Far out
Gabriel Josipovici
From A to B & Bach Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (Cassell. A. Michael Dempsey Book. £4,50)
Mom always said not to worry about love, but Just to be sure to get married. But I always knew that I would never get married, because I don't want any children. I don't want them to have the same problems that I have. I don't think anybody deserves it.
When I got my first TV set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships with Other people. I'd been hurt a lot to the degree you can only be hurt if you care a lot ... So in the late 'fifties I started an affair with my television which has continued to the present, When I play around in my bedroom with as many as four at a time. But I didn't get married until 1964 when I got my first tape recorder. My Wife. My tape recorder and I have been married for ten years now. When I say 'we' I mean my tape recorder and me. A lot of people don't understand that.
When I look around today, the biggest anachronism I see is pregnancy. I just can't believe that people are still pregnant.
An artist is somebody who produces things that People don't need to have but that he — for some reason — thinks it would be a good idea to give them. Business Art is a much better thing to be making than Art Art, because Art Art doesn't support the space it takes up, whereas Business Art does. (If Business Art doesn't suPPort its own space it goes out-of-business.) So on the one hand I really believe in empty spaces, but on the other hand, because I'm still making some art, I'm still making junk for People to put in their spaces that I believe should be empty: i.e. I'm helping people waste their space when what I really want to do is help them empty their space.
I think a lot about 'space writers' — the writers Who get paid by how much they write. I always think quantity is the best gauge on anything (because you're always doing the same thing, even if it looks like you're doing something else), so I set my sights on becoming a 'space artist'. When Picasso died I read in a Magazine that he had made four thousand masterpieces in his lifetime and I thought: Gee, I could do that in a day." So I started. And then I found out: "Gee, it takes more than a day to do four thousand pictures." ... 1 really thought I could do four thousand in a day. And they'd all be masterpieces because they'd all be the same painting. And I started and I got to about five hundred and then I stopped. But it took more than a day, I think it took a month. So at five hundred a month, it would have taken be about eight months to do four thousand masterpieces — to be a 'space artist.' and fill up spaces I don't believe should be filled up anyway. It was disillusioning for me, to realize it would take me that long.
Usually all I need is tracing paper and a good light. I can't understand why I was never an abstract expressionist, because with my shaking hand I would have been a natural.
The hard thing is when you have to dream up the tasteless things to do on your own. When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who would tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you're working.
At the end of my time, when I die, I don't want to leave any leftovers. And I don't want to be a left-over, I was watching TV this week and I saw a lady go into a ray machine and disappear. That was wonderful, because matter is energy and she just dispersed. That could be a really American invention, the best American invention — to be able to disappear.
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