Paris Hilton - Animal lover
In 1969, Andy Warhol purchased a Great Dane. No ordinary dog, this Great Dane was a great dog — a champion in fact, according to the Westminster Kennel Club. But there was one major difference between this dog and most, besides the fact that he was an award winner: By the time Warhol purchased him, he had been dead for almost 40 years.
Cecil, as Warhol called the stuffed and preserved animal, was believed to be the pet of film director Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959). Or at least that’s what the antiques dealer from whom Warhol had purchased the prized specimen told him. Warhol bought the story and the dog for $300. A high price in those days, it was a lot more than the previous owner had paid when he bought the champion dog, whose real name was Ador Tipp Topp, along with 11 other mounted dog breeds from the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University.
All of this information did not come to light until recently. A year and a half ago, a museum visitor named Kerrin Winter-Churchill noticed the dog while visiting from Ohio. A canine photographer and genealogist, she was intrigued upon seeing the perfect specimen and began searching for information about the animal, only to find that the German-born beast was a winner of numerous awards, among them the 1924 Best of Breed at the Westminster Kennel Club.
Cecil used to stand guard at Warhol’s Factory, beginning in 1969, the year the artist purchased him, until 1987, the year Warhol died. Now he presides over a remarkable little temporary exhibit built around him by Warhol archivist Matt Wrbican.
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On the fifth floor of the museum, “Canis Major: Warhol’s Dogs and Cats (and other party animals)” delves into the history of Ador Tipp Topp, aka Cecil, as well as Warhol’s own interest in cats and dogs.
Warhol once wrote, “I never met a pet I didn’t like.” Indeed, the artist had many pets throughout his life, including his childhood dog Lucy, more than a dozen Siamese cats, and his dachshunds Amos and Archie. His studio, the Silver Factory, had two resident cats, Black Lace and White Pussy, and he was fond of his friend Brigid Berlin’s pugs, Fame and Fortune.
“In the ’50s, Warhol was more of a cat person,” Wrbican says, “and then, in the ’70s, he became a dog person.”
True enough, around 1952, when Warhol’s mother, Julia, left Pittsburgh to live with Andy in New York, the artist also purchased two Siamese kittens, Hester and Sam. Together, they sired at least another 10, all of which at one point were scrambling around Warhol’s brownstone on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Inspired by the cats, two years later Warhol published a series of cat portraits in a book titled “25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy.” A limited-edition, hand-colored book that featured a series of 23 cat portraits, the title was supposed to read “Named Sam,” but his mother, who did the lettering, left off the “d,” and the title stuck.
A drawing from that book is on display here, as well as a delightful little drawing contained in a vitrine that is more of a personal sketch of Sam. “That’s a great drawing,” Wrbican says. “If you look really close, you can see little cat prints all over it.”
Not far away is a series of illustrations by Julia Warhola, loose pages from her own illustrated book “Holy Cats,” which Warhol published in 1957.
By the 1970s, Warhol’s interest in cats faded thanks in part to a shorthaired dachshund puppy named Archie. Like Paris Hilton with her teacup dog, Warhol took Archie with him everywhere, often deferring to the animal whenever someone would ask him a question he didn’t want to answer.
When Archie was almost 3 years old, Warhol acquired another dachshund he named Amos. Amos was treated just as well as Archie and often appeared with Archie and Warhol in photographs.
Animals also were influential in Warhol’s artwork, ranging from his famous Cow Wallpaper to his various paintings of horses, monkeys, parrots, dogs and fish.
In 1976, he began a series of paintings of friends’ pets. All dogs and cats, 15 of them hang in the gallery here. “Most of these paintings are of pets of Warhol’s friends, and (Warhol) knew the names of the animals, but they have since been lost,” Wrbican says.
One is of a dachshund, although it is not clear whether it is Archie or Amos.
One thing about Warhol, Wrbican says, is that “he really loved his pets.”
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