Was autism the secret of Warhol's art?
Social ineptitude, love of uniformity, obsessive attention to detail all are classic symptoms, say those who paint the artist as psychologically disabled

By Vanessa Thorpe, Arts Correspondent
Guardian Unlimited

Sunday March 14, 1999


The image of a tin of soup repeated across a canvas has always been thought of as Andy Warhol's ironic response to popular culture. But there is growing evidence that the late pop artist's love of repetition was actually a symptom of autism, the psychological disability that channels thought down unusual or 'eccentric' paths.

According to a paper submitted to the National Autistic Society, many of Warhol's artistic and behavioural traits bear marks of the condition. His social ineptitude, care to use the minimum of words in speech, difficulty recognising friends and obsession with the uniformity of consumer goods are each thought to be clues that Warhol was autistic to some degree.

'It is fascinating how many of the things he did are typical of autism,' said Dr Judith Gould, director of Eliot House, Britain's leading diagnostic centre for autism and its milder, or 'higher functioning', form, Asperger syndrome. 'I would say, from the study I have seen, that Warhol almost certainly had Asperger syndrome.'

She believes that higher functioning forms of autism are often associated with prodigious talent and even with artistic genius. The theory has quickly gained ground among experts, some of whom were already working on the relationship between autistic behaviour and creative talent.

The notion that Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, L. S. Lowry and Peter Sellers were all autistic has been current for some time, but in most of these cases there is less surviving proof than in Warhol's.

The composer Ian Stewart, who first put forward the argument that Warhol was autistic, has also been diagnosed with a mild form of the condition. He says he was initially struck by hearing of the artist's obsessive buying of the same make of green cotton underpants. 'He describes the process so carefully in his autobiography A to B and Back Again that I was immediately reminded of autistic behaviour. He was convinced the green ones felt different to other colours.

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