WATCH: Pop legend goes back to the village in "Absolut Warhola"

Intimate portraits reduced to decisive line and shade...  It was only natural, considering Warhol spent many a morning staring at the neighborhood iconostasis while growing up in a Slavic ghetto of Pittsburgh.

Byzantine icon: Image of Edessa or Holy Mandolion ("miraculous image made without hands")

Self Portrait (1986) by Andy Warhol (made with hands?)

This fascinating diffusion of cultures is captured in a documentary by Stanislaw Mucha, in which:  

"he traces the family roots of the American pop artist Andy Warhol back to two ethnic Ukrainian villages in Slovakia. There he finds Warhol’s eccentric relatives, all of whom treat the famous hometown boy with pride even though none of them has actually known him or understands his art. They know so little of him that when Warhol sends original art work to his relatives, they use the art as clothing for children’s toys. With gentle humanism, the film gravitates from the art of Warhol to the lives of his relatives – characters in their own right. We see the “artfulness” with which they come to grips with their everyday lives and the strange outside world. These villagers’ healthy attitude towards art, life and the encroaching modern world makes Absolute Warhol a buoyant documentary." 

-from The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University

The full film can be seen here (then follow the links):