Before he became the king of New York's art scene Andy Warhol worked at a leather goods company, where he created this enchanting story about a high society snake, among other things...
Before Andy Warhol was pop art’s darling father, or the crème de la crème of any New York guestlist, he was a man who needed a job. And at this largely forgotten juncture of his thereafter stellar career, it was Teddy and Arthur Fleming-Joffe, the co-founders of an eponymous leather goods company based in the city, who gave him one. “Andy created our swatch cards, our wrapping paper, shopping bags, magazine ads, and even a colouring book for our clients,” the pair writes in the epigraph to a new book, The Autobiography of a Snake, which debuts a rarely seen collection of illustrations he made during his time there. “He did the interiors for our trade shows. He painted an awning for our new showroom in St. Louis and the lamps for our company dining room.” Not only this – when Fleming-Joffe won a prestigious Coty American Fashion Critics’ Award in 1963, Warhol decided to create a series of slides for the company, with the intention that they be shown altogether as a film at the awards ceremony which was to follow.
The film was not to be, unfortunately, but the resulting sweet, satirical tale is centred around protagonist Noa the Boa, a snake with an irrepressible passion for the world of fashion and celebrity who would stop at nothing to climb the city’s social ranks. In an effortlessly charming but nonetheless crude ink line, Warhol etched out a world for the agile Noa, who is strangely admirable for his undisguised ambition. “I am a snake. I slither like a snake, and I look like a snake, but I have the creative soul of an artist and an actor,” he writes in a curling, calligraphic hiss. “I longed to be part of high society, so I reinvented myself.”
“I became Diana Vreeland’s chicest shoe. Even she loved me, eventually” – Noa the Boa, The Autobiography of a Snake
Noa’s ensuing adventures take him through the colourful ranks of high society, forming accessories for the likes of Liz Taylor (a bracelet), Coco Chanel (a shirt), Princess Grace (a pillow) and the dancers at the Folies Bergère (very little at all, in fact). His tone is cheeky and revealing, and unmistakably Warholian. “I was the luggage for Happy Rockefeller, and a hat for the other Rockefeller, Bo Bo,” he writes, gleefully. “More recently I became the darling of women who needed me. I gave them chic. As a belt I could squeeze an inch off your waist. This trick made me particularly popular.” His most tongue-in-cheek of all refers to the then-editor of American Vogue herself. “I became Diana Vreeland’s chicest shoe. Even she loved me, eventually.”
Now, with the support of The Andy Warhol Museum, the illustration series has finally been brought to life in glorious technicolour, in the form of a book published by Thames & Hudson. Framed within the context of Warhol’s life, it becomes all the more enchanting for its parallels. The publishers are keen to agree. “Any resemblance of the snake, a creative individual who loves celebrities, to Andy Warhol, a creative individual who loves celebrities, is purely coincidental,” reads the editor’s note which opens the book. As Noa states on the story’s final page, “I have arrived!”
