Wigging Out with Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol: Self-Portrait  
from the Fright Wig series (1986)

I.

A wig is a head covering made from human or animal hair; or, rather less convincingly, synthetic fibres. Whilst concealing baldness is certainly a popular reason for wearing one, there are many others; some people wear them on religious grounds, for example; some do so simply for the pleasure of enhancing, disguising, or transforming their appearance. 

The Case of Andy Warhol is particularly interesting ...


II.

If, initially, Warhol wore a wig as a young man in the 1950s in order to hide prematurely thinning hair, he eventually styled his public persona upon a never anything but artificial looking collection of silver-white wigs. Indeed, Warhol's wig-wearing might even be seen as a wonderful piece of performance art concerned with self-creation and self-promotion.    

Made from hair imported from Italy and sewn by famous New York wig maker Paul Bochicchio, Warhol opted for his trademark silver-white wig in order to look slightly alien and also in the knowledge that if you have always looked old, no one can guess your real age. Allowing his own hair to protrude at the bottom of the wig ensured no one mistook it for anything other than a piece of artifice.

Strangely, however, just as the wig came to be seen by others as Andy's natural look, so too did Warhol grow to feel it was an essential element of his identity - we might almost say that just as some wear their hearts upon their sleeves, he wore his soul upon his head. 

And so it is that when Warhol had his wig snatched off his head by a young woman at a book signing in October 1985, it was as much a violent assault as when Valerie Solanas shot and seriously injured the artist back in the summer of '68. Indeed, Warhol described this shocking and painful later event as the day his greatest nightmare came true. 

Nevertheless, real trooper that he was, Warhol simply pulled up the hood on his Calvin Klein coat, smiled, and continued signing copies of his newly published work America. It might also be noted that although the perpetrator of the assault was held until the police arrived, no charges were pressed.


See: Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett, (Penguin Books, 2010). In the entry covering this wig-grabbing incident at the Rizzoli bookstore in the Soho district of Manhattan, Warhol describes his assailant as very pretty and well-dressed and suggests that this may have been what prevented him from pushing her over the balcony.