Read I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews Online
Authors: Kenneth Goldsmith
Often quoted from but rarely reprinted in full, this interview is considered the most important that Andy Warhol gave in the 1960s: so important, in fact, that when the U.S. Post Office issued its Warhol stamp in 2002, the quote on the stamp’s selvage originated here: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”
Twenty-three-year-old Gretchen Berg–the daughter of prominent film historian Herman G. Weinberg
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–was introduced to Andy Warhol by film critic Sheldon Kenan
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who had visited the 47th Street Factory. Kenan was so impressed that he phoned Berg to tell her that she should go and meet Warhol.
Berg had previously known about Warhol through her film-world connections. She recalls: “We had heard that there was this new artist who was making these unusual films so I saw a few of them–Empire, Sleep, and Kiss–at The Film-Makers’ Cinémathèque on 41st Street. At the time, we weren’t quite sure who he was or what he was doing.” Soon after Kenan’s call, Berg approached Warhol at a screening and requested an interview with him. Warhol replied that he was interested but warned her that he didn’t usually say anything.
Undeterred, Berg proceeded to interview Warhol at the Factory during the summer of 1966. Upon her arrival, she “found a very nice, very reserved man” who was amused to speak to a “polite and serious young woman.” The face-to-face interviews, which were done partly on a reel-to-reel Norelco tape recorder she had borrowed from her father, and partly from memory, were written down afterward.
The conversations took place over the course of three to four weeks–generally between 2:00 and 6:00 in the afternoon–and are a compendium of loose talk and observations. As Berg remembers, “The questions were meant to relax him, banish fear or hesitation and put him into a kind of dream state so that he would speak his innermost thoughts. They were made to provoke him to talk about this or that, to suggest things; they were remarks rather than questions. The piece was meant to be a kind of word collage to give the reader the feeling of being in the Factory on a hot summer day.”
Berg came with a few pre-prepared questions, but she quickly discarded her script and let the conversation take its own course. She was captivated by Warhol and wanted her piece to reflect this quality. “Andy was such a powerful presence; he had an enormously magnetic personality. Talking to him, one became as though one was being hypnotized. It seemed to me that everything flowed in one stream to the point that the questions I asked became irrelevant.” Hence, she began to think of her interactions with Warhol as “mediations” rather than as interviews.
In a particularly chilling passage, Warhol refers to Valerie Solanas, who shot him in June of 1968, about two years after this interview was done: “People try to trap us sometimes: a girl called up here and offered me a film script called Up Your Ass and I thought the title was so wonderful and Ym so friendly that I invited her to come up with it, but it was so dirty that I think she must have been a lady cop. I dont know if she was genuine or not but we haven t seen her since and Vm not surprised. I guess she thought that was the perfect thing for Andy Warhol”
During Berg’s visits, the Factory was full of its many famous inhabitants including Jackie Curtis, Gerard Malanga, Rene Ricard, International Velvet, and Eric Emerson. Also present was a Harvard student named Danny Williams
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who, during these conversations, fell asleep on a couch holding a lit cigarette and set the piece of furniture ablaze. Berg recalls Warhol trying to rouse Williams as Stravinksy’s “Petrushka” played over the stereo in the loft.
The piece was edited over the course of several days. “There were a few things that do not appear in the final interview: for instance, we had a conversation about my photography portfolio. I removed it because it wouldn’t have fit in but I included almost everything else.”
When the interview was finished. Berg didn’t know what to do with it She lived on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village with her boyfriend and decided by chance to stop into the nearby offices of The East Village Other, who accepted the piece on the spot Berg remembers their response: “Oh yeah, Andy. Cool.”
–KG
ANDY WARHOL–I’d prefer to remain a mystery, I never like to give my background and, anyway, I make it all up different every time I’m asked. It’s not just that it’s part of my image not to tell everything, it’s just that I forget what I said the day before and I have to make it all up over again. I don’t think I have an image, anyway, favorable or unfavorable. I’m influenced by other painters, everyone is in art: all the American artists have influenced me; two of my favorites are Andrew Wyeth and John Sloan; oh, I love them, I think they’re great. Life and living influence me more than particular people. People in general influence me; I hate just objects, they have no interest for me at all, so when I paint I just make more and more of these objects, without any feeling for them. All the publicity I’ve gotten . . . it’s so funny, really . . . it’s not that they don’t understand me, I think everyone understands everyone, non-communication is not a problem, it’s just that I feel I’m understood and am not bothered by any of the things that’re written on me: I don’t read much about myself, anyway, I just look at the pictures in the articles, it doesn’t matter what they say about me; I just read the textures of the words.
I see everything that way, the surface of things, a kind of mental Braille, I just pass my hands over the surface of things. I think of myself as an American artist; I like it here, I think it’s so great. It’s fantastic. I’d like to work in Europe but I wouldn’t do the same things, I’d do different things. I feel I represent the U.S. in my art but I’m not a social critic: I just paint those objects in my paintings because those are the things I know best. I’m not trying to criticize the U.S. in any way, not trying to show up any ugliness at all: I’m just a pure artist, I guess. But I can’t say if I take myself very seriously as an artist: I just hadn’t thought about it. I don’t know how they consider me in print, though.
I don’t paint any more, I gave it up about a year ago and just do movies now. I could do two things at the same time but movies are more exciting. Painting was just a phase I went through. But I’m doing some floating sculpture now: silver rectangles that I blow up and that float. Not like Alexander Calder mobiles, these don’t touch anything, they just float free. They just had a retrospective exhibition of my work that they made me go to and it was fun: the people crowded in so much to see me or my paintings that they had to take the pictures off the walls before they could get us out. They were very enthusiastic, I guess. I don’t feel I’m representing the main sex symbols of our time in some of my pictures, such as Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor, I just see Monroe as just another person. As for whether it’s symbolical to paint Monroe in such violent colors: it’s beauty, and she’s beautiful and if something’s beautiful, it’s pretty colors, that’s all. Or something. The Monroe picture was part of a death series I was doing, of people who had died by different ways. There was no profound reason for doing a death series, no “victims of their time”; there was no reason for doing it at all, just a surface reason. I delight in the world; I get great joy out of it, but I’m not sensuous. I’ve heard it said that my paintings are as much a part of the fashionable world as clothes and cars: I guess it’s starting that way and soon all the fashionable things will all be the same: this is only the beginning, it’ll get better and everything will be useful decoration. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being fashionable or successful; as for me being successful, well . . . uhhh . . . it just gives you something to do, you know. For instance, I’m trying to do a business here at the Factory and a lot of people just come up and sit around and do nothing, I just can’t have that, because of my work.
It didn’t take me a long time to become successful, I was doing very well as a commercial artist, in fact, I was doing better there than with the paintings and movies which haven’t done anything. It didn’t surprise me when I made it; it’s just work . . . it’s just work. I never thought about becoming famous, it doesn’t matter . . . I feel exactly the same way now I did before . . . I’m not the exhibitionist the articles try to make me out as but I’m not that much of a hard-working man, either: it looks like I’m working harder than I am here because all the paintings are copied from my one original by my assistants, like a factory would do it, because we’re turning out a painting every day and a sculpture every day and a movie every day. Several people could do the work that I do just as well because it’s very simple to do: the pattern’s right there. After all, there’re a lot of painters and draughtsmen who just paint and draw a little and give it to someone else to finish. There’re five Pop artists who are all doing the same kind of work but in different directions: Pm one, Tom Wesselman, whose work I admire very much, is another. I don’t regard myself as the leader of Pop Art or a better painter than the others.
I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap-dancer. I don’t even know if Pm an example of the new trend in American art because there’s so much being done here and it’s so good and so great here, it’s hard to tell where the trend is. I don’t think Pm looked up to by a large segment of young people, though kids seem to like my work, but Pm not their leader, or anything like that. I think that when I and my assistants attract a lot of attention wherever we go it’s because my assistants look so great and it’s them that the people are really staring at, but I don’t think I’m the cause of the excitement.
We make films and paintings and sculpture just to keep off the streets. When I did the cover for the TV
Guide
, that was just to pay the rent at the Factory. I’m not being modest, it’s just that those who help me are so good and the camera when it turns on just focuses on the actors who do what they’re supposed to do and they do it so well. It’s not that I don’t like to speak about myself, it’s that there really isn’t anything to say about me. I don’t talk very much or say very much in interviews; I’m really not saying anything now. If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it. I don’t feel my position as an accepted artist is precarious in any way, the changing trends in art don’t frighten me, it really just doesn’t make any difference; if you feel you have nothing to lose, then there’s nothing to be afraid of and I have nothing to lose. It doesn’t make any difference that I’m accepted by a fashionable crowd: it’s magic if it happens and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. I could be just as suddenly forgotten. It doesn’t mean that much. I always had this philosophy of: “It really doesn’t matter.” It’s an Eastern philosophy more than Western. It’s too hard to think about things. I think people should think less anyway. I’m not trying to educate people to see things or feel things in my paintings; there’s no form of education in them at all.
I made my earliest films using, for several hours, just one actor on the screen doing the same thing: eating or sleeping or smoking; I did this because people usually just go to the movies to see only the star, to eat him up, so here at last is a chance to look only at the star for as long as you like, no matter what he does and to eat him up all you want to. It was also easier to make.
I don’t think Pop Art is on the way out, people are still going to it and buying it but I can’t tell you what Pop Art is: it’s too involved; it’s just taking the outside and putting it on the inside or taking the inside and putting it on the outside, bringing the ordinary objects into the home. Pop Art is for everyone. I don’t think art should be only for the select few, I think it should be for the mass of American people and they usually accept art anyway. I think Pop Art is a legitimate form of art like any other, Impressionism, etc. It’s not just a put-on. I’m not the High Priest of Pop Art, that is, Popular art, I’m just one of the workers in it. I’m neither bothered by what is written about me or what people may think of me reading it.
I just went to high school, college didn’t mean anything to me.
The two girls I used most in my films, Baby Jane Holzer and Edie Sedgwick, are not representatives of current trends in women or fashion or anything, they’re just used because they’re remarkable in themselves.
Esquire
asked me in a questionnaire who would I like to have play me and I answered Edie Sedgwick because she does everything better than I do. It was just a surface question, so I gave them a surface answer. People say Edie looks like me, but that wasn’t my idea at all: it was her own idea and I was so surprised: she has blonde short hair, but she never wears dark glasses. . . .
I’m not more intelligent than I appear . . . I never have time to think about the real Andy Warhol, we’re just so busy here . . . not working, busy playing because work is play when it’s something you like.
My philosophy is: every day’s a new day. I don’t worry about art or life: I mean, the war and the bomb worry me but usually, there’s not much you can do about them. I’ve represented it in some of my films and I’m going to try and do more, such as
The Life ofjuanita Castro
, the point of which is, it depends on how you want to look at it. Money doesn’t worry me, either, though I sometimes wonder where is it? Somebody’s got it all! I won’t let my films be shown for free. I’m working principally with Ronald Tavel, a playwright, who’s written about ten movies for me; he writes the script and I sort of give him an idea of what I want and now he’s doing the films as off-Broadway plays.