I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (35 page)

BUCHLOH So the shift that has occurred in the last five years has not at all bothered you? The return to figuration, the return to manual painting procedures–that’s nothing that you see in conflict with your own work and its history?

WARHOL No, because I’m doing the same. . . . If only I had stayed with doing the
Campbell’s Soup
well, because everybody only does one painting anyway. Doing it whenever you need money is a really good idea, just that one painting over and over again, which is what everybody remembers you for anyway.

BUCHLOH The fact that people are now pretending again that painting is something that is very creative and skillfully executed and depends on an artist’s competence–I mean the reversal of all the sixties’ ideas that has taken place–you do not consider that to be a problem at all? Because the statements I see in your recent paintings seem to distance themselves from all that. In fact, the
Oxidation
paintings or the
Rorschach
paintings seem very polemical.

WARHOL No, but at that time they would have fit in with the conceptual paintings or something like that.

BUCHLOH It’s too bad that the
Oxidation
paintings weren’t shown in New York.

WARHOL Well, when I showed them in Paris, the hot lights made them melt again; it’s very weird when they drip down. They looked like real drippy paintings; they never stopped dripping because the lights were so hot. Then you can understand why those holy pictures cry all the time–it must have something to do with the material that they were painted on, or something like that. They look sort of interesting. I guess I have to go back to them. But the thing I was really trying to work on was the invisible painting, the invisible sculpture that I was working on. Did you go see the show at Area?

BUCHLOH No, not yet.

WARHOL Disco art? You haven’t done disco art yet? Really good art–you should see it. It’s going to be over soon. A lot of work by about thirty artists; it’s really interesting.

BUCHLOH What did you do at Area?

WARHOL The invisible sculpture, but it’s not really the way I had planned it. I’ve been working on it with the electronic things that make noises go off when you go into an area. But this one down here, it’s just something or nothing on a pedestal. But Arman has a beautiful bicycle piece down there at Area. It filled one whole window, one whole window filled with bicycles. It’s really beautiful. I think he’s such a great artist.

BUCHLOH So you are aware of his work later on, just not in that early moment of the early 1960s accumulations. And you think that the early work is interesting as well, the work from the late fifties and the repetition of the readymade objects?

WARHOL Yes, well, that’s what he always does.

BUCHLOH The earlier ones are more direct and poignant than the later work, which is kind of aestheticized.

WARHOL The earlier ones I saw were like a car. What was that, a cop car or something?

BUCHLOH He put a package of dynamite under a car, a white MG, and blew it up. There was a collector in Dlisseldorf, an advertising man who gave him a commission to do a work. So Arman said, “OK, Charles Wilp, give me your white MG car,” and blew it up. It’s called
White Orchid–
it’s a wonderful piece.

WARHOL But his work now is really great.

BUCHLOH I would be interested in discussing how you saw the subsequent development in the 1960s with the rise of minimal and conceptual art, before the rather rapid inversion of all of these ideas in the early 1980s. Do you have any particular relation to those artists that came out of conceptual art? Did you follow up on these issues? Do the non-painterly artists who are now working interest you as much as the painters do?

WARHOL Yes, but there are not many. There are [fewer] conceptual artists around now for some reason.

BUCHLOH But at the time when conceptual art was done–people like Lawrence Weiner, for example–does that kind of work interest you?

WARHOL Yeah, that was great. But are they still working? Are they doing the same thing?

BUCHLOH Yes, they’re still working; they’ve continued to develop these approaches. In public, you seem to support painting more than anything else.

WARHOL Oh no, I love that work. They’re all great.

BUCHLOH So you don’t see painting now as contrary to your own work.

WARHOL Nowadays, with so many galleries and stuff, you can just be anything. It doesn’t matter any more; everybody has taste or something like that. There are so many galleries. Every day a new one opens up, so there’s room for everybody. It’s amazing that you can go in every category and it’s just as good, and just as expensive.

BUCHLOH So you don’t attach any particular importance to one principle any longer? In the sixties, there was a strong belief system attached to the art.

WARHOL In the sixties everything changed so fast. First it was pop, and then they gave it different names, like conceptual art. They made it sound like it was modern art or something because it changed so fast, so I don’t know whether pop art was part of that, or whether it was something else, because it happened so fast.

BUCHLOH But the question of the original, for example–the artist as an author, as an inventor, or as somebody who manufactures precious objects–was a question that was really criticized in the sixties. You were always the central figure in these debates, or at least you were perceived as the central figure who had criticized that notion in the same way that Duchamp had criticized it. And now things have turned around, and now it seems that this is no longer an issue at all.

WARHOL Certainly I would like to think that I could only work that way. But then you can think one way, but you don’t really do it; you can think about not drinking, but you drink, or something like that. And then I hear about this kind of painting machine a kid just did, and then I fantasize that it would be such a great machine. But, you know Tinguely did one sort of like that.

BUCHLOH Yes, in the late 1950s, at the height of tachism,
¹
when it became too absurd.

WARHOL I still think there is another way of doing that painting machine. This kid has done it, but it falls apart. But I really think you could have a machine that paints all day long for you and do it really well, and you could do something else instead, and you could turn out really wonderful canvases. But it’s like . . . I don’t know, this morning I went to the handbag district, and there were people that spend all day just putting in rhinestones with their hands, which is just amazing, that they do everything by hand. It would be different if some machine did it. . . . Have you been going to galleries and seeing all the new things?

BUCHLOH Yes, I go fairly consistently, and I have never really quite understood why everything has been turned around in that way, why all of a sudden people start looking at paintings again as if certain things never happened.

WARHOL It’s like in the sixties when we met our first drag queens, and they thought they were the first to do it. Now I go to a party and these little kids have become drag queens. They think they are the only people who ever thought of being a drag queen, which is sort of weird. It’s like they invented it, and it’s all new again, so it makes it really interesting.

BUCHLOH Are your TV program and your paintings, then, in a sense the extreme opposite poles of your activities as an artist?

WARHOL Yes, we are trying to do two things, but the painting is really exciting. I don’t know, I’m just really excited about all the kids coming up, like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Kenny Scharf. The Italians and Germans are pretty good, but the French aren’t as good. But like you were saying about Yves Klein and stuff being. . . . But the French do really have one good painter, I mean, my favorite artist would be the last big artist in Paris. What’s his name?

BUCHLOH A painter?

WARHOL Yes, the last famous painter. Buffet.

BUCHLOH Many of the new painters seem to imitate him anyway.

WARHOL Well, I don’t know, I don’t see any difference between that and Giacometti. Somewhere along the line, people decided that it was commercial or whatever it was. But he’s still painting, and I still see the things; the prices are still $20,000 to $30,000. He could still be there. His work is good; his technique is really good; he’s as good as the other French guy who just died a couple of days ago, Dubuffet. What do you think has happened? Do you think it is not that good?

1
Tachism was a style of painting practiced in Paris after World War II and through the 1950s. Like its U.S. equivalent, action painting, it featured the intuitive, spontaneous gesture of the artist’s brush stroke.

Warhol Studios, New York City. Into the front to shake hands, all around. Managers, producers, art dealers, and, in the back of the crowd, Andy Warhol. Small, black jeans, sneakers, bright pink glasses, white hair. He shakes hands with a quiet “Hi,” then disappears somewhere into the large building while the rest of us are taken up, two at a time, in a very small Otis elevator to a second or third floor dining room for lunch.

The cozy affair is filled with editors from
Interview
magazine, art critics, friends, managers, us (Glenn Suokko,
AmigaWorld’s
Art Director, and myself), and others all talking, drinking wine, sitting at some unheard command and eating. Andy drifts in quietly, sits and eats at the far end of the table. Monosyllabic answers to questions asked by others at the table.

I ask an editor of
Interview
what questions I should ask Andy. “Is there anything he likes to talk about?”

“That’s a hard one,” he says. “Andy doesn’t do interviews. I’m just glad that because he is the publisher [of
Interview
] I will never have to interview him. I don’t know what I would ask. You should ask his manager.”

Earlier, I asked Jeff, an engineer from Commodore who has been working with Andy for weeks on his new video for MTV, the same question. “I don’t know,” Jeff said. “He doesn’t talk much. He doesn’t talk at all. He doesn’t do interviews, as far as I know. You guys are really lucky to get an interview with him.”

Finally, I ask the Commodore exec who set up the interview in the first place. “Maybe I should ask the questions,” he says. “Andy doesn’t talk much, and I have no idea how it will go.”

Our photographer arrives and Glenn goes up to the video studio to help set up lights. Lunch ends and I follow Andy upstairs to the studio.

“So you don’t do interviews?”

“No,” Andy says abruptly. He disappears again.

Great.

The video studio where the MTV video was put together has chairs, equipment racks, monitors, video editing decks, cameras, lights and two Amigas. Some paintings are brought in. Four by four foot Dolly Parton, Punching bags. Things. Vincent Freemont, Producer for
Andy Warhols
T.V., has everyone sit and we preview Andy
Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes (More or Less
) video for MTV. The portions done on the Amiga are pointed out. Titles and special effects. Andy has drifted in to watch.

When it is over, most of the people in the room either leave or move or remain seated. A video camera is connected to a digitizer connected to one of the Amigas, and Andy sits before it. Lights are adjusted. The camera is turned on. The software is loaded.

Our photographer begins shooting almost nonstop. He uses a camera with an auto-winder so he can click-zhhh, click-zhhh, click-zhhh as fast as he can paint and focus. He moves around the room quickly using up roll after roll of film.

No one is sure who is supposed to be there and who isn’t. People wander, people sit, people talk. The engineer plugs in cables, types on the keyboard, moves and clicks the mouse, changes settings.

And Andy Warhol sits before an Amiga that is soon alive.

Images of what the video camera sees are fed into the Amiga and onto the screen. At first there are flickers of color and interference. The camera is pointed at nothing, and then (more for something to focus on than anything else) the engineer points the camera at the painting of Dolly Parton leaning against a rack filled with videotapes.

It doesn’t really start anywhere. At some point tape recorders are turned on. At another point the software is working. Throughout there is the click-zhhh, click-zhhh, click-zhhh of the photographer’s 35mm camera. Andy begins playing with the mouse, and the colors on the screen change with each move and click. He is intrigued with the changing colors and weird effects caused by the camera-light-software-mouse-people combination.

While waiting for the interview to begin, the interview began. More as a conversation than an interview. Andy playing with the computer image, people coming in and going out. Many people asking questions, even Andy asking questions. The photographer shooting from every possible angle in the room. The engineer constantly adjusting equipment. People doing nothing but watching the screen as the colors change or the video camera is moved or the lights are moved or as Andy tries something else.

A color painting of Dolly Parton is, at first, shades of black, white and gray, but soon is illuminated, replacing the original colors with electronic Amiga colors.

An interview with Andy Warhol, who doesn’t do interviews–an artist at the Amiga launch, an artist long before Amigas. Publisher of
Interview
magazine. Involved with video, MTV, rock, films, people and things like Amiga computers.

GLENN: When did you do this portrait of Dolly?

ANDY: Last week.

GLEN: Hmmm. Look at that color.

ANDY: It would be great to just drop this color in. Oh yeah. So, do you want to ask me any questions?

GSW (GUY WRIGHT): What do you want to talk about?

ANDY: Oh, I don’t know.

GLENN: Is this the greatest thing since sliced bread?

ANDY: Oh yeah, it is.

GLENN: How do you see this work being displayed? How would you show something that you create on an Amiga to the general public?

ANDY: Well, we could get a printout. I could just print this out if we had the printer.

GSW: Would you sell the prints or distribute the disk itself?

ANDY: Well, this friend of mine, named Jean-Michel Basquiat, goes to the xerox machine and puts xerox all over his paintings. So, if we had a printer right here I could do it this way and just sign it as a print. But, I guess if printers ever get really big, like a twenty by thirty or thirty by forty, then it would really be great.

GSW: So you don’t see any problem? Something you do on the computer can be re-created pixel for pixel, an exact duplicate?

ANDY: Well, in prints they are supposed to be exact duplicates. So. . . .

GSW: But there is a finite number, like print number fifty-six of one hundred.

ANDY: Well, you can stop at whatever number you want. Etchings usually stop at a certain number.

[
The motorized film advancer on the photographer’s camera is furiously click-zhhhing, click-zhhhing, click-zhhhing while people move around the room and Andy taps the buttons on the mouse.
]

GLENN: Could you ever imagine monitors sunk into walls in museums or galleries?

ANDY: Kids have been doing it already. The Palladium has two big square TV sets going all the time, with about 25 to 50 sets on each side. They haven’t done any art yet, but it would be great to do that.

GSW: Like the Limelight with their bank of TV sets along one wall.

ANDY: Yeah, but actually Private Eyes is a video bar. [
To Glenn
] Have you been there?

GLENN: No.

ANDY: It used to be right around here. So if you have a video you want to screen down there for a party, you can. It’s not a dancing place. It’s just a video bar.

GSW: Do you think that might be the new wave museums?

ANDY: Well, yeah, actually, when I worked on this at Lincoln Center [the Amiga launch], it was like a museum, because we had a couple thousand people and I was working with it on the stage. It was like a museum because you could show your work.

GSW: Instant museum in a finite time period.

ANDY: Yes.

GSW: So it’s not a static art?

ANDY: Jack [
Haeger, Art and Graphics Director at Commodore-Amiga
], who was working with me before, uses it more like brushes and paint.

GSW: Do you like working with it?

ANDY: I love it.

GSW: Are you going to buy one?

ANDY: Well, we already have two, so we are going to buy the printer.

GSW: You are talking about the high-quality printer?

ANDY: Well, they had the one at the launch, which was this big [
measuring four square inches in the air with his hands
]. It was really cute. Very pretty.

[
People wander about the room. There is conversation in the background. The engineer adjusts cables. The photographer loads film, shoots some more. The image on the Amiga vibrates with the changing room lighting and with the passing of people in front of the video camera angle.
]

GLENN: I like the movement.

ANDY: Well, it’s not–oooh [
as the engineer moves the video camera, sending electric streaks of color across the Amiga’s screen
]–it is usually still. I guess the cycle is on. Oh, that stops it. Ooh yeah, that is nicer.

[
The image settles down to crimson polarized wash of the day-glo Dolly Parton painting leaning crooked behind a bank of video production equipment
]

GSW: Do you see this as more video-oriented, as opposed to computer-oriented?

ANDY: I think everything–anyone can use it.

GSW: Do you think there will be a rise in personal art?

ANDY: That too, yeah. [
Crimson changes to mauve to orange to fuchsia as Andy moves and clicks the mouse.
] Well, I’ve been telling everybody about the machine, but they haven’t been able to get one yet.

GLENN: Have any of your artist friends seen the stuff that you’ve done?

ANDY: We had somebody come down the other day, and people heave read in magazines about the stuff we did at the launch.

GLENN: How do your friends feel about computer art generally?

ANDY: They all like it. They have been using the xerox, and they can’t wait until they can use this because there are so many people into xerox art. You do it and then take the stuff to the xerox store and do the prints there. Jean-Michel Basquiat uses xerox. So, if he could be printing out on his own machine, he would be using this.

GLENN: Jean-Michel was the artist who worked with you on this? [
An illustrated punching bag.
]

ANDY: Yes.

GSW: Do you like the machine because it is so quick?

ANDY: I think it’s great. It’s quick and everything.

GSW: What influence do you think this will have on mass art as opposed to high art?

ANDY: Mass art is high art.

GSW: Do you think it will push the artists? Do you think that people will be inclined to use all the different components of the art, music, video, etc.?

ANDY: That’s the best part about it. I guess you can. . . . An artist can really do the whole thing. Actually, he can make a film with everything on it, music and sound and art. . . everything.

GLENN: Have you been doing anything with the music capabilities?

ANDY: Not yet. We were just trying to learn the art part of it first. [
Another color change on the digitized video image of Andy’s photographic painting of Dolly. Where there were reds are now blue-blacks, where there was flesh-pink there is now yellow-green.
] Oh, this is great.

GSW: Do you think the computer has a limiting effect?

ANDY: No.

GSW: Do you think it is open ended?

ANDY: Yeah. [
Andy is distracted constantly by the changing colors on the Amiga screen. The Dolly Parton portrait is color animated with each mouse move and click.
] Gee, if we had a printer now, I could just print these out and send them to Dolly Parton in all these different colors. It would save us a lot of trouble.

GLENN: Has she seen the portrait?