I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (31 page)

ANDY: The best.

ANDRE: I know somebody who’s thirty-seven and still has wet dreams. Does that mean he has a strong sex drive?

ANDY: I don’t have any sex dreams.

VICTOR: You mean wet dreams where you come all over your pants and then in the morning you’re embarrassed?

ANDY: Are you kidding? Come on! That’s stupid.

BILL: These phenomena are generally associated with adolescence, but can occur at any age.

VICTOR: Andy, Bill is a great actor, he’s a natural, and if you don’t use him in your next movie you’re really crazy. He could be a big star. Look at his face, he is really naturally . . ..

BILL: Yes, I can play doctors and C.I.A. men, and all kinds of things.

VICTOR: You know what it’s like for a writer. He writes and writes; he wants to act.

BILL: I do war criminals very well.

ANDRE: War criminals?

ANDY: I think you should be a dress designer.

BILL: A Nazi war criminal I could play very well.

VICTOR: A what?

ANDY: I think you should be a dress designer. You gotta change your profession and become a dress designer.

BILL: Well . . . hmmm, that’s not my sort of thing.

ANDY: Well, actually, you’re the best-dressed person I’ve ever known.

BILL: Really?

ANDY: Isn’t he the best? He’s always worn a tie since I’ve known him.

VICTOR: But seriously, I think Bill’s career is in acting, because he’s written so much and now he needs a change. Do you know he didn’t start writing until he was thirty-five?

ANDY: What were you doing before?

BILL: I was just fooling around. Very marginal.

ANDY: Just bumming around? Working at an office?

ANDRE: You were killing roaches! He was killing roaches in Chicago! He was an exterminator!

ANDY: No! You owned the company?

BILL: No, no.

ANDRE: He
killed
the roaches.

BILL: It was the best job I ever had. It was so easy, I enjoyed it. To this day I know all about roaches.

ANDRE: Can you tell me the sex life of a roach?

BILL: I don’t know about that, but I do know how to get rid of them. I know where they live.

ANDRE: Where do they live in apartments?

BILL: Well, Fd have to look around and analyze the case, see. They get, of course, into sinks. If there’s linoleum they’ll get under that. They’ll get in the kitchen cabinets, woodwork.

ANDRE: So how do you keep them out of the kitchen cabinets where you have your best china and silverware and all that?

ANDY: Well, they can be with the best china. It’s the best food you don’t want them to be with.

BILL: Take it out and spray it.

ANDY: No. Spray it and serve the people food with the spray on it. That’s what you do!

BILL: Well, you spy out where they are and then you spray there, and pretty soon you’re rid of them.

ANDRE: But if you’re a lay person. . . .

ANDY: A lay person! A person who lays?

ANDRE: How do you go about finding them in dark corners in your kitchen cabinet?

BILL: Well, you have to have a feel [
rubbing hands
] for where they are.

ANDRE: And you had a feel for it?

BILL: Well, yes, because I did it for nine months, man.

ANDY: But I used to come home and I used to be so glad to find a little roach there to talk to, I just. . . it was so great to have . . . at least somebody was there to greet you at home, right? And then they just go away. They’re great! I couldn’t step on them.

BILL: Oh God, no man! I either have a sprayer. . . . Occasionally I get a water bug in my place. There’s something called TAT with a thin tube coming out from the nozzle and it makes this fine spray. If you see a water bug you can just. . . .

VICTOR: A roach who shows its face in Bill’s presence is definitely a dead roach. Bill is very quick. In the middle of a conversation he will leap up and rush across the room grabbing a can of TAT on the way and he will sssshhhhh. But you had a slight bed bug problem. That was a problem.

ANDY: Oh well, that’s the worst. You have to get a bomb. . . .

BILL: I did, I did.

ANDY: You get a bomb and then you run out of the room.

BILL: I got a bomb and put it under the mattress and under where the springs are. That’s where they get to, and I got rid of them.

ANDY: God, I had bedbugs. I . . . only last year. . . .

ANDRE: Andy, please!

ANDY: [
To Bill
] What’s your last novel about?

VICTOR:
Cities of the Red Night
. It’s about brain transplants. It’s a very very interesting book, it’s a fascinating, fascinating book.

BILL: It’s very complicated and tricky.

VICTOR: It’s a detective story but it’s fabulously complicated, but it’s a story . . . and it ends up in South America with some very rich people who are developing the possibility of brain transplants.

ANDY: You mean they transplant their brain to a younger person?

VICTOR: Well, the thing is, you can transplant the “I” from a younger person into another person, correct?

BILL: Yes, presuming you knew where it was located, just as you can transplant a liver. Dr. Stargill is working on the idea of brain transplants now.

ANDY: A lot of people don’t want to be transferred though.

BILL: Well, that’s true. It isn’t compulsory.

ANDY: Oh well, that’s fascinating. Would you want to be, Victor?

VICTOR: Transplanted?

BILL: Transplanted into what?

VICTOR: Well, what do you want to do?

ANDY: No, I don’t want to be transplanted.

VICTOR: What do you want to do when you die?

ANDY: Oh, er . . . nothing.

VICTOR: What was the biggest change in sex in the seventies so we can see what it’s going to be like in the eighties?

ANDY: You’re talking about entertainment sex. Entertainment sex is different, see.

ANDRE: What is entertainment sex?

ANDY: Entertainment sex is the S&M thing when you go down to those S&M bars.

BILL: It entertains
some
people.

ANDY: Yeah, well, a lot of people, and then, you know, where sex spends a whole evening and it’s like entertainment. It’s like going to a Broadway show. It’s entertainment sex and that’s what the eighties are.

From ancient times up to the present, artists have pursued the representation of myths. The power of pagan legend has survived through new interpretations by each generation, as seen, for example, in Thomas Hart Benton’s portrayal of Persephone as an American farm girl. But when Andy Warhol decides to do a series often silkscreens entitled “Myths,” we’re talking about a whole other pantheon. As an artist who represents an era in which advertising, film and TV are as great a source of heroes and villains as Homer or the Bible were for pre-media society, Warhol chose to update the classical order. His myths are: Dracula, Howdy Doody, Mammy, Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus, Superman, The Shadow, The Star, The Witch, and Uncle Sam.

In a certain sense Warhol himself is a myth. He has come to symbolize success and stardom in the arts, yet still somehow remains an elusive figure. The mystification surrounding his public image renders it difficult for some to see his art for what it really is–powerful, persistent images that have never failed to capture the spirit of the time. It is no wonder that The Shadow print is a self-portrait. A red-tinted photo-silkscreened image of the artist’s face casts a distorted shadow haloed by the application of diamond dust. We see man and myth, artist and Stardust, portrayed side by side.

BARRY BLINDERMAN: How did the “Myths” series come about?

ANDY WARHOL: Ron Feldman, who published the prints, has a lot of wonderful ideas. He and I went through lists of people. Actually, I wanted to do a whole Disney series with Donald Duck and other characters, but I ended up using only Mickey Mouse.

BB: Did you see the Whitney Disney exhibit?

AW: Yes. It was interesting to see how other people did so much of the work. I liked the show so much that I went to see
The Fox and the Hound
. That movie looked like it was done 50 years ago because the backgrounds were so painterly. But I wish the Whitney show had been larger; I wanted to see more.

BB: This series brings your work full circle in a sense. You did a Superman painting in 1960, and Lichtenstein and Oldenburg did Mickey Mouse shortly afterward. Here it is over 20 years later, and you’re painting these characters again.

AW: I know, I just can’t believe I did it. But this time it was more complicated. We had to go through getting copyrights and everything like that.

BB: Now that the history of Pop Art is behind Superman and Mickey Mouse, do these characters mean anything different to you than when you originally painted Superman?

AW: No, it just means that I liked it then and I still like it now.

BB: “Myths” really captures the American spirit from a lot of different angles.

AW: The only one I didn’t understand was
The Shadow
, and that was me, so. . . .

BB: The image of The Witch is really striking. Is that Margaret Hamilton, the same woman who played the Wicked Witch in
The Wizard of Oz
?

AW: Yes, she’s so wonderful. She lives right in this neighborhood. She looks and acts the same as she did back then.

BB: There’s probably no child or adult in this country who hasn’t seen
Oz
. It’s easily as American as Mickey Mouse.

AW: I wonder if kids who see that movie think it’s a new movie or an old movie. Some kids know about old movies and others haven’t even heard of some of the stars that were around.

BB: What impressed me most about
The Witch
was the color. The way the shape and color interact reminds me of things Ellsworth Kelly used to do. I’ve always wanted to know if you ever thought of your paintings in the ‘60s in terms of Kelly and Noland, your contemporaries doing abstract art.

AW: I always liked Ellsworth’s work, and that’s why I always painted a blank canvas. I loved that blank canvas thing and I wish that I had stuck with the idea of just painting the same painting, like the soup can, and never painting another painting. When someone wanted one, you would just do another one. Does anybody do that now? Anyway, you do the same painting whether it looks different or not.

BB: Yes, for example the
Dracula
looks similar to the way you did Kafka in the last series. Both emerge from the darkness like ghosts. So does the
Mammy
. Powerful image and color have been the issue from the start. Was the Superman you used from a DC comic?

AW: Yes. I wanted to do Wonder Woman, too.

BB: Did you consider using one of the movie or TV actors for your
Superman?

AW: Well, I thought the man who played in the TV series [George Reeves] looked just like the comic book character.

BB: More than half of the
Myths
are based on TV or movie characters. Is this to say that modern myths are mostly made on the screen?

AW: Yes, I guess so. . . . Afterward, yes. But the TV is so much more modern.

BB: From the beginning you’ve been doing prints in one form or another–from the blotted paper technique to rubber stamps, and then to silkscreens, which you use to this day.

AW: The silkscreens were really an accident. The first one was the
Money
painting, but that was a silkscreen of a drawing. Then someone told me you could use a photographic image, and that’s how it all started. The
Baseball
painting was the first to use the photo-silkscreen.

BB: When you first began using silkscreens, you were concentrating on removing your personal touch from the work. Now your paintings have a lot of brushwork and drawing, and are expressionist by comparison.

AW: I really would still rather do just a silkscreen of the face without all the rest, but people expect just a little bit more. That’s why I put in all the drawing.

BB: As a portraitist, what do you feel is most important to express?

AW: I always try to make the person look good. It’s easier if you give somebody something back that looks like them. Otherwise, if I were more imaginative, it wouldn’t look like the person.

BB: How many shots do you take for each portrait? Do you take them all yourself?

AW: Yes, I take them all. Usually about 10 rolls, about 100 shots.

BB: Do you still use the SX-70?

AW: No, I use the “Big Shot” now.

BB: What’s been the general response to the portraits from the people who commissioned them?

AW: The Polaroids are really great because the people can choose the photo they want. That makes it easier. And this camera also dissolves the wrinkles and imperfections.

BB: Polaroid is like color TV in a way. It has its own idea about what blue is or what red is. It’s a very subjective color that seems like it was custom made for your art.

AW: Yes, it seemed to be. But it’s hard to do whole bodies with it. I haven’t learned to take whole bodies with it yet. I do have a camera that can take whole bodies, though.

BB: The camera has been an essential part of your art for so long. I saw some early Campbell’s soup can drawings at a Guggenheim drawing show some years ago. How did you do those drawings? Were they projected onto the paper?

AW: Yes. They were photographs that I projected and traced onto the paper. I used both slides and opaque projectors in those days. I also used a light box.

BB: Your use of photography as a direct source for images was pretty unique at that time, and is interesting to consider in view of the continued use of photographs by the Photo-Realists several years later. What did you think of Photo-Realism when you first saw it?

AW: I loved all their work.

BB: I thought your recent book
POPism
expressed the true sense of the 60s, both positive and negative. You really point out the exhilaration of that decade. In one part of the book, you say you felt like you could do anything then. You had gallery shows, made films and produced the Velvet Underground.

AW: Yes, but there are a lot of kids who are doing the same thing now. It probably will be back again.

BB: I know a young artist who does drawings, reliefs, plays in a band, and makes films and video. I don’t know where he gets all his time.

AW: If you don’t get so involved in business, you can have the time. Since we have a business here, I can’t do all the fun things I did at one time.

BB: No more rock bands?

AW: No, we’re managing Walter Steding and the Dragon People. We’re doing a video promo of that right now at our studio downtown.

BB: I’ve seen some of Steding’s portraits. He’s a good painter, too. . . .

Throughout
POPism
you wonder if Picasso had heard of your work yet. Did he ever?

AW: I don’t know–I never met him. We just know Paloma. Now her husband is writing the Paris gossip column for
Interview
.

BB: Since at least 1970, particularly with the
Jciggers
and
Jews,
there are some stylistic touches that bring to mind Cubism and Picasso’s succinct way of drawing. Was he an influence?

AW: I was trying to do the portraits differently then. Since the transvestite portraits, I’ve tried to work more into the paintings. I may have been thinking of Picasso at the time.

BB: For a whole new generation of figurative artists, you’re now the Picasso figure of sorts. Many young artists I speak to name you as a major inspiration. What do you think about this new image-oriented art?

AW: I like every art in New York. It’s so terrific and there’s so much of it. BB: Do you have any favorite artists or galleries?

AW: There are so many artists that are so good now that it’s very hard to pick out one or two. It’s hard for me to go to galleries because the kids stop me all the time. There was a show at the Whitney of young artists that I liked–Lynda Benglis and the young guy who does the chairs [Scott Burton].

BB: Did you see the Times Square Show
²
last summer?

AW: No, I didn’t, but I saw pictures of it in magazines and the newspaper. It looked like the early 60s–the Reuben Gallery and places like that.

BB: There’s an excitement in the air that seems quite similar in spirit to the early Pop days.

AW: It was funny then–I guess there was a different mood. Now, in New York I just notice how beautiful the people are. Since there’s no war that everybody’s going to, they have the pick of the best athletes, models, and actors. They always had great girl models, but now the boy models are just as good. The pick is so much better now because they’re all in New York instead of in the army. Sixties actors were all peculiar-looking people and now the new stars are really good-looking, like Christopher Reeve.

BB: What about the art world?

AW: Twenty years ago was such a different time for artists, too.

BB: Now that we’ve come out of ’70s art, artists can do paintings of people instead of putting sticks on the floor. Painting is a vital issue now, whereas 10 years ago people were talking about the end of painting.