Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Andy Warhol Worked

Transcript

How Andy Warhol Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:14
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck, Bryan Jerry's here and this is Stuff
0:17
Speaker 1: you should Know.
0:19
Speaker 2: And look, there's Andy Warhol. Yeah, Anitie Sedgwick and lou Reid.
0:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Jackie Curtis and Valerie Solanas, the whole gangs here.
0:29
Speaker 2: We did one on that right in the Scum Manifesto.
0:32
Speaker 1: Yes, we did, okay. Chapter eighteen of our book is
0:35
Speaker 1: on the Scum Manifesto in Valerie Solanas shooting Andy Warhol.
0:39
Speaker 2: We did not do it as a podcast yet no,
0:41
Speaker 2: Oh well, probably never will.
0:43
Speaker 1: Oh okay, But I think, Chuck, before we get into this,
0:47
Speaker 1: we should dispend something because I think it's very instructive
0:50
Speaker 1: about Andy Warhol. He is. Probably the most famous quote
0:55
Speaker 1: from him is that ever in the future, everyone will
0:58
Speaker 1: be famous for fifteen minutes. And he didn't say that,
1:03
Speaker 1: even in an interview in nineteen eighty he said he
1:05
Speaker 1: didn't say it. He used it in I think a
1:08
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty or sixty eight exhibition like the Notes, but
1:12
Speaker 1: it wasn't his. There is at least four other people
1:15
Speaker 1: who can make a claim to having said it first,
1:18
Speaker 1: and that that says a lot about any Warhol that
1:20
Speaker 1: he was not shy or embarrassed or even secretive about
1:25
Speaker 1: taking other people's ideas, even asking for other people for
1:28
Speaker 1: ideas to use in his own work. And then it
1:32
Speaker 1: also shows that the idea that he said that, and
1:37
Speaker 1: that that's so associated with him and his whole you know, ethos,
1:41
Speaker 1: it also demonstrates that he himself was one of his
1:45
Speaker 1: own works of art, his own brand, his own image,
1:49
Speaker 1: his own everything about him was he was one of
1:52
Speaker 1: his own works of art. And those two things are
1:54
Speaker 1: all captured in just that one little quote.
1:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. A little
1:59
Speaker 2: bit about his childhood before we get to the good stuff.
2:03
Speaker 2: He was born, actually, Andrew WARHOLA he would drop the
2:07
Speaker 2: a years later. He was born. And it's interesting you
2:10
Speaker 2: think of Warhol as a contemporary artist, which he is
2:14
Speaker 2: in some ways, but he was born in nineteen twenty eight.
2:18
Speaker 2: It's not like, you know, he was a bit older
2:21
Speaker 2: when he was at Studio fifty four in the nineteen seventies,
2:24
Speaker 2: older as in my age.
2:26
Speaker 1: Even stranger than that, chuck. He was born in.
2:28
Speaker 2: Pittsburgh, yeah, well not stranger if you're from Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh
2:34
Speaker 2: is very proud of their Warhol connection, especially to Carnegie
2:37
Speaker 2: Mellon University, where he went. His parents were European immigrants
2:42
Speaker 2: and his mother was an artist. He was the youngest
2:44
Speaker 2: of three boys, and his parents were very encouraging of
2:47
Speaker 2: his art. They got him a camera when he was
2:50
Speaker 2: a little kid. They sent him to art classes and
2:53
Speaker 2: eventually would pay for him to go. It was a
2:55
Speaker 2: Carnegie Institute of Technology at the time, but Carnegie Mellon
2:58
Speaker 2: now which is a great art school, which is kind
3:01
Speaker 2: of period.
3:02
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it really is. I read that the whole
3:04
Speaker 1: family just kind of, I don't want to say coddle,
3:08
Speaker 1: but he was a bit of the center of attention.
3:10
Speaker 1: He was the center of the family, being the baby
3:12
Speaker 1: of three boys. And when he was a kid, he
3:16
Speaker 1: came down with Sydenham Korea or Korea which is also
3:21
Speaker 1: known as Saint Vitas dance, which is a really mean
3:23
Speaker 1: name for a neurological disorder where you have involuntary movements,
3:29
Speaker 1: and he was in bed for a number of months,
3:32
Speaker 1: and he again just happened to have a mom who
3:35
Speaker 1: was into art, who took that time to teach him
3:38
Speaker 1: to draw, and then he also spent some of that
3:41
Speaker 1: time reading celebrity magazine. So those two things that he
3:44
Speaker 1: got into when he was sick in bed really kind
3:48
Speaker 1: of came together to form the foundation of his whole career.
3:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you said, he was the youngest. He
3:53
Speaker 2: was also ill. He had a skin discoloration issue. He
3:59
Speaker 2: didn't like his nose. He thought his nose was bulbous
4:01
Speaker 2: and misshapen. He was bullied at school. He was always
4:06
Speaker 2: very just always felt bad. It's sort of about the
4:08
Speaker 2: way he looked. And then later in life when he
4:10
Speaker 2: would wear wigs and have plastic surgery and wear makeup
4:14
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, people would say that sort of
4:16
Speaker 2: you know, was andy. From the time he was young.
4:19
Speaker 2: His father would die when he was just fourteen years
4:21
Speaker 2: old of johndice liver. It was very hard on young Andrew.
4:26
Speaker 2: He could not go to the funeral. I don't know
4:28
Speaker 2: if that's from emotion.
4:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was completely overwhelmed.
4:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Yeah, so he was hiding under his bed
4:35
Speaker 2: during the wake. And eventually he would move to New
4:37
Speaker 2: York City in nineteen forty nine, where he would drop
4:41
Speaker 2: that a and become a very successful commercial illustrator kind
4:45
Speaker 2: of pretty quickly.
4:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, he knew how to hustle too. I read that
4:48
Speaker 1: he would go to record stores and look at album
4:51
Speaker 1: art and then pick out the labels that had the
4:53
Speaker 1: coolest art, and then go to those labels and try
4:56
Speaker 1: to get work from him. Man, it worked a lot,
4:58
Speaker 1: and I think it's one of those things where once
5:00
Speaker 1: you make a name for yourself with a couple of companies,
5:02
Speaker 1: it gets easier and easier to get work. So he
5:05
Speaker 1: made a pretty good name for himself. He made a
5:07
Speaker 1: pretty good living as a commercial artist for at least
5:11
Speaker 1: the first decade or so of his career. And he
5:15
Speaker 1: had this style that I don't know was unique to him,
5:18
Speaker 1: but you know, he basically adopted it himself, where he
5:21
Speaker 1: would draw something, usually kind of out of proportion, some
5:25
Speaker 1: parts were more detailed than others. It very very early
5:28
Speaker 1: sixties drawing, like almost pink Panther type illustration, and then
5:32
Speaker 1: he would blot the ink before it was dry, so
5:35
Speaker 1: some parts would be thicker, some lines would be thicker
5:38
Speaker 1: than other parts that were not even disconnected and almost
5:41
Speaker 1: appeared dotted, and then he would go over and color
5:43
Speaker 1: them in outside of the lines, like almost blot them
5:47
Speaker 1: with paint. And he became really well known for that,
5:51
Speaker 1: and it was really good to apply to women's shoes
5:54
Speaker 1: and that was one of his favorite things to draw
5:56
Speaker 1: commercial art for.
5:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, he also started and this would come come in
6:00
Speaker 2: very handy, as we will see when he sort of
6:02
Speaker 2: had his assembly line art thing going at the factory,
6:06
Speaker 2: he would he'd made stamps of things. He made rubber stamps,
6:10
Speaker 2: and this is how he would do printmaking. So if
6:12
Speaker 2: he had a client and was like, I love this,
6:14
Speaker 2: but I don't like the color, he could go do
6:16
Speaker 2: it again without starting all over, just by changing the
6:19
Speaker 2: color out on the stamp. Or if he was doing
6:22
Speaker 2: like screen printing or printmaking or something like that, He's
6:25
Speaker 2: very easy to change things up. Then, like you said,
6:28
Speaker 2: he won awards, he made some pretty good money. He
6:32
Speaker 2: was out as a gay man in the nineteen fifties.
6:36
Speaker 1: I've even both I've seen that he was and that
6:38
Speaker 1: he wasn't.
6:40
Speaker 2: Oh really, I've always seen that he was. But either way,
6:42
Speaker 2: it was the art role of the nineteen fifties. Even
6:46
Speaker 2: in that scene, it wasn't the most normal thing to
6:50
Speaker 2: be out and proud.
6:51
Speaker 1: Right for sure, No definitely. So one of the things
6:56
Speaker 1: that made Andy Warhol Andy Warhol is he never really
6:59
Speaker 1: saw the high art that he created gallery art versus
7:04
Speaker 1: commercial art as something more elevated than the commercial art
7:09
Speaker 1: work he did. It was just different or maybe he
7:11
Speaker 1: could make more money for it. There were other people involved,
7:14
Speaker 1: but he viewed the gallery owners, the curators and people
7:18
Speaker 1: who would eventually commission him or you know, buy his work,
7:22
Speaker 1: he would let them help shape it. Like he wasn't
7:24
Speaker 1: like one of those you know the picture of the
7:27
Speaker 1: artists who like can't take the first note about their work.
7:31
Speaker 1: He would get like, yeah, exactly, like you were his
7:33
Speaker 1: client when you were buying art from him. And that's
7:36
Speaker 1: how he viewed it. And that was definitely new and
7:40
Speaker 1: he carried that throughout his career and it had a
7:43
Speaker 1: lot of benefits for him. And then toward the end
7:45
Speaker 1: it really kind of detracted from his images.
7:47
Speaker 2: We'll see, yeah, for sure. Early on, and this is
7:51
Speaker 2: in the fifties, you got to remember he was selling
7:54
Speaker 2: some self published art books. He had one called Studies
7:58
Speaker 2: for a Boy Book that was in a gallery called
8:01
Speaker 2: the Bodily Gallery, and it was his first solo exhibition.
8:04
Speaker 2: They were sketches of young men. He was not shy
8:07
Speaker 2: about projecting sexuality in any of his works, and like
8:13
Speaker 2: we said, this is nineteen fifties. Even in the art world,
8:15
Speaker 2: some people accepted that stuff. Other galleries were like, no,
8:18
Speaker 2: we can't have like gay themed art in our gallery,
8:21
Speaker 2: even in like a New York art gallery. So he
8:24
Speaker 2: was kind of pushing the envelope early on with that stuff.
8:27
Speaker 2: He worked with his mom. His mom lived with him,
8:29
Speaker 2: she moved to New York and lived with him for
8:30
Speaker 2: about twenty years, Yeah, until she left in I think
8:33
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one's where she went home to die, right.
8:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, essentially. And another just like with his father, he
8:41
Speaker 1: ignored letters from his cousin telling him like his mom
8:43
Speaker 1: was dying and apparently she was holding out for him
8:47
Speaker 1: to visit, and he never did. And I don't think
8:49
Speaker 1: he went to her funeral either. And he said later
8:52
Speaker 1: that in a quote that he couldn't bear think of it.
8:55
Speaker 1: He likened her to a bird that had died recently,
8:59
Speaker 1: and that he couldn't been there to think of the
9:00
Speaker 1: bird dying. That he just liked to think that it
9:02
Speaker 1: was out for a walk. Yeah, So that kind of
9:05
Speaker 1: thing just totally overwhelmed. He was very close to his mother.
9:07
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. He lived with his mother
9:09
Speaker 1: for twenty years. Yeah, during like the height of his
9:12
Speaker 1: career and fame, and supposedly also they were both deeply
9:16
Speaker 1: religious Byzantine Catholics, and he would carry a rosary around
9:21
Speaker 1: in his pocket with him. But there's a lot of
9:23
Speaker 1: legends and stories about Andy Warhol. There's also another story
9:27
Speaker 1: that he would carry loose diamonds around his pocket because
9:29
Speaker 1: he liked to just kind of, you know, jiggle him
9:32
Speaker 1: around like they were loose change. So who knows. It's
9:35
Speaker 1: not entirely documented, but there's there's a whole thread of
9:40
Speaker 1: there's a whole camp that it's like, No, he was
9:42
Speaker 1: super religious, he just kind of hit it.
9:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a bit of a conundrum in a
9:46
Speaker 2: lot of ways. The more I read about him, it
9:49
Speaker 2: was interesting because he could be quite kind and giving.
9:52
Speaker 2: He could also be very cruel, even to friends of his.
9:55
Speaker 2: As we'll see, he was a lot of things. He
9:58
Speaker 2: was a well known liar, So even things that you
10:02
Speaker 2: read that Andy Warhol said oftentimes was not the truth.
10:05
Speaker 2: And the way I took it was he wasn't like,
10:09
Speaker 2: oh he's a liar. He's a bad guy because he lies,
10:12
Speaker 2: or it seemed like you just like messing with people
10:15
Speaker 2: and he would just make stuff up.
10:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, some people. It's funny because you know, from the
10:19
Speaker 1: outside you think of Andy Warhol as almost like an
10:22
Speaker 1: art god, but inside the art world, like there were
10:26
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are just annoyed with him,
10:27
Speaker 1: or I just thought he was lame or a creep.
10:31
Speaker 1: I saw him compared to basically an energy vampire. Yeah,
10:34
Speaker 1: but then like you said, other people are like no,
10:36
Speaker 1: he was very kindly and very giving of himself and
10:39
Speaker 1: of his money and help people get like a start
10:42
Speaker 1: for in their art career that they were looking for,
10:44
Speaker 1: like you, Yeah, like you said, he he was a
10:48
Speaker 1: contradiction in terms in a lot of ways.
10:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, big time. So he obviously is most famous for
10:53
Speaker 2: being a pop artist. Pop art started in London in
10:56
Speaker 2: the early fifties and Warhol was one of the first
10:59
Speaker 2: few artists to kind of get involved in this art
11:03
Speaker 2: movement that emerged from Dada and also just had a
11:07
Speaker 2: lot of it was just sort of in the early
11:11
Speaker 2: it was in the zeitgeist of the art scene at
11:12
Speaker 2: the time of this idea of mass produced objects being
11:17
Speaker 2: a theme. There was also, at the same time, though,
11:20
Speaker 2: a very different world of people like Jackson Pollock and
11:23
Speaker 2: abstract expressionism happening, people who are very serious about their
11:27
Speaker 2: art and who I imagine did not appreciate this kid,
11:32
Speaker 2: while he wasn't a kid by that point. But this
11:33
Speaker 2: guy named Andy Warhol, this very eccentric guy, that's you know.
11:37
Speaker 2: One of the very first things he did were those
11:39
Speaker 2: celebrity screen prints, those silk screens, right.
11:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the abstract expressionist kings, Williem d'cooning, told
11:48
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol to his face that he was a killer
11:50
Speaker 1: of beauty, a killer of art. He said, you even
11:52
Speaker 1: kill laughter.
11:54
Speaker 2: You know, dacooning. He killed La Laughter two himself.
11:57
Speaker 1: He was pretty drunk at the time, but yeah, I'm
11:59
Speaker 1: sure any Warhol didn't like to hear that. Right, So,
12:03
Speaker 1: so he is associated with pop art, and it definitely
12:08
Speaker 1: did dominate abstract expressionism, and it kind of said like, hey,
12:13
Speaker 1: you don't have to just you don't have to take
12:15
Speaker 1: art quite so seriously. And not only that, are you
12:17
Speaker 1: guys paying attention over here to how commercial and consumerist
12:21
Speaker 1: America is becoming. Let's start meditating on that a little
12:25
Speaker 1: bit and like you said, one of the first ones
12:28
Speaker 1: that really kind of gained attention were his silk screens
12:32
Speaker 1: of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe. And I think one of
12:36
Speaker 1: the first ones he did was Marilynd's portrait on a
12:39
Speaker 1: gold background, and it was meant to basically kind of
12:42
Speaker 1: look like a Renaissance icon of the Madonna. Just the
12:46
Speaker 1: gold suggested it, I guess something like that. And what
12:49
Speaker 1: he was essentially saying, he was equating celebrity as replacing religion. Now,
12:54
Speaker 1: so it was kind of like comments like that that
12:56
Speaker 1: was the basis of early top art.
13:01
Speaker 2: Should we take a break? Yeah, I don't think this
13:04
Speaker 2: has any great cliffhangers, No, really, it doesn't. I was
13:07
Speaker 2: trying to find one, all right, So we'll take a
13:09
Speaker 2: break now and we'll come back with the sort of
13:11
Speaker 2: the beginning of Andy Warhol's pop art career right after this.
13:36
Speaker 2: All right, So we mentioned before the break. In nineteen
13:39
Speaker 2: sixty one, I think one of his first pop artworks
13:42
Speaker 2: was called black and White. It was black and white.
13:44
Speaker 2: It was called Coca Cola two, and it's a drawing
13:49
Speaker 2: of one of those great coke bottles. And this would
13:52
Speaker 2: become a thing for him, like brands, especially food and beverages,
13:55
Speaker 2: which is very interesting, I think. But he did those
13:58
Speaker 2: silk screens right away. In the very next year, in
14:00
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two is when those Campbell soup cans came out.
14:05
Speaker 2: A couple of the things he's most well known for
14:07
Speaker 2: were those celebrity silk screens and the Campbell soup cans.
14:10
Speaker 2: Thirty two portraits, And I love that Livia used those quotes,
14:15
Speaker 2: used portraits and quotes because what he did was he
14:19
Speaker 2: would project. Is what I did when I was a kid.
14:21
Speaker 2: I had a little overhead projector, and I would project
14:24
Speaker 2: an image of Opus the penguin, or build a cat
14:26
Speaker 2: on a wall, and I would trace it. And I
14:28
Speaker 2: would act like I could draw right when I couldn't.
14:32
Speaker 2: I was just tracing something. And that's what he did
14:34
Speaker 2: with those soup cans. He traced them from being projected
14:36
Speaker 2: on a wall.
14:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they were the first thirty two portraits were
14:41
Speaker 1: hand drawn. His first Campbell soup one portraits were and
14:46
Speaker 1: he actually didn't have the idea himself. He paid fifty
14:49
Speaker 1: dollars to a designer named Muriel Latau at a party.
14:53
Speaker 1: He paid by check for the idea. She said she
14:56
Speaker 1: had a good idea and that was it, and he
15:00
Speaker 1: turned it into his whole career. And then there's one
15:03
Speaker 1: other development too while he was doing the Campbell soup
15:05
Speaker 1: cans that really kind of altered his career that instead
15:09
Speaker 1: of projecting onto a canvas and then hand drawing something
15:14
Speaker 1: and then going back and painting it, he figured out
15:17
Speaker 1: that you could take you could project an image onto
15:20
Speaker 1: a silk screen that had amulsion on it that would
15:22
Speaker 1: burn that image onto that silk screen, and all of
15:26
Speaker 1: a sudden, you had a stencil and you could put
15:28
Speaker 1: whatever color you wanted through it and make the same
15:30
Speaker 1: thing over and over and over again. And so his
15:33
Speaker 1: next series of soup cans were just Campbell's tomato soup,
15:36
Speaker 1: but in all sorts of different colors. And that kicked
15:39
Speaker 1: off the Maryland, the Elvis, the Jackie I think A
15:45
Speaker 1: hundred Ways or something like that like that that changed
15:49
Speaker 1: his career because not only did it it causes sensation
15:52
Speaker 1: like nobody had made art like that before, and it
15:54
Speaker 1: looked really cool, but also it allowed him to form
15:59
Speaker 1: the assembly line that he eventually became famous for.
16:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a lot of his art later on
16:05
Speaker 2: was done by these people that worked for him in
16:08
Speaker 2: the factory, and it was you know, if you've ever
16:11
Speaker 2: been to like a T shirt silkscreen place and there's
16:14
Speaker 2: people just like silkscreen t shirts, one after the other.
16:17
Speaker 2: Andy Warhol was doing that kind of thing and becoming
16:20
Speaker 2: very famous for it. It's very interesting how it all happened.
16:24
Speaker 2: But there was a gallery in nineteen sixty two, the
16:27
Speaker 2: Fairest Gallery in Los Angeles, where he had his first
16:31
Speaker 2: solo pop art exhibition of these soup cans. The gallery
16:35
Speaker 2: co owner was named Irving Bloom, and he displayed them
16:38
Speaker 2: like they were shelves on or they were cans on
16:41
Speaker 2: a shelf, like at a supermarket. Very clever. Dennis Hopper
16:45
Speaker 2: very famously bought one of those first ones. But apparently
16:49
Speaker 2: Warhol didn't even go. A lot of people didn't go.
16:52
Speaker 2: Wasn't super big at first? A lot of people too, right, Yeah,
16:56
Speaker 2: a lot of writers were making fun of it in
16:59
Speaker 2: the press. One quote was like, Frankly, the cream of
17:02
Speaker 2: asparagus does nothing for me, but the terrifying intensity of
17:05
Speaker 2: the chicken noodle gives me a real zen feeling. So
17:08
Speaker 2: he was being mocked until you know, he became Andy
17:13
Speaker 2: warhowt and I'm sure he was mocked for a lot
17:15
Speaker 2: of his career by some of the same critics that
17:18
Speaker 2: had their nose turned up at stuff like this, for sure,
17:20
Speaker 2: But it was the beginning of this movement in the
17:22
Speaker 2: United States, and no one had ever seen anything.
17:24
Speaker 1: Like it, No, because nobody had done anything like it. Like,
17:28
Speaker 1: like you said, commercialism kind of slipped in here there,
17:31
Speaker 1: but this was nothing but commercialism and a comment on
17:34
Speaker 1: commercialism and our relationship to brands and all that kind
17:38
Speaker 1: of stuff, and that was definitely new. And from that
17:42
Speaker 1: the pop art esthetic like took off. You can basically
17:47
Speaker 1: plant that at the feet of Andy Warhol in his
17:49
Speaker 1: first Campbell's Soup camp portraits, and then very quickly after
17:52
Speaker 1: that later on the Tomato soup portraits with silk screening.
17:56
Speaker 1: And today I think, I think what had up and wash?
18:01
Speaker 1: Did you say, Blum? Irving Blum? I said, bloom, but
18:04
Speaker 1: bloom he he, It may be bloom either way. He
18:09
Speaker 1: decided that those those portraits should not be sold off individually.
18:12
Speaker 1: They didn't really make sense on their own. They made
18:14
Speaker 1: sense as a group because it was allegedly all thirty
18:18
Speaker 1: two flavors of Campbell's soup, and that you know, just
18:22
Speaker 1: having Scotch broth by itself is kind of cool, but
18:26
Speaker 1: not really, you need the whole thing. So he bought back,
18:29
Speaker 1: including Dennis Hoppers. He bought back all of those first
18:32
Speaker 1: thirty two portraits, and he paid Andy Warhol a thousand
18:35
Speaker 1: dollars about ten thousand.
18:38
Speaker 2: Dollars one today.
18:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hand drawn or hand painted soup can is
18:46
Speaker 1: called a small torn soup can pepper pot. In two
18:50
Speaker 1: thousand and six, that one sold for eleven point eight
18:52
Speaker 1: million dollars. So Irving Blum got these things for a
18:56
Speaker 1: song because it hadn't taken off yet, but it did
18:59
Speaker 1: very quickly after.
19:00
Speaker 2: Well that that small tour in campbell soup can that
19:04
Speaker 2: wasn't even one of the big paintings. That was paper
19:08
Speaker 2: dresses we talked about. Paper dresses were a thing at
19:10
Speaker 2: the time, literally dresses made out of these paper pieces,
19:15
Speaker 2: and he was making these paper dresses with images silk
19:18
Speaker 2: screened on them, and Campbell's soup even started doing that
19:22
Speaker 2: later on. But just one of the pictures from one
19:25
Speaker 2: of the dresses sold for almost twelve million bucks.
19:28
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's great, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I also
19:33
Speaker 1: saw too. I don't understand art unless somebody explains it
19:38
Speaker 1: to me.
19:38
Speaker 2: Same here.
19:39
Speaker 1: But I saw that the especially the silk screen tomato
19:42
Speaker 1: soup cans that is the same soup can, but in
19:45
Speaker 1: a bunch of different colors. That what he's doing is
19:48
Speaker 1: by taking this thing that you take as a given
19:51
Speaker 1: that's so familiar, it's a Campbell soup can. I recognize
19:53
Speaker 1: that everybody knows what that is, and by putting by
19:56
Speaker 1: playing with the colors and making different color combinations, he
19:59
Speaker 1: was actually like basically melting the brand. The whole idea
20:03
Speaker 1: of the brand, the whole identity of the brain was
20:05
Speaker 1: just kind of being stripped away from the viewer's brain
20:10
Speaker 1: and turned into something else without the viewer even really
20:13
Speaker 1: realizing it, because the colors are so pretty that you
20:17
Speaker 1: just kind of lost track that you're looking at a
20:19
Speaker 1: soup can, even though you start out knowing that you're
20:22
Speaker 1: looking at a soup can.
20:23
Speaker 2: Oh.
20:23
Speaker 1: Interesting, Yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting too.
20:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as pop art goes, you know, you
20:29
Speaker 2: mentioned a comment on consumerism. You know, it sort of
20:32
Speaker 2: depends on who you ask on what it means. That
20:35
Speaker 2: can be a comment on consumerism. It could be just
20:39
Speaker 2: you know, everyday things are like celebrating something that's every
20:44
Speaker 2: day in ordinary Andy Warhol himself said pop art is
20:48
Speaker 2: just about liking things, and that he ate Campbell's soup
20:51
Speaker 2: every day for lunch for twenty years. I don't know
20:54
Speaker 2: if that's true. That sounds like one of his little
20:55
Speaker 2: stories that he might tell. But for him it was
20:58
Speaker 2: very simple. I don't think he tried to get too
21:01
Speaker 2: overly analytical about it. He was just like, it's pop art,
21:05
Speaker 2: and that's the whole point is you shouldn't examine it
21:07
Speaker 2: too closely.
21:07
Speaker 1: Well. One of the other things, though, is that he
21:11
Speaker 1: was very ambitious. He liked money, he liked fame, He
21:15
Speaker 1: wanted to be known as the greatest artist in the world.
21:18
Speaker 1: And he was like he was a consumer himself, Like
21:21
Speaker 1: he liked stuff. He liked spending money on things, like
21:24
Speaker 1: that story about him walking around with loose diamonds in
21:26
Speaker 1: his pocket. So it's weird. He was. He liked the
21:32
Speaker 1: very stuff that his paintings allegedly criticized or made fun
21:37
Speaker 1: of or mocked or analyzed. He was into that same scene.
21:41
Speaker 1: He wasn't an outsider to it. He was as much
21:44
Speaker 1: an American consumer as anybody else. And that was that
21:48
Speaker 1: was very odd for that time. You know, that was
21:51
Speaker 1: the time where like you didn't want to be a
21:52
Speaker 1: sellout or anything like that. Andy Warhol was a sellout
21:55
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. He even put a fake ad
21:58
Speaker 1: in The Village Voice saying like he to tach his
22:00
Speaker 1: name to the following things if you would pay for it.
22:04
Speaker 1: And it was a joke. But at the same time
22:07
Speaker 1: it wasn't a joke. As we'll see, he started making
22:09
Speaker 1: what he called business art and started making a lot
22:13
Speaker 1: of money from it, and as a result of his
22:17
Speaker 1: taking that up very quickly becoming like basically a sellout
22:21
Speaker 1: as soon as he could. The art critics basically say
22:25
Speaker 1: his period of actual good artwork just lasted from nineteen
22:31
Speaker 1: sixty one with the Coca Cola bottles to the nineteen
22:35
Speaker 1: sixty four Flowers edition, so three years. Interesting even though
22:38
Speaker 1: his career kept going on that that was his last
22:41
Speaker 1: notable painting. Specifically, there's an art critic for the Washington
22:44
Speaker 1: Post named Blake Gopnik who wrote a nine hundred page
22:47
Speaker 1: biography on Andy Warhol and his art, and he I
22:52
Speaker 1: don't think it was just his opinion. I think that's
22:54
Speaker 1: generally the art critic world's opinion that he was almost
22:58
Speaker 1: a flash in the pan as far as actually producing
23:01
Speaker 1: good art is concerned.
23:02
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, because what he was was a
23:05
Speaker 2: he kind of was the art. He created a brand
23:09
Speaker 2: in a persona that was bigger than the art itself.
23:14
Speaker 2: So it was I mean, you talk about separating art
23:16
Speaker 2: from artists, it was indistinguishable. In any Warhol's case, It
23:20
Speaker 2: was all a part of who he was, this, which
23:24
Speaker 2: was this. He was the Campbell soup, can you know?
23:26
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I mean we take it for granted today
23:29
Speaker 1: living decades into the postmodern era and now decades into
23:33
Speaker 1: the era of influencers and Instagram, like that's a normal thought.
23:37
Speaker 2: To us, right, Totally.
23:38
Speaker 1: This guy was doing this when modernism still reigned and
23:42
Speaker 1: postmodernism was just starting to bleed out of it where
23:45
Speaker 1: there weren't such things as influencers like he. I don't
23:49
Speaker 1: want to maybe he did. He might have invented it.
23:52
Speaker 1: At the very least, he gave other people a lot
23:55
Speaker 1: of other people the idea to try the same things.
23:58
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, we have to talk about his filmmaking because
24:03
Speaker 2: he would branch out away from you know, screenprinting things.
24:06
Speaker 2: Although he did that kind of throughout I think because
24:09
Speaker 2: he had his factory going. But in the mid sixties
24:14
Speaker 2: he started to make visual art. In sixty three, his
24:17
Speaker 2: first film, Sleep I was about to say, came out,
24:20
Speaker 2: but it kind of didn't really. I'm sure it played
24:22
Speaker 2: in some avant garde theaters here and there, but his
24:25
Speaker 2: movies were they weren't movies. They didn't have plots and
24:30
Speaker 2: characters in three act structure and stuff like that. He
24:34
Speaker 2: would set a camera up in front of the Empire
24:36
Speaker 2: State Building and shoot it for eight hours. Sleep was
24:40
Speaker 2: five hours and twenty one minutes of his boyfriend John
24:44
Speaker 2: Giorno sleeping. His most successful movie, if you want to
24:48
Speaker 2: call it, that, was called The Chelsea Girls in sixty six.
24:52
Speaker 2: I Love Livia says it came at a relatively snappy
24:55
Speaker 2: three hours.
24:56
Speaker 1: Well, what's funny is it came in at three hours
24:58
Speaker 1: because it was a six hour movie. He's split in
25:00
Speaker 1: half and projected side by side next to each other,
25:03
Speaker 1: so technically it was six hours.
25:05
Speaker 2: It was six hours. But this also didn't have a plot.
25:09
Speaker 2: He was very explicit with his real sex in movies
25:14
Speaker 2: without it being well I'm sure a lot of people
25:16
Speaker 2: labeled it pornography at the time, but it was art
25:20
Speaker 2: also drug use too, Oh sure. He was very open
25:24
Speaker 2: and explicit about all of this. At Like I mentioned
25:27
Speaker 2: the factory, he had three places called the Factory, and
25:31
Speaker 2: they were his art studios, they were his meeting places,
25:34
Speaker 2: his party spaces, the first one being at East forty
25:37
Speaker 2: seventh in nineteen sixty four.
25:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a silver factory an artist named Billy
25:42
Speaker 1: name name is not his real last name. He just
25:45
Speaker 1: adopted it. It's kind of like generic. I love that. Yeah.
25:50
Speaker 1: He covered it in an aluminum foil and silver paint,
25:53
Speaker 1: which gave it the name silver Factory. But it was
25:55
Speaker 1: also a former fat hat factory. A fat factory is
25:59
Speaker 1: another way to it. And the other reason factory applies
26:03
Speaker 1: is because remember Andy Warhol was the one who came
26:06
Speaker 1: up with assembly line art. Yeah, he would have an idea,
26:09
Speaker 1: or maybe somebody would give him an idea. He would
26:12
Speaker 1: execute it initially, like maybe create the first stencil, make
26:16
Speaker 1: a couple versions of it with different color combinations, and
26:19
Speaker 1: then after that he would basically leave it to his
26:21
Speaker 1: assistants to start producing his art that he would sign
26:24
Speaker 1: and it was his art. But that was a brand
26:27
Speaker 1: new way of considering art, and so much so that
26:31
Speaker 1: he had an assistant, a guy who basically became his
26:35
Speaker 1: right hand His name was Gerard Malanga or Malanga as
26:38
Speaker 1: we'll see. He would go to interviews with Andy Warhol,
26:43
Speaker 1: and Warhol would be like, why don't you ask my
26:45
Speaker 1: assistant Jerry here some questions. He did a lot of
26:47
Speaker 1: my paintings, and I think most people at the time
26:49
Speaker 1: thought he was kidding, and he wasn't kidding at all.
26:52
Speaker 1: Not just Jerry, but other people were physically making the
26:55
Speaker 1: paintings that he was selling for tens of thousands of dollars.
26:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be clear, I know people are typing up
27:02
Speaker 2: emails right now. This is not a new idea, and
27:05
Speaker 2: this is not something that doesn't happen all the time
27:08
Speaker 2: in the art world. There are In fact, we got
27:12
Speaker 2: an email from someone recently who was called a ghost artist,
27:14
Speaker 2: like a ghostwriter. They very famous artists, many, many times
27:20
Speaker 2: have assistants that actually pump out these paintings in their
27:23
Speaker 2: style and sell them. Wow, it's always happened. I had
27:26
Speaker 2: a friend who twenty five years ago did it for
27:29
Speaker 2: a guy here in Atlanta, and now she's her own
27:31
Speaker 2: artist and has her own gallery, which is great, great,
27:33
Speaker 2: but that's how an assistant a lot of times can
27:36
Speaker 2: get their foot in the door is by working for
27:40
Speaker 2: a very famous artist who has other people paint their art.
27:42
Speaker 2: It's just it happens all the time, all right.
27:44
Speaker 1: Then, if he didn't invent it, he was the one
27:46
Speaker 1: who made no secret of it whatsoever. He exposed it
27:50
Speaker 1: and actually used it to his benefit.
27:52
Speaker 2: Well, and his had definitely more of a assembly line
27:57
Speaker 2: feel than the others. It's not like other ghost artists
28:01
Speaker 2: like I'll paint the trees and then you slide it
28:03
Speaker 2: to the next person who paints the mountain. It's like
28:06
Speaker 2: a single artist sort of recreating the pieces of art,
28:09
Speaker 2: or a team of six assistants that are all working
28:12
Speaker 2: on their individual thing. It's not like a factory kind
28:16
Speaker 2: of thing that Andy Warhol did, so it was a
28:17
Speaker 2: little different.
28:18
Speaker 1: So initially his assistants were basically, this is gonna sound unkind.
28:26
Speaker 1: They were very heavy drug users, if not addicted to drugs.
28:32
Speaker 1: They were very frequently street kids. A lot of them
28:36
Speaker 1: have been kicked out of their houses because they were
28:38
Speaker 1: transgender or they were gay. They were societies cast off
28:45
Speaker 1: in weirdos, and he collected them like they were precious
28:50
Speaker 1: memory figurines and surrounded himself with them.
28:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that included well, he collected all kinds of people.
28:57
Speaker 2: He collected them. The factory was a scene. Man. It
28:59
Speaker 2: was like you could have some you know, seventeen year
29:03
Speaker 2: old street kid who was a junkie sitting next to
29:07
Speaker 2: a very famous, you know, actor like a Dennis Hopper
29:11
Speaker 2: or a real musician. And of course, the Velvet Underground
29:14
Speaker 2: was never that big in the United States. That's kind
29:17
Speaker 2: of what they're famous for these days, is is America
29:21
Speaker 2: not ever really accepting them. They were huge in Europe,
29:23
Speaker 2: but the Velvet Underground was had a thing going to
29:26
Speaker 2: New York. Andy Warhol was their first manager. He financed
29:29
Speaker 2: that first great record and brought in Nico to sing
29:32
Speaker 2: on it. He designed that great album cover with a banana,
29:37
Speaker 2: and he was That was part of the scene. The
29:39
Speaker 2: Velvet Underground was hanging out there at the factory. Dennis
29:43
Speaker 2: Hoppers hanging out the factory. People are coming and going,
29:47
Speaker 2: They're doing Heroin, They're having sex out in front of everyone,
29:50
Speaker 2: shooting lots of speed. It was it was wild.
29:55
Speaker 1: It was super wild, like they people would just walk
29:58
Speaker 1: around naked like it was nuts. Totally unhinged, like there
30:03
Speaker 1: were very few rules or regulations or anything like that.
30:06
Speaker 1: I think it was just one of those things where
30:08
Speaker 1: if you got in, you could manage to stay in.
30:11
Speaker 1: You could do basically whatever you wanted. And I also
30:14
Speaker 1: get the idea that people performed like it was performative too,
30:20
Speaker 1: that it was also very competitive because one of the
30:25
Speaker 1: things that he was known to do was to just
30:27
Speaker 1: really latch onto somebody and find them very interesting, and
30:30
Speaker 1: then he would get bored with them and just kind
30:31
Speaker 1: of leave them behind in the dust. And I think
30:34
Speaker 1: that was one of the reasons why he was called
30:35
Speaker 1: I think it was fran Leewitz who said that who
30:38
Speaker 1: called him a vampire. He would not just kind of
30:41
Speaker 1: take energy from people, he would also take talent from people.
30:46
Speaker 1: Apparently he had a talent for recognizing the peculiar talents
30:50
Speaker 1: that each individual person has and then using them for himself.
30:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:55
Speaker 1: So, for example, I think one of his assistants named
31:00
Speaker 1: Bob Colicello. Andy Warhol had a terrible memory, but he
31:04
Speaker 1: liked to record everything with his tape recorder so he
31:07
Speaker 1: could remember. Not everybody wanted him to use his tape recorder,
31:10
Speaker 1: and Bob Colicello he found out had a really great memory,
31:13
Speaker 1: So Bob Colicello was his human tape recorder when somebody
31:17
Speaker 1: wouldn't let him record their conversation. Just stuff like that,
31:20
Speaker 1: just random stuff like that. And he assembled his life
31:24
Speaker 1: the way he wanted it, using the people he surrounded
31:26
Speaker 1: himself with and then just kind of interchanging them like
31:29
Speaker 1: they were tutress parts when he saw fit.
31:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was an author and a performer named Bridget
31:35
Speaker 2: Berlin who was around in the sixties and seventies at
31:39
Speaker 2: the factory. Hopped up on speed, she would do all
31:43
Speaker 2: kinds of work. She sometimes would run the factory line.
31:46
Speaker 2: Sometimes she would get a hold of his diaries and
31:49
Speaker 2: edit his diaries. Sometimes she would co write his books.
31:53
Speaker 2: Edie Sedgwick very probably one of the biggest of his
31:57
Speaker 2: what he called the superstars as far as you know
31:59
Speaker 2: name recognition. She was a very pretty young woman, very troubled.
32:04
Speaker 2: She was from a very prominent family. They met in
32:07
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five when she was twenty one and he
32:09
Speaker 2: was thirty six. She went out on to be in
32:12
Speaker 2: ten of those movies of his, and they were inseparable.
32:16
Speaker 2: At a certain point they would match outfits. She was
32:18
Speaker 2: always on his arm. But when you talk to insiders,
32:21
Speaker 2: they would say that, you know, he treated Edie very
32:24
Speaker 2: badly at times, and at one point he said, do
32:27
Speaker 2: you think Edie will let us film her when she
32:29
Speaker 2: commits suicide? So it was that kind of thing that happened.
32:33
Speaker 2: She very sadly died of a drug overdose when she
32:36
Speaker 2: was twenty eight years old, so just seven years into
32:38
Speaker 2: their relationship.
32:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've also seen it pointed out that there was
32:42
Speaker 1: a habit of people around him dying young, and that's
32:46
Speaker 1: not the case with everybody. Like Bridge of Berlin was
32:49
Speaker 1: shown shooting up speed in Chelsea Girls, and I think
32:52
Speaker 1: she lived at twenty twenty, so people could make it
32:55
Speaker 1: out of his orbit alive, but other people like Edie
32:59
Speaker 1: Sedgwick didn't. And some people blame Andy Warhol for encouraging
33:04
Speaker 1: just that kind of behavior, people's self destructive behavior, either
33:08
Speaker 1: for his own amusement or whatever he was getting out
33:10
Speaker 1: of it.
33:11
Speaker 2: I think that cult song Edie was about Edie Sedgwick,
33:14
Speaker 2: Oh was it?
33:15
Speaker 1: Yeah? She was supposedly the first it girl where whatever
33:19
Speaker 1: she did started a nationwide trend among people who were
33:22
Speaker 1: into fashion or style or whatever, Like she couldn't whatever
33:26
Speaker 1: she did. It was just that she had her own thing,
33:28
Speaker 1: and everybody put her up on this pedestal. She was
33:31
Speaker 1: a bright, brilliant star.
33:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, Candy Darling was another one of his cohorts for
33:37
Speaker 2: a while. And if you look up Candy Darling, like,
33:40
Speaker 2: I didn't even know a ton about Warhol, a little
33:42
Speaker 2: bit here and there, but when I looked up Candy Darling,
33:45
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, I've seen this person in pictures
33:48
Speaker 2: like my whole life. I feel like Candy Darling was
33:51
Speaker 2: a transgender woman who got hormone therapy at a time
33:55
Speaker 2: when that wasn't something that people did or was even
33:58
Speaker 2: very easy to get done. And also Jackie Curtis was
34:02
Speaker 2: friends with Candy Darling and they were kind of a
34:05
Speaker 2: pair with Warhol. And Jackie Curtis was a playwright and
34:08
Speaker 2: a poet and a singer and was back in the
34:11
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties playing with gender identity and using different pronouns
34:17
Speaker 2: and using terms like you know, fluidity and things like that.
34:23
Speaker 2: This is at a time where like no one was
34:25
Speaker 2: doing this kind of thing, and that's what Jackie Curtis
34:27
Speaker 2: is doing.
34:28
Speaker 1: Yes, another very famous superstar. I don't know if we
34:31
Speaker 1: said or not, he would call them superstars, the people
34:33
Speaker 1: who are around him and starred in his movies and stuff. Yeah, okay, good,
34:38
Speaker 1: well done, Chuck. Another superstar is a guy named Robert
34:41
Speaker 1: Olivio who was known as On Dene. Is that how
34:45
Speaker 1: you'd say it.
34:46
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's on Dene or Undine, but
34:48
Speaker 2: on Deane sounds more right.
34:50
Speaker 1: I think so too. He met Andy Warhol at a
34:54
Speaker 1: really chic party. No, I'm sorry. He met Andy Warhol
34:57
Speaker 1: at an orgy in the early sixties, and on Dene
35:00
Speaker 1: did not like Andy Warhol from the get go because
35:04
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol was just standing there watching everybody, not participating basically,
35:08
Speaker 1: and Undine didn't like that at all. So he had
35:11
Speaker 1: his friend whose orgy it was, throw Andy Warhol out,
35:14
Speaker 1: and they crossed paths again later and I guess hugged
35:18
Speaker 1: it out, and on Deane became one of his favorite people.
35:22
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there's a If you look up Andy
35:24
Speaker 2: Warhol superstars, there's a very very long list of people.
35:27
Speaker 2: We obviously can't go over all of them, but we
35:30
Speaker 2: should mention Joe Dellasandro. He was the one and more
35:33
Speaker 2: one of the more famous, at least in that scene.
35:36
Speaker 2: Once one of the actors in many of his films,
35:39
Speaker 2: and uh, just a sort of a gay subculture sex
35:42
Speaker 2: symbol icon for you know, a couple of decades and
35:46
Speaker 2: I think is still around.
35:50
Speaker 1: He was also he was also the model for the
35:52
Speaker 1: rolling Stone sticky fingers cover.
35:54
Speaker 2: Oh is that dallas Andro?
35:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, that cover of is basically a man's crotch.
35:59
Speaker 2: You she's crotch.
36:00
Speaker 1: Pretty tight jeans too, They're very tight. Do you want
36:04
Speaker 1: to take a break and then come back and talk
36:06
Speaker 1: about who shot Andy Warhol?
36:09
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was Lily Taylor.
36:12
Speaker 1: Right after this, so nice reference chuck to I shot
36:37
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol the movie which I think contains the Yola
36:41
Speaker 1: Tango song. I shot Andy Warhol? Right, isn't that for
36:43
Speaker 1: that movie?
36:45
Speaker 2: Probably? I don't remember. It's been a while.
36:46
Speaker 1: That's a great song. It's gotta be Yeah, go listen
36:48
Speaker 1: to that song. It's very good. So Valerie Salonis is
36:52
Speaker 1: who Lily Taylor was playing in that movie. I shot
36:55
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol and she was Again, if you have our book,
36:59
Speaker 1: go read chapter eighteen. It goes no way book. No,
37:03
Speaker 1: it wasn't in the kids book. No, it goes way
37:06
Speaker 1: into detail about Valerie Salanis and the shooting but in
37:11
Speaker 1: the abbreviated version, she was a radical feminist, a playwright,
37:15
Speaker 1: a man hater. And I say that quite confidently because
37:18
Speaker 1: she was the founder and sole member of the Society
37:21
Speaker 1: for Cutting Up Men Scum, author of the Scum Manifesto,
37:25
Speaker 1: which is definitely worth reading. I think I've mentioned before
37:28
Speaker 1: on the show, and she had a beef with Warhol.
37:32
Speaker 1: She wrote a play called Up Your Ass and she
37:36
Speaker 1: wanted Warhol to produce it, and not only would he
37:38
Speaker 1: not produce it, he lost the manuscript that she gave him,
37:42
Speaker 1: or the script that she gave him, and that really
37:46
Speaker 1: enraged her. And apparently the Andy Warhol Foundation and Museum
37:50
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh has that script still. They keep it under
37:53
Speaker 1: lock and key, but she never got it back, essentially.
37:58
Speaker 1: And then he also used some of her record words
38:01
Speaker 1: without credit in one of his movies. So she did
38:05
Speaker 1: not like Andy Warhol. She was kind of fixated on him,
38:08
Speaker 1: and on June third, nineteen sixty eight, she shot him.
38:12
Speaker 2: Up Your Ass is so funny.
38:14
Speaker 1: Oh, and there's like so many like subtitles to it too,
38:17
Speaker 1: but you can just call it up your Ass.
38:20
Speaker 2: I haven't seen that in a long long time. I
38:21
Speaker 2: saw that movie back when it came out, and Lily
38:24
Speaker 2: Taylor was so good. I just I love her and
38:26
Speaker 2: she's amazing in that role. But yeah, on June third,
38:29
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, she went to the apartment of another
38:33
Speaker 2: sort of art scene lady named Margo Phiden and said
38:38
Speaker 2: it was, you know, really pretty out of it. She
38:41
Speaker 2: suffered from schizophrenia and so she was not having a
38:43
Speaker 2: good day. She was still trying to get this play
38:47
Speaker 2: made and was almost begging this woman, Margo, to do that.
38:52
Speaker 2: And she said, you know that she couldn't do that,
38:55
Speaker 2: and she said, oh, yes, you will, because I'm going
38:57
Speaker 2: to shoot Andy Warhol. Showed off her gun and left,
39:01
Speaker 2: and apparently Piden tried to warn Warhol wasn't able to
39:06
Speaker 2: get to him. This is when the factory was now
39:09
Speaker 2: at Union Square, and she shot him and did not
39:14
Speaker 2: immediately kill him. We'll hold on to that till the end.
39:17
Speaker 2: But he was really messed up. He got a lot
39:20
Speaker 2: of had a lot of damage to his internal organs,
39:23
Speaker 2: had many surgeries, a lot of scarring, and had to
39:26
Speaker 2: wear a corset for the rest of his life because
39:28
Speaker 2: of these injuries.
39:29
Speaker 1: A medical courses that held his guts in Essentially, Yeah,
39:33
Speaker 1: I saw that he when he was recuperating in the hospital,
39:35
Speaker 1: he said to somebody, you know, we got to get
39:38
Speaker 1: some bigger things to hide behind.
39:42
Speaker 2: That great, very any Warhol.
39:44
Speaker 1: So he did survive, but he was different after that,
39:48
Speaker 1: and some people argue that he was already headed in
39:50
Speaker 1: this direction. But basically he stopped hanging out with the
39:55
Speaker 1: people living on the fringes of society, entered society like
40:00
Speaker 1: high society. He took his rightful place there as like
40:03
Speaker 1: a beloved art god among people who could pay millions
40:09
Speaker 1: of dollars for paintings, got a really nice house, got
40:12
Speaker 1: a Rolls Royce, and then the next factory that he
40:17
Speaker 1: set up was like a legit business, and he started
40:19
Speaker 1: making what he called business art, where if you were
40:23
Speaker 1: very wealthy, you could have him paint you in the
40:27
Speaker 1: style of Maryland or Elvis, that kind of silk screen thing,
40:30
Speaker 1: and he would take your money and be totally fine
40:33
Speaker 1: with it. And he became again such a sellout. There's
40:38
Speaker 1: really no other way to put it. That even those
40:41
Speaker 1: portraits started to become bad, like he didn't even pay
40:44
Speaker 1: that much attention to him, even though that's what he
40:46
Speaker 1: was doing. And he got such a bad name toward
40:49
Speaker 1: the end of his career that when he was hanging
40:51
Speaker 1: out with Bosquiot. Bosquiot's career was kind of dragged down
40:55
Speaker 1: for a little period of time because he was very
40:59
Speaker 1: close to Andy Warhol. That's how bad a reputation Andy
41:02
Speaker 1: Warhol got. He became a parody of himself to people
41:06
Speaker 1: in the art world toward the end of his life.
41:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a much different scene than I mean, he
41:12
Speaker 2: kind of in a way got nineteen eighties, you know.
41:16
Speaker 2: I guess he sort of mirrored what happened in the
41:18
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties with consumerism and just you know, MTV came along.
41:23
Speaker 2: He did a couple of shows on MTV very cool,
41:26
Speaker 2: one called Andy Warhol's TV and one called Andy Warhol's
41:28
Speaker 2: Fifteen Minutes. Yeah. They weren't a bad actually, but it
41:33
Speaker 2: was a different thing for sure. He, like you said,
41:38
Speaker 2: he sold out from the beginning. But I think everyone
41:42
Speaker 2: in his circle like thought he really sold out in
41:47
Speaker 2: the eighties, like and not in a good way that
41:49
Speaker 2: he should be proud of, you know.
41:50
Speaker 1: I think it just took the rest of the world
41:53
Speaker 1: like that long to catch on that he he had
41:56
Speaker 1: always been a sellout and was totally fine with that
41:58
Speaker 1: and didn't care. Maybe that's so this is his reputation
42:01
Speaker 1: in the art world. His star was still quite bright
42:05
Speaker 1: everywhere else, Like he would be on TV. He like
42:09
Speaker 1: you said, he had two different MTV shows in the
42:11
Speaker 1: mid eighties, Like he was hanging out with some of
42:13
Speaker 1: the great up and coming artists like bas Giacht or
42:15
Speaker 1: Keith Herring. He was just he was very well known.
42:19
Speaker 1: He got work as much as he needed, and his
42:23
Speaker 1: last major work was pretty great. It was an interpretation
42:26
Speaker 1: of the Last Supper. Part of it is like a
42:30
Speaker 1: sale sticker that says six ninety nine. It's one of
42:32
Speaker 1: the more prominent things, and then another prominent thing. There's
42:36
Speaker 1: Jesus is on there too, and next to it it
42:39
Speaker 1: says the Big Sea. I think Christ Christ the Big Sea.
42:47
Speaker 2: It could be anything though, if you think about it, it.
42:48
Speaker 1: Could be, but this is the Last Supper. So he
42:51
Speaker 1: was again not really revered in the art world until
42:55
Speaker 1: after his death, and it became very clear that this
42:58
Speaker 1: guy was an artistic genior, not just in his art
43:01
Speaker 1: but in his life too, Like the Time Capsules is
43:03
Speaker 1: a good example of that.
43:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, he in seventy four he started a Time Capsules
43:08
Speaker 2: project He filled up five hundred and sixty nine cardboard boxes,
43:14
Speaker 2: a steamer trunk, twenty filing cabinets, and there you know letters, there,
43:19
Speaker 2: brick of brec from his life. There's artwork, there's ticket stubs,
43:22
Speaker 2: there's clothing all the way back from the nineteen fifties
43:26
Speaker 2: for about close to thirty years worth of stuff in
43:30
Speaker 2: these time capsules.
43:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw he would just sweep his desk clean
43:33
Speaker 1: into a box like once every week or two and
43:36
Speaker 1: like right TC on it for time capsule.
43:38
Speaker 2: Well, when you're that famous, that becomes hugely valuable. If
43:42
Speaker 2: I swept the stuff off of my desk, it's not
43:45
Speaker 2: worth anything, so.
43:46
Speaker 1: Right, So you've got the time capsules, which is a
43:49
Speaker 1: really deep peek into his life. He also kept diaries,
43:54
Speaker 1: and you've brought this to my attention. She was super
43:57
Speaker 1: into Andy Warhol for a while, and she found out
44:00
Speaker 1: that he had been audited Chuck every year ye by
44:05
Speaker 1: the irs from nineteen seventy two until his death in
44:09
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven.
44:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you Nixon.
44:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, he attributed it to Nixon revenge from Nixon, and
44:14
Speaker 1: that's actually probably a pretty good hypothesis because he had
44:18
Speaker 1: created political artwork for George McGovern's nineteen seventy two campaign,
44:24
Speaker 1: and it was like an ugly portrait of Nixon. Then
44:26
Speaker 1: underneath it said vote McGovern. And it's entirely possible Nixon
44:30
Speaker 1: ordered him to be audited and it just got kept up.
44:33
Speaker 2: That's that's no coincidence. You don't get audited every year, sure,
44:36
Speaker 2: so it's not how it works.
44:37
Speaker 1: So he would start noting everything, right.
44:40
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure that he kept very good records from
44:42
Speaker 2: that point on.
44:43
Speaker 1: He did. He would dictate his diary by phone every morning,
44:47
Speaker 1: and those became published later on as Andy Warhol's diaries.
44:52
Speaker 1: So there's a lot known about that guy, and yet
44:54
Speaker 1: he's still an enigma.
44:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, very much. When I said earlier that he did
44:59
Speaker 2: not die right away from that gunshot, he would die
45:03
Speaker 2: from complications from that gun shot many years later, in
45:07
Speaker 2: February of nineteen eighty seven, he was fifty eight years old,
45:10
Speaker 2: complications of having his gallbladder removed, and it was you know,
45:15
Speaker 2: they can draw a direct line to that shooting and
45:18
Speaker 2: his eventual death. He left a treasure trove, like you said,
45:23
Speaker 2: of stuff. He donated everything basically to what is now
45:27
Speaker 2: the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual arts. It's worth
45:32
Speaker 2: a lot of money. They've given out close to three
45:34
Speaker 2: hundred million bucks just in grants to more than a
45:38
Speaker 2: thousand art organizations over the year, and I think they
45:42
Speaker 2: are partnered with the Carnegie Institute and the Dia Art
45:46
Speaker 2: Foundation to build the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which
45:50
Speaker 2: is where I last year saw Bonnie Prince Billy play.
45:56
Speaker 2: One of my many shows that I've seen it his
45:58
Speaker 2: he played the Indy Warhol Museum, because that's what he does.
46:01
Speaker 2: He plays it weird places like that or not weird,
46:03
Speaker 2: just different places. And it was great and it was
46:06
Speaker 2: cool to walk around that museum a little bit beforehand.
46:08
Speaker 2: They have more than they have a lot of his work.
46:11
Speaker 2: They have more than four thousand videotapes, and they got
46:14
Speaker 2: those time capsules there.
46:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, every single one of them, I think right. I
46:17
Speaker 1: think so.
46:20
Speaker 2: So.
46:20
Speaker 1: In addition to predicting the fifteen minutes of fame for
46:23
Speaker 1: the future, even if he didn't originally come up with it,
46:26
Speaker 1: he also had another idea that I think kind of
46:28
Speaker 1: came to fruition later on. He had an idea for
46:31
Speaker 1: a chain of diners that he called Andy Matts, and
46:34
Speaker 1: they were for people who eat alone and you just
46:37
Speaker 1: sit at a table they serve you frozen food, and
46:41
Speaker 1: then you watch TV by yourself, and that everyone has
46:43
Speaker 1: their own TV set.
46:45
Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
46:46
Speaker 1: Basically just predicted smartphones and society today.
46:49
Speaker 2: That's where we are now. Yeah, thought of that.
46:52
Speaker 1: And then there's one other thing. If you are a
46:53
Speaker 1: fan of cringe, you don't like cringe?
46:56
Speaker 2: Do you like cringe comedy?
46:59
Speaker 1: Yeah? Or yeah? Basically her cringe performance art.
47:02
Speaker 2: I like stuff like The Office. Okay, it can border
47:07
Speaker 2: on like I don't want to watch this for sure.
47:09
Speaker 1: Yeah. I can't take it very easily. And if you
47:13
Speaker 1: watch his interviews, they're very cringey. He would purposely just
47:18
Speaker 1: sit there and go er or whatever, and he wouldn't
47:23
Speaker 1: like he didn't have anything to say or couldn't think
47:25
Speaker 1: of what to say, like he would just be a
47:26
Speaker 1: terrible interviewee.
47:27
Speaker 2: Yeah.
47:28
Speaker 1: And then there's also Mike Douglas no MERV Griffin Show
47:34
Speaker 1: segment with him and Edie Sedgwick, and he just refuses
47:38
Speaker 1: to talk the whole time, and it's up to Edie
47:40
Speaker 1: Sedgwick to try to keep things going. It's she's like
47:43
Speaker 1: twenty one years old. It's just really hard to watch.
47:47
Speaker 1: I think I made it maybe a minute into it
47:50
Speaker 1: and I was like, I can't watch this anymore.
47:52
Speaker 2: I could actually watch that stuff. Yeah, I'm going to
47:56
Speaker 2: check that out.
47:57
Speaker 1: Okay, you're gonna lie.
47:58
Speaker 2: I don't know how much I love it, but oh,
48:01
Speaker 2: I don't know. Sometimes when someone is just I think
48:04
Speaker 2: that it's having no regard for And I'm not saying
48:06
Speaker 2: it's like it's cool to go in there and like
48:08
Speaker 2: wreck an interview, but like I also think, like I
48:12
Speaker 2: don't know, if someone doesn't believe in that system and
48:14
Speaker 2: they think it's all bs to make a statement like
48:17
Speaker 2: that is like fine, as long as everyone's not doing it.
48:19
Speaker 2: No one wants to watch everybody do that.
48:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. It's weird though, because he was enthralled
48:25
Speaker 1: by celebrity from a very young age, but he wouldn't
48:29
Speaker 1: participate in it when he was a celebrity himself, even
48:31
Speaker 1: though he wanted to be a celebrity.
48:35
Speaker 2: A conundrum.
48:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I think that's it for Andy Warhol. Huh.
48:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, this could have been two or three ups, but
48:44
Speaker 2: I think it's a pretty good overview.
48:45
Speaker 1: I think so too. If you want to know more
48:47
Speaker 1: about Andy Warhol, there, like you said, is a lot
48:50
Speaker 1: more to learn, and you can find stuff starting out
48:53
Speaker 1: on the internet, and then go to Pittsburgh and see
48:55
Speaker 1: his stuff in person, and then save up eleven million
48:58
Speaker 1: dollars and buy one of his painting yourself. That's right.
49:01
Speaker 1: And while you're saving that money up, it's time for
49:03
Speaker 1: listener mail.
49:07
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this shortened Shortish in Swedish. Hey, guys,
49:12
Speaker 2: Actually this is more than Swedish. This is great. Hey, guys.
49:15
Speaker 2: I'm an old retired concert pianist who remembers miny Hammond
49:19
Speaker 2: organs for my youth. I didn't play them professionally, but
49:23
Speaker 2: listening to this, Josh, you're gonna love this. I was
49:25
Speaker 2: the pianist for the Pittsburgh Symphony, and I was so
49:29
Speaker 2: interested though in the history of the Hammond. I had
49:31
Speaker 2: no idea. I had actually never even thought about their origin,
49:34
Speaker 2: although I played a few in funeral homes over the years.
49:37
Speaker 2: I played big pipe Organs with stops, including for the
49:40
Speaker 2: Pittsburgh Symphony, but I never mastered those slide bars on
49:44
Speaker 2: the Hammond. It's interesting you did a whole podcast about
49:46
Speaker 2: hamm and Organs, but I don't think we heard a
49:48
Speaker 2: single musical note. There was a wonderful young lady, wrote Scott,
49:52
Speaker 2: who used to play at the Hurricane Lounge in Pittsburgh.
49:56
Speaker 2: She's still living, also in her early eighties like me.
49:59
Speaker 2: Thanks for wonderful learning experience. And this, my friends, is
50:03
Speaker 2: from a legend. Patricia prattis Jennings and I did a
50:08
Speaker 2: little wormholing with Patricia and it turns out Patricia is
50:13
Speaker 2: a legend. She played I believe she was the first
50:17
Speaker 2: black woman to sign a major contract with the major
50:20
Speaker 2: symphony in the United States.
50:21
Speaker 1: Nice.
50:22
Speaker 2: There's a great, great YouTube piece on her. I can't remember.
50:26
Speaker 2: It's a Pittsburgh local, Pittsburgh thing, but it's really good
50:31
Speaker 2: that she's interviewed, and she's just wonderful and amazing talent.
50:34
Speaker 2: And it just knocks me out that in her eighties
50:37
Speaker 2: she's like getting something out of our show.
50:39
Speaker 1: That is pretty cool. And that's a lot of range too,
50:41
Speaker 1: going from the symphony to a funeral. That's pretty cool.
50:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. But she played for the symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony
50:47
Speaker 2: for decades.
50:48
Speaker 1: Right, but she could also play a funeral too. I'm
50:50
Speaker 1: sure there's quite different. The whole ViBe's got to be different, you.
50:54
Speaker 2: Know, I would think so.
50:55
Speaker 1: And also one more thing. I'll bet the Hurricane Lounge
50:58
Speaker 1: was the place to be.
51:00
Speaker 2: Sounds like it, doesn't it.
51:01
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Patricia, that is really cool. Thank you
51:04
Speaker 1: for writing in, and, like Chuck said, thank you for
51:06
Speaker 1: getting something out of our episode. And if you want
51:09
Speaker 1: to be like Patricia, you can get in touch with
51:10
Speaker 1: us via email too. Send it off to stuff podcast
51:13
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
51:19
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
51:23
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
51:26
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.