A shrewd and captivating journey into Warhol’s art, combining psychological insights with evocative prose.
The celebrated pop artist Andy Warhol was a textbook example of how the mind can turn suffering into creative gold, according to this biographical meditation.
Romero, a psychiatrist and artist who knew Warhol personally, traces links between the artist’s artworks—including his carefully crafted public image—and his experiences of illness, social exclusion, and bereavement. These included serious childhood bouts of rheumatic fever and Sydenham chorea, also known as St. Vitus’ Dance, which had lasting physical and neurological effects on the artist, Romero contends; they included a flattened affect and verbal inexpressiveness, which he repurposed as an aloof, diffident, “cool” persona. Warhol’s father’s death in 1942 caused the teenager to hide under his bed for three days; however, Romero asserts, it also kindled an obsession with mortality that informed some of Warhol’s best-known paintings. His unhappiness about his physical appearance made him fixate on Hollywood-style beauty and glamour, which infused iconic paintings of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe, and his early career as an advertising illustrator provoked disdain from the Abstract Expressionist elite, but it led the artist to an egalitarian pop art philosophy that erased the gap separating Campbell’s soup cans from fine art. And although Warhol’s intense shyness left him virtually friendless for much of his life, the author says, it also fueled a drive to become so famous that the world would seek him out, as when his Factory studio became the center of 1960s avant-garde New York. Romero fits these observations into a therapeutic framework that he calls Logosoma Brain Training, which combines ideas about the brain’s response to stress and its generation of creative thought patterns with evolutionary theory and Buddhist principles of nonattachment and mindfulness.
Romero’s nuanced portrait of Warhol teases out the complexities of his character, highlighting his agitation and insecurity—one vignette has him “sobbing hysterically” when a lover brought another man to their hotel room—and his veneer of Zenlike serenity: “The more you look at the same exact thing,” he said of his repetitive imagery, “the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.” The book’s analysis of Warhol’s contradictory personality conveys psychiatric tropes in colorful text with punchy metaphors: “Ondine, Factory superstar, coined a nickname for Andy—Drella, a portmanteau of Dracula and Cinderella. It reflects a poetic assessment of Warhol as a vampire seeking virgin blood while being disguised as a Cinderella-like virgin himself.” The author’s explorations of Warhol’s art are equally deft and open to the multiplicity of meanings in deceptively simple works: “What did Andy Warhol see when he looked at a can of Campbell’s soup? He saw lunch. He saw childhood memories with his mother….He saw the factories of mass production. He saw art. A masterpiece of human ingenuity, creativity, truth, beauty, and goodness.” Well-chosen illustrations, including reproductions of some of the artist’s works, as well as candid images of the artist by various photographers lend visual resonance to Romero’s commentary.
A shrewd and captivating journey into Warhol’s art, combining psychological insights with evocative prose.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781943876396
Page Count: 256
Publisher: G Editions LLC
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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