Warhol had this to say about the attack: “Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television – you don’t feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.”
Guh i know we’re all sick of talking about warhol. But frankly i relish the opportunity to answer the question,” what do you think of warhol?” even though i will always say i dont know. I was for a long time very eager to hate what he stood for, but i think one of the most interesting things about him is that- moreso than most- i cant begin to think what that is. If its capitulation to commercialism, which is seemingly a fraction of the adventure, then he represents something a lot of us are just not as resolved against as we would have some think, or more appropriately “I.” The issue is not cut and dry, for someone to have waded through all that and with such an air of clarity and express drive surely means that he contended with art in the most modern sense, doesn’t it? Can you get rich and maneuver subversively in the commercial world by poisoning- by some standards, enlightening- those ideas of marketing and creation? Can one take revenge on those who have sold us culture by penetrating their ranks and totally razing the standards by which they judge us to be “bought and sold” as it were? Spirituality of art? What? Did you ever go to bed at night smoldering with self-reproach for almost convincing yourself that a deist god told you the best way to serve him was to be as big and disruptive as possible, and to smile handsomely and insolently while you did it? Are we just going to run back and forth, susceptible and yielding to ambiguous art rhetoric?
Oh, and i almost forgot. with a quote like the one above, how can you say you feel any different?
