Read I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews Online
Authors: Kenneth Goldsmith
I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (6 page)
JOHN GIORNO
1963
Unpublished Manuscript from the Andy Warhol Archives,
Pittsburgh
Poet John Giorno first met Warhol in November 1962 at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery during Andy’s first Pop show there. A friendship between the two ensued which ultimately led to Giorno starring in Warhols first film, Sleep (1963), a six-hour film of Giorno sleeping. In 2002, Giorno told a British newspaper “I was a kid in my early 20s, working as a stockbroker. I was living this life where I would see Andy every night, get drunk and go into work with a hangover every morning. The stock market opened at 10 and closed at three. By quarter to three I would be waiting at the door, dying to get home so I could have a nap before I met Andy. I slept all the time–when he called to ask what I was doing he would say, ‘Let me guess, sleeping?’ ”
1
The premiere of Sleep took place on January 17, 1964 at the Gramercy Arts Theater as a benefit screening for the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. The screening was attended by only nine people, two of whom left during the first hour.
–KG
Andy and I made the ‘Andy Warhol Interviewed by a Poet” in June and July 1963, as a parody, a fake interview, about nothing and for nothing. Stupid and trashy, and dumb, not intended for anything, with no agenda; a response to the serious, self-serving art world. We did it in taxis, when Andy came by my place at 2SS East 74th Street to pick me up to go somewhere, and in his place on Lexington Avenue and 89th Street, and in the Firehouse Factory, and anywhere. Whenever Andy said something that sounded like it fit in an interview, I scribbled down the words. I made up the questions to fit the answers. They were typed up separately. A dysfunctional interview, and in the style of a Tennessee Williams play. “Oft, just put it together any way” said Andy. “It doesnt matter.” It was never published. We had a good time doing it, laughing and loving and resting in the play of each others” minds. There was no bad or good. Everything was totally great
.
–John Giorno
Place: The former locker room of the old No. 13 Hook & Ladder.
POET, (
winningly
) How long have you been a painter?
ANDY. When I was nine years old I had St. Vitus Dance. I painted a picture of Hedy Lamarr from a Maybelline ad. It was no good, and I threw it away. I realized I couldn’t paint.
POET. That is a revealing fact. Your first painting was of a movie star. What is your capacity? Are you a fast worker?
ANDY. I can make a picture in five minutes, but sometimes I run into so much trouble. I have to do them over and over. Or I don’t have enough turpentine, and everything is sticky. I did fifty Elvises one day. Half my California show. The roof of the firehouse leaked, and they were all ruined. I had to do them all over.
POET. How come you weren’t in the Modern Museum show this year?
ANDY. I was crushed. But it doesn’t matter. POET. How come?
ANDY, (
coughing
) They had Marisol and Bob Indiana, and I guess they thought three from one gallery would be too much. I was so hurt.
POET. What do you think of Abstract Expressionism?
ANDY. Art is dead.
POET. Why Is Art dead?
ANDY. Nobody thinks. Nobody uses imagination anymore. Imagination is finished.
POET. What do you think of Larry
2
?
ANDY. He’s the daddy of “Pop Art.” He’s so chic.
POET. What is “Pop Art"?
ANDY. “Pop . . . Art” . . . is . . . use . . . of . . . the . . . popular . . . image.
POET. Is “Pop Art” a fade? [
sic
]
ANDY. Yes. “Pop Art” is a fade, [
sic
] I am a “Pop Artist.”
POET. Would you like to go with Maryborough
3
?
ANDY. Oh, yes. They are international, and I hear they give you a private secretary. That would be good for my career.
POET. Did you get any free soup from the Campbell soup people?
ANDY. No! Not even a word. Isn’t that amazing? If it had been Heinz, Drew Heinz would have sent me cases of soup every week.
POET. What do you think of the nude figure in American painting?
ANDY. Oh, Art is too hard.
POET. What’s that can of paint on the floor? It looks like house pa int.
ANDY. It is. I mean it’s the black paint I use.
POET. Don’t you use tubes like other artists?
ANDY, (
crossly
) Ohhhh, no.
POET. What pigments do you use?
ANDY. A silver spray can, plastic paint. . . and varnoline.
POET. What’s varnoline?
ANDY. I clean my screens and brushes with it. I am having so much trouble. I am allergic to varnoline. I break out in red blotches and vile sores. I’m going to have to stop painting.
POET. Did you just become allergic to it?
ANDY. Yes. In the last two, three weeks.
POET. And you have been using varnoline for two years?
ANDY Yes.
POET. Don’t you think it is psychosomatic?
ANDY No . . . Yes . . . I don’t know.
POET. Well, if you weren’t allergic to it for two years, I think it was caused by a mental disorder.
ANDY, (
confused
) I guess so. It gets in your blood. Varnoline is poisonous. That’s what causes the. . . .
POET. Where do you have your silk screens made?
ANDY. Mr. Golden.
POET. Is that where Rauschenberg has his made?
ANDY, (
huffily
) Yes . . . Oh, don’t put that in your interview.
POET. Tell me what you do when you’re not painting.
ANDY. I believe in living. I didn’t before. I spent fourth of July in the country, and I had forgot about living. It was so beautiful. I started going to Sam Ronny’s Health Club on Broadway and West 73 Street, every day for four hours. I get massaged, box, swim under water . . . I want to be pencil thin . . . I want to like myself. . . What else? I am making a movie about sleep.
POET. Sleep! What about sleep?
ANDY A movie of John Giorno sleeping for eight hours.
POET. How fascinating. Could you be more explicit?
ANDY It’s just John sleeping for eight hours. His nose and his mouth. His chest breathing. Occasionally, he moves. His face. Oh, it’s so beautiful.
POET. When can I see it?
ANDY. I don’t know.
POET. Tell me more about your painting.
ANDY. I am going to stop painting. I want my paintings to sell for $25,000.
POET. What a good idea. What are you working on now?
ANDY Death.
POET, (
transfixed
) Hmmmm.
ANDY. The girl who jumped off the Empire Building, a girl who jumped out of a window of Bellevue, the electric chair, car crashes, race riots.
POET. Where do you get your photographs?
ANDY. My friends clip them out of newspapers for me.
POET. Do you think Marisol has affairs with people?
ANDY. Nobody knows.
POET. When can I see your death pictures?
ANDY. In November. I’m having a show in Paris
4
. . . (
with despair
) I haven’t done them yet. I will have to do all of them in one day. Tomorrow . . . I don’t know why I’m having a Paris show. I don’t believe in Europe.
POET. How do you think Oldenburg compares with Marisol?
ANDY, (
impatiently
) Ohhhh . . . You can’t ask me questions like that.
POET. Would you like to meet Elizabeth Taylor?
ANDY, (
ecstatic
) Ohhhh, Elizabeth Taylor, ohhhh. She’s so glamorous.
POET. Tell me more about your painting.
ANDY. It’s magic. It’s magic that makes them.
The End
1
Catherine Morrison, "My 15 Minutes."
The Guardian
, 14 Feb. 2002.
2
Larry Rivers. Artist, 1923-2002.
3
Marlborough Gallery, New York City.
4
Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, January–February, 1964.
RUTH HIRSCHMAN (NOW RUTH SEYMOUR)
Fall 1963
Transcription of KPFK radio broadcast, published in
Annual Annual
, 1965, The Pacifica Foundation,
Berkeley, Ca.
In September of 1963, following the filming of Sleep, Warhol made a crosscountry car trip to Los Angeles for his second show at the Ferus Gallery. He was accompanied by the actor Taylor Mead, the artist Wynn Chamberlain, and Warhol’s assistant, poet Gerard Malanga. Warhols stay in Los Angeles was packed with parties and openings. He was invited to a party at Dennis Hopper’s house and was introduced to stars such as Troy Donahue and Sal Mineo; he attended the opening of Marcel Duchamp’s retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum; and he made a movie during his stay, Tarzan and Jane Regained . . . Sort of, starring Mead and the New York underground filmmaker Naomi Levine.
The Ferus show featured portraits of Elvis Presley in the main gallery, which were printed on one continuous roll of canvas and left to gallerist Irving Blum to cut and stretch at will. Although Warhol’s reputation was quickly growing and the Pop phenomenon had spread to the West Coast, the paintings appeared too machine-made for the general public and were coolly received; subsequently, nothing sold. Andy later pointed out that they were money hanging on the wall but, at the time, people couldn’t see it.
A few days after the opening, KPFK Arts Director Ruth Seymour (then Ruth Hirschman) interviewed Warhol and Mead at Pacifica s North Hollywood studios. Seymour, who joined KPFK at the end of 1961, regularly interviewed artists and intellectuals coming through Los Angeles, such as filmmaker Jean Renoir, poet Charles Bukowski, and author Erskine Cald-well. In the early ‘60s, KPFK was the only radio station of its kind in Southern California. Seymour was responsible for the stations arts coverage:
“I made the decisions about what arts programs went on the air and chose what I thought was important and timely.” Her interview with Warhol and Mead lasted about half an hour.
The day the interview was scheduled, Seymour showed up with her five-year-old daughter in tow, who was too ill to go to school. “I cant tell you the look on their faces when I drove up with this sick little girl” Seymour recalls. “They were not pleased, to say the least. It was clear that they were going to be interviewed by this suburban mom: la vie famille vs. the two gay, decadent avant-gardists.” Seymour settled her daughter into a corner of the studio with crayons and a coloring book and set to work.
The interview began roughly, with Warhol incorrectly giving Youngstown, Ohio as his place of birth. Seymour felt that “Warhol and Mead weren’t prepared to take me seriously. They were impressed that I was good-looking, smart and plugged into the ‘scene” (probably in that order). Andy and Taylor were all about that.”
As they spoke at length, the dynamic shifted. “Taylor was the one who melted first. You could see him changing and you could see him thinking, ‘Oh, she’s interesting,’ “ Seymour remembers. “Andy was a much more guarded person; you couldn’t tell very much about his reaction to things. But as the interview progressed, he warmed up and we began playing with each other. It became a friendly exchange and, by the end, we were having fun with each other. And when it was over, they both felt awful about my little daughter and I could see they felt guilty, especially since she’d behaved beautifully throughout the interview. She was too sick to do much of anything else, and their belated solicitousness hardly registered with her, but they made a real effort to make up for a bad beginning.”
–KG
RUTH HIRSCHMAN: Where are you from, Andy?
ANDY WARHOL: Youngstown, Ohio.
R.H.: Ohio. Were you brought up there?
A.W.: Yes.
R.H.: Most of your life spent in Ohio?
A.W.: No.
R.H.: Where was it?
A.W.: Philadelphia.
R.H.: Were you painting at that time?
A.W.: Yes.
R.H.: How long have you been painting?
A.W.: I was ah . . . ah . . . oh, I just copied all the Maybelline ads.
R.H.: Way back then.
A.W.: Yes.
R.H.: Right.
A.W.: And they were of movie stars . . . Hedy Lamarr and Joan Crawford.
R.H.: When you were doing these things was there any movement known as Pop Art?
A.W.: Just in the grade school.
R.H.: Kind of underground.
A.W.: Underground Pop Art.
R.H.: Right. When did you hit the Pop Art scene?
A.W.: The skids, so to speak. Uh–two years ago.
R.H.: Was it in New York?
A.W.: Yes.
R.H.: One of the things that I’ve heard most discussion about, especially in relation to your work, is the question where do you get your themes from? The Campbell’s soup show showed here, and now, of course, the Elvis Presley show; and watching people move around the Ferus Gallery, especially art instructors from colleges who are trying to explain it to their students, and they usually talk in terms of social significance–this is the–this is an aspect of our culture that he’s painting–would you go along with that? Do you consciously think of like “What is the symbol of our culture?” when you did the Campbell soup show?
A.W.: Uh, no.
R.H.: You don’t?
A.W.: No.
R.H.: Are they simply objects that move you?
A.W.: Yes.
R.H.: And they’re chosen at random.
A.W.: Yes.
R.H.: Do you think they are particularly American?
A.W.: Uh, what they are, they’re the only things I know.
R.H.: When I saw your show, I don’t know whether you were aware of it, I don’t know whether you were in town–the Campbell soup show–there was a gallery two doors down, and they had six Campbell’s soup cans in the window with a little sign and it said “Don’t be fooled, buy the real thing here, two for 33
.
A.W.: Oh, I would have bought those.
TAYLOR MEAD: Yes, in fact, he was going into sculpture and we were going to go into a supermarket and put fixative on one of the displays in the supermarket and transport it to a museum or something.
R.H.: One of the things I find kind of interesting is that almost all Pop painters seem to come from the Midwest. Or am I wrong about that?
A.W.: Well, no. I think California–doesn’t California have a lot?
R.H.: California has some, but I know Oldenburg’s from Chicago, I think Lichtenstein is from the Midwest, too.
A.W.: And Taylor Mead is, too.
T.M.: I’m not a Pop Artist, I’m a romantic.
R.H.: Is there a difference?
T.M.: I’m an old silent movie star.
R.H.: Is there a difference?
A.W.: No.
T.M.: Yes. I’m pure and simple and Andy’s complex and satirical.
R.H.: Are you satirical, Andy?
A.W.: No, I’m simple.
R.H.: You’re simple. Well, he says he’s simple, too. Maybe he’s the real romantic.
T.M.: Maybe.
A.W.: No, I’m quasi-romantic, at least.
R.H.: When you–for example, when you did the Elvis Presley show, I forget, how long ago was that done?
A.W.: Well, it took me five minutes to do.
R.H.: Yeah.
A.W.: I mean, well, about an hour. It was done a month ago.
R.H.: Has it ever been shown before?
A.W.: No.
R.H.: This is the first showing.
A.W.: Yeah.
R.H.: Now, when you say like, it takes about an hour–do you spend most of your time painting?
A.W.: No.
R.H.: You don’t. What do you do? Besides, I know you’ve made a movie and you’re going to make another one.
A.W.: I don’t know.
R.H.: You just live.
A.W.: Right. No, I don’t live.
R.H.: Do you want to qualify that statement?
A.W.: No.
T.M.: He spends the rest of the time playing Elvis Presley records, and listening to them.
R.H.: Do you think Pop Art could survive, let’s say, without P.R. people?
A.W.: Oh, yeah.
R.H.: You do?
A.W.: Well, because I think the people who come to the exhibition understand it more. They don’t have to think. And they just sort of see the things and they like them and they understand them easier. And I think people are getting to a point where they don’t want to think, and this is easier.
R.H.: I gather that you find something positive in this.
A.W.: Well, yeah.
R.H.: Right. I wish you’d just go on and explain a little bit why.
A.W.: I don’t know, I don’t know–
R.H.: Well, I was wondering, I had–I brought my daughter to two or three Pop Art exhibitions and had no difficulty at all with her understanding the stuff, or with her being bored. She wasn’t, she had a ball at the galleries. Maybe that comes close to something that you mean.
A.W.: Yeah, yeah.
R.H.: That it’s just, you just dig it.
A.W.: Yeah.
R.H.: You don’t have to. . . .
T.M.: I don’t, really, I don’t see how a child could dig it any more than digging average pictures in books. I think it almost requires a very sophisticated audience. ‘Cause I think it’s sort of a transvaluation of the advertising values that sort of inundate the country. . . .
R.H.: Well you see it, then, as satiric. You see that a can. . . .
T.M.: I see it as something the country richly deserves. And it, actually the advertising, has so swamped America that now the Pop Artist. . . we have to find some value in it because it’s just–you know, we have to take it and find something in it that’s groovy or just be smothered by it, and the Pop Artist is doing that. They’re saying “We’re going to dig it no matter what,” you know.
R.H.: I think this is interesting. That’s what we get so often. In other words, Pop Art is a verbal art in a way. It’s very easy for you or me to talk about it in terms of its meaning, and we can make a very meaningful case for it. But when we ask Andy, he doesn’t want to make a meaningful case for it and that’s what intrigues me.
T.M.: Yeah, but he was in advertising, though, and he’s evolved.
R.H.: Were you in advertising professionally?
A.W.:Yes.
R.H.: And do you feel that this has any carry-through?
A.W.: Why, no, it’s just that I liked what I was doing before and I like what I’m doing now.
R.H.: But you don’t consider the two the same thing?
A.W.: Uh, no.
R.H.: Would you go along with what Taylor said? We’ve been . . .
A.W.: No. . . .
R.H.: . . . been so swamped with it that this is where we now find a meaning?
A.W.: No.
T.M.: Well, actually,–there’s so much of it that actually you can now pick out things in it that really amount to, uh, to art. Like we just drove across the country and both of us would say “Oh what a great Coca-Cola sign or what a great restaurant sign that is” and it’s really amazing that as a result of Pop Art you can really see something in the average sign of value.
A.W.: Yeah.
R.H.: I think this is true. I don’t think that anybody who saw the Campbell’s soup show can ever walk into a supermarket and look at a can of Campbell’s soup the same way again.
T.M.: The Pop Artist has isolated a way of looking at what surrounds us; I think, just like the person who paints a sylvan scene has isolated the countryside somehow.
R.H.: Do you think that it’s like a comment on what we have to say about the way we live now?
T.M.: Yeah, definitely.
R.H.: Pop Art makes that comment?
T.M.: Yeah, very much.
R.H.: Does it make it on a value basis? Is it saying it in terms of like, this is what we get, Campbell’s soup, rather than a vision of truth or beauty or that Campbell’s soup contains a vision of truth and beauty?
A.W. & T.M.: Both, yeah, both.
R.H.: Then you don’t see it as a negative comment?