The Andy Warhol Museum on His 80th Birthday
Moving the Factory to Pittsburgh
By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 02, 2008
Andy Warhol should have died on June 3, 1968. He was shot point blank by the outraged feminist, would be film writer and star, Valerie Solanas. Like other assassins and wannabes her name and pathetic persona survive in infamy. She was the founder and only member of S.C.U.M. or Society to Cut Up Men.
Like others on the fringe Andy had given her a 'screen test' and allowed her to hang out along with all the other artists/ poseurs/ celebrities real and imagined who inhabited the Factory. His studio near Union Square and14th street was within walking distance of Max's Kansas City. At some point she gave him a script which he apparently misplaced. She returned with a gun wanting it back. Like Hitler the sad Valerie just wanted to be an artist. In one of his many guises Andy was an enabler for those with even the slightest pretext and talent as ersatz artists.
Much of his art resided on the cusp between high art and outrageously inept amateurism. This is nowhere more evident in the remarkable oeuvre than in his films. Often the performances were so egregiously bad that they make Ed Wood's turgid camp classics look like the product of an auteur. One of Andy's many unique talents was the ability to embrace the rank and grotesque yet, somehow, with the use of his magic wand and fairy dust, to turn frogs into princes. At least for a moment, until these Junebugs danced in frenzy and seemingly evaporated in clouds of meth and horse. Crashed and burned like Edie, or, jumped out a window like Eric Emerson. (One who was there corrects this by stating that "Eric Emerson never jumped out of a window but landed in the gutter by friends who took it upon themselves to dump him there in a dazed OD.")
In more ways than one it was bad luck that Solanas shot Andy (see the film I Shot Andy Warhol) on that particular day. Andy, who loved celebrity, fought for his life while the media covered the assassination of Robert Kennedy by another confused nobody, Sirhan Sirhan. The doctors pronounced Andy D.O.A. and then miraculously pulled him back from the lure of the white light.
For the next eleven years of his life, however, Andy was spooked by the freaks. Instead, he started to hang with Truman Capote, Liza Minnelli and the rest of the pretenders of Studio 54. During this phase he earned big bucks cranking out silk screened, formulaic "portraits" of the mega rich. They were a means of cashing in on the authentic brilliance and originality of the earlier Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor portraits. Andy got big bucks for these canned portraits which are just awful if you see enough of them. But Andy liked the money after all he blew on those terrible films which are now dissected, like the Koran and Bible, in art schools and college seminars. Like so many basset hounds those films were wonderful and loveable precisely because they were so charmingly, ugly awful. The worse the "acting" and production values the more they are treasured by the ever increasing numbers of academics who write books and build careers feeding on Warhol's carrion and ephemera.
If you follow the Warhol field you have to wonder if it is redolent of scholarship or necrophilia. But Andy wouldn't mind. Fame is its own reward.
Truth is, in those eleven years, post Valerie, Andy was more than just banged up. He showed his scars in the famous portraits by Avedon and Alice Neel. But the real wounds ran deeper. The more devastating consequence is that he seemed to have lost his edge and nerve. Hanging with High Society may have insulated him from the dangerous crazies but it also cut him off from the source. Andy was famous for taking other people's ideas and making them his own. Today, of course, we call that appropriation of which he was the master. He was really more of a chameleon and sponge than an originator. He had that commercial gift of making things look good. He had the ability to transform banality into brilliance and elegance. There was a compelling simplicity to the best work. More evident in the fabulous graphic works than in the point and shoot, deadpan artifice of the films. There, he just set up the tripod and placed the wackos in front of the camera to sink or swim. Some rose to the occasion like Ondine as the Pope slapping around a woman in "Chelsea Girls" for her alleged lack of respect.
It is ironic that Andy actually did die on February 22, 1987. Where it was a miracle that he survived being shot there is no way he should have passed away from recovery following gall bladder surgery. The special nurse on duty that night was more interested in reading her Bible than monitoring his vital signs when he went into cardiac arrest. Perhaps the Gods were paying him back for those eleven years of living on borrowed time and producing mostly mediocre work. The Gods, mean bastards that they are, have a way of pulling that kind of shit.
The current issue of Interview, the magazine which he founded, celebrates his coming 80th birthday in August. This is an occasion for all the scholars, apologists, revisionists and former "superstars" to once again cavort in the dazzling light of his reflected glory. While sub rosa we have been informed that there is a scandal brewing that will "rock the art world."
The irony is that Andy got swept up and given a creative transfusion during that fallow period following the shooting through collaborations with admirers like Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente and Jean Michel Basquiat. To these younger artists he was a role model and inspiration even though he fed on them more than they took from him. One may only speculate what might have been had Andy not croaked at 59. There was still some rubber on his wheels.
These musings are conjured up by reflections on visiting the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. And, mulling over the recent passing of another Pop master, Robert Rauschenberg. A careful reading of history reveals that, early on, Andy was shunned by his peers Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Apparently, they thought he was too flagrantly gay and didn't want any of the treacle to rub off on their aura as serious artists. Which is odd since they were an item at the time, however closeted, along with Cy Twombly who decamped to Italy.
Andy was involved, whether he knew it or not, in creating a Gesamtkunst, or Total Work of Art. Everything about Andy involved the art. There were no boundaries. It was all art. Where Bob and Jasper, while experimenting in multi media, were about making art art. Or art which was art rather than living art as art in which making art is just a part and consequence of being art which is more than art which is after all just art.
This also means that Andy's work can be boring. Just as life often is. While Jasper's art never is and Bob's often was. Well Bob's work wasn't really boring perhaps, let's say, not always terrific. And Jasper's stuff is not really always terrific but never quite boring. Well, maybe. But Andy's stuff is often boring which is why it is art. And can't be dwelled upon individually but rather must be located ensemble. Even those horrible, piss poor, rich people portraits of don't give a fig about German industrialists and Park Avenue over the hill debutantes. Compared to which losers like Viva, Ultra Violet, Edie, Baby Jane, Henry, The Velvet Underground, Nico, Lou, Rene, Taylor Mead, Ed Hood, Bruce Pecheur, Susan Bottomley, Joe Dellesandro, Mario, the G, Billy Name, Paul Morrisey, Ondine, Bridget, Eric, Valerie, Candy and the rest of the tawdry gang are absolutely intriguing.
Well, kindah. As we soon found out, yet again, when we sat in the theatre of the Warhol Museum which continually screens the hundreds of films in its vault. This one was something rankly amateurish "starring" the now forgotten Susan Blond as a reporter. It is one of those Warhol moments which have long out ticked their allotted fifteen minutes. We endured it until Astrid wanted to leave. She has less nostalgia for this stuff than I have. Our memories of the 60s are very different. She never watched Rene Ricard dance on table tops in the back room of Max's under the Dan Flavin light sculptures.
The Warhol Museum reminded me of the Factory which I visited with my friend Jim Jacobs who worked for Castelli Gallery at the time. I remember the junky couch, flaking silver walls, and the pay phone. The pay phone struck me as odd but it was a brilliant way to keep the entourage of street people from running up the bill. There is the same deadpan feeling to the Pittsburgh based museum and archive. It does and doesn't work. Overall, the setting feels so drab and ordinary. More like a place to work and make stuff than to see it.
Most of what was on view was so readily familiar that the visit revealed few surprises or insights. Of course it is also a study center so scholars get to poke about in all that junk and ephemera that Andy horded. The endless Polaroid snap shots and tape recordings, the Time Capsules of cardboard boxes in which he tossed the junk mail, records and promo items sent to him in great abundance. In that sense it is not surprising that there is a thriving Warhol industry among scholars. There is so much material that there is a bottomless trove for research.
Not that it really matters. There is nothing new to say about Warhol. It is what it is and needn't be explained. You either get it or you don't. The more you explain it the less interesting it becomes.
But if you find yourself in Pittsburgh, a quite nice city actually, probably a lot more interesting and less grimy than when Andy ran away from home, by all means, drop in on the Warhol Museum. Just be prepared to be disappointed if you know the work and are expecting any really new and brilliant insights.
Yeah, it was funny to see his wigs and girdle in vitrines like mummies in cases in the Cairo Museum. And there was a special exhibition of recent digital, large format, photos by Neke Carson. As well as a video and Polaroids that Andy took while Carson painted his portrait manipulating a paint brush stuck up his ass. Actually, not a bad likeness, considering its unique means of execution. I endured the video long enough to get the drift of what Carson was doing. As usual, Andy in the video seemed both amused and flattered by the absurd attention. The museum states that it is the first time that the "Portrait" has been displayed since its creation.
Why am I not surprised? Nothing about Andy surprises me. What I miss about Andy is that nothing really mattered. Today, everyone tries so hard to make real good art. For Andy, it was all kindah loosey goosey and effortless. No heavy lifting. Andy makes me laugh. But what's really funny is that his museum ended up back in Pittsburgh. That's a long haul from Max's.