Andy Warhol, who died in 1987, remains one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His works command stratospheric prices, yet many regard him as a huckster, vacuous and inflated. He perfected a kind of celebrity: the denizen of Studio 54, the consort of Lee Radziwill and all, and fame became for Warhol a kind of obsession. 

In today's episode, Paul McDermott – comedian, writer, and occasional painter – examines this contradictory artist in a new biography by Blake Gopnik.