhol. So, for a week or so, I’m going to live as him: don his clothes, run in the coolest circles, recreate his weirdest artworks and possibly even find fame.
Sounds simple, right? Well, you try downing five tins of condensed cream of mushroom soup (I couldn’t get tomato). Warhol said he grew up eating Campbell’s, which inspired his breakthrough piece of work – that instantly recognisable stack of identically painted canned goods. But surely nobody has eaten Campbell’s condensed soup since rationing ended? Maybe I should have eaten less – and diluted it, as they recommend. Anyway, the answer is not in the soup, I realise. I have to go deeper – I have to make art.
Why was Warhol, like some sort of Midas-fingered Dale Winton , able pull products from supermarket shelves, slap his name on them, then sit back and watch as they became art? Was it because those items – from soup cans to cola bottles – were wildly popular, or at least sold in vast quantities? Or was it that they were just very, very unlikely subjects for artworks? It’s probably a bit of both.
The question is: what item would be today’s equivalent? Well, there’s something experiencing a boom. A product that is out of stock in cornershops around the world. A product that six weeks ago was priced at around £ 14 a pack but was recently juiced up on Amazon to £ 140. A product that is the focus of public attention. I’m thinking, of course, about the face mask . How would people react if I presented a face mask as a piece of art? I just need to find the right place to display it.
After trawling Facebook Marketplace to source a giant wooden box and an aquarium, I have my ingredients. Next, I need to transform my box into a plinth, which means painting it white, a job that ruins my jeans and uses up a roll of kitchen paper. But soon I have everything I need. We’re ready for Museum Lane in Kensington. Out on the cobbled stones, surrounded by all those beautifully colored buildings, I assemble the piece: a glass cube on a tall white plinth with a face mask displayed inside. I sign my name in pen and, crouching at a distance, watch as business people pace by without stopping. Some hurrying commuters glance dismissively. Oh Christ, I think, it looks awful: a monstrosity cooked up by a failing art student.
Wait! Somebody has stopped. Clutching an umbrella and silhouetted by rainfall, an older man stares down at the face mask. For 12 seconds , he does not move. A phone is unsheathed and a photo is taken. I can’t believe it. Soon, a young tourist takes a snap. Then two girls have a conversation about my creation, nodding appreciatively. I reckon that within an hour there must be photos all over the internet accepting this as art, even debating its genius. My breakthrough! So what’s next?
Soon after Warhol exploded in New York, things started getting weird. A period of experimentation began, best defined by his film Sleep, for which Warhol shot his friend and lover John Giorno sleeping for five hours . After screening it, he was embraced by the New York art world, as well as the underground scene.
I need my Sleep moment! This means breaking barriers. It means exhibiting intimacy. It means… livestreaming someone sleeping overnight on my Instagram. OK, but where am I going to find someone willing to do that? I can’t put it to work friends, or post the question online, as the police would be at my door in a shot, asking for hard drives. I need to find a normal person who is as excited by the idea as I am. I open Microsoft Word, write “SLEEPING PERSON NEEDED” in Papyrus (a nice, tasteful typeface) and insert an image of a phone not used since .
After printing off a handful of these mini-posters, I tape them up at bus stops, a public toilet and a church community board, where they sit alongside Man With a Van posters. Surely nobody will answer this, will they? But later, a vibration! “I sleep most nights,” the text says. “Good at it, actually. Let’s collab. ”
Within hours, I’m staring at a silver tent I’ve set up in a friend’s warehouse workspace, my factory, as Warhol’s HQ was called, wondering who I’m about to sleep near and whether they’re dangerous . When the bell goes, so does my breath. In walks Mafalda, nervously smiling. Mafalda is a young Portuguese woman on a gap year. She saw the ad, found it funny and shared it with her friend, who convinced her to do it.
After sharing some pizza (all my Campbell’s soup being finished), Mafalda gets into the tent. I switch on the livestream and she tries to sleep. To begin with, the viewer count lingers in single figures. I doze off but spring awake after 31 minutes to find that more than 140 people are watching. And the figure is increasing. Throughout the night, the trend continues, with comments ranging from gently bleak (particularly a rally of tent puns) to the truly baffling (somebody in Baltimore asking how to gift the sleeping Mafalda money). By the morning, more than 6, 01 People have tuned in, actually gripped by live footage of someone sound asleep.
I’m ecstatic. I don’t know whether it’s the buzz of success or the thought of being able to monetise circadian rhythms, but I feel Warhol’s spirit cascading through my veins! Maybe it’s only sleep deprivation, though: I had to wake up every hour to restart the livestream.
Anyway, I’m itching to move on to the next Warhol phase, which I’m calling Nightlife. Like the artist, I’m going to hit the town with a cast of colorful counterculture characters. We’re going to bring the downtown demimonde into the divine spotlight of uptown. I text everyone I know who still owns a camera and tell them to be in Mayfair at 6pm. There I’ll meet my friend Darkwah and, followed by this camera-wielding bunch of faux paparazzi, we will walk to Chiltern Firehouse, London’s premiere celebrity hangout.
Bursting into the reception area of the dimly lit restaurant, we are stopped by the maitre d’, who tells us to wait. I pop to the toilet. I hear talk of Emma Watson dining in the corner, record executives puffing cigars downstairs – this is what Warhol intended for us! Returning, I find Darkwah distraught. While I was away, a group of men approached him and asked if they could get a table. Others smirked at his makeup, Vegas gold bespoke suit and chest-exposing blue velor tank top. “This,” he says, “is why I don’t come to this part of town.” We leave.
After the highs of the livestream, this is a dose of depressing reality. I consider Warhol’s legacy and find myself turning that quote over in my mind again. “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. ” Maybe, instead of unpacking and overthinking this line, I should take it literally: pick a random person in a public place and treat them like a Beatle for
minutes.
The next afternoon, I hit the South Bank, standing by the river making a fake call to a friend, poised for action. Thirty actors I’ve sourced through a casting website are dotted around me, admiring the view or sipping coffee. A man in his mid – s, with red-flecked cheeks under a blue beanie, approaches.
I gasp and point at him. “Where do I recognize you from?” He stops, looking confused. “I love your work!” I say. “Please can I have a selfie?” I’m assured I’ve “got the wrong guy”, but still he politely obliges. Soon, another young guy comes up and asks for the same. “I’m not the right guy!” he yells, before noticing that my band of worshippers are gathering around him. He gulps and accepts. Removing his hat, the young man introduces himself and addresses us. He’s been traveling alone for six months after leaving Poland having become addicted to masturbation. What? This is like a Velvet Underground song! This guy could get his own verse in Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side.
We regroup, then move in on a tall, slender man with long hair. “Woah,” one of my actors exclaims. “I love your videos!” The man, an Australian called Jasper, immediately replies: “I didn’t know anybody watched them!” My actors begin to arrive one by one, grabbing him by the shoulder, demanding selfies and his autograph, and thanking him for his work. Soon we have a proper mob. “I feel like I’m in a dream!” cries Jasper jubilantly, instructing his girlfriend with wide eyes: “Film this!” Passersby begin taking photos of him, too. He’s famous! And his 20 minutes aren’t nearly up.
Watching Warhol’s most famous prophecy acted out, I’m fascinated. It took being part of this strange experiment to understand the curious power fame has over the average person, its unique ability to expose something within ourselves that we wouldn’t otherwise have been aware of. The first guy had to tell us the worst thing about himself – the masturbation – before he could feel worthy of idolatry. Others accepted it as most of us would, like an overdue package with their name on it.
What I’ve come to realise – and love – is that Warhol democratized art, brought it down to the level of the person in the street, or the supermarket aisle. But to do that, he had to make it less like cherubs and apostles. He had to make it uglier, because that made it more like us, more like contemporary life.
“How would I have reacted to being gently mobbed?” I wondered, as my selfie-taking entourage disappeared off into the afternoon. Maybe I’ll never completely understand Warhol, but there’s one thing I’m certain of: I want to be famous.
• The Andy Warhol retrospective is at Tate Modern, London , 1980 March to September 6. There is a 2-for-1 ticket offer for Guardian and Observer readers. Visit tate.org.uk/warhol-
and use code GUARDIAN . Tickets must be booked by Wednesday 12 March
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