i\1\'w170"'1/ffd!

i\f}',,,4%'{fWl,<Mt\\
)S\'R'l'i{';'Nfl/;,;sr-,z;Yi\!!\lf{tilt'%i/WK'P%'«{4;\'\jitSfu"',i;)TulWi,W~%"'.&Y;ut.t,\Wi:0Wk¥£0\if\zivYJG\\\\0" ~!'}~>¥¾ «mt'\l!mtmvi'i'V}i';; WK\\llll\'0/

CHAPTER FIVE The minimalist current into which Warhol tapped began (or re-began) with
John Cage (after Gertrude Stein, after Satie). 3 Cage, in a revolt against the
NOTES FROM authoritarian systematicity of his teacher; Schoenberg, invented a form of
THE UNDERGROUND music that rejected rhe traditional ideology of composition, with its pillars of
ANDY WARHOL harmony, structure, order and control. This, in turn, led him to abandon the
whole idea of the artist as organizational source and master of the work.
Instead Cage developed a philosophy (inspired by Buddhism and a certain
pantheism) which equalized all the parts of a work and stressed _duration,
repetition and random elements. Art, according to Cag~, shoJJkLb.e..brought
Fordist mass production inevitably demanded mass marketing and mass back rnto relat10nsh1p with everyday h.fu. lt.should.1J..s.tfound ob1ecrs (or found
consumption as its corollary. 1 Thus the long American boom after the Second sounds) and resp~c~ the uneven rhyth-!l!~-- of day-_1?y-dayexistence, even its~
World War saw the development of a massive merchandizing machine, in the ,bal1ility, ·dead periods and ordinariness. At the limit, Cage was fascinated by
advertising, packaging,,and media industries. This Great Leap Forward of silence, which posited duration with a special intensity while negating the
marketing and publicity was predicated, of course, on a Great Leap Forward traditional appeal of music as melody and even the unthought-through
in the production of images: in the streets, in the press, on television. The concept of audibility - because, in a certain sense, silence was the most
seismic change in the form of mass culture, as it both proliferated and was audible register of all. Silence, too, foregrounded the incidental and the not-
subordinated to the drive of mass production and consumption, was finally meant-to-be-listened-to, refocusing our perception of the acoustic environ-
reflected in the na/fi1wer and traditionally 'purer' spheres of the arts and high ment, removing the aural 'frame' which marked 'music' off from 'everyday
culture, now unable to delay or resist confrontation with the new visual (and, life·. Like the artists of COBRA in Europe, Cage placed 'everyday life' in
indeed, verbal) environme~t or the economic weight and pressure of the new relationship to 'play', to non-purposive, free activity. 4 Thus everyday life
communications industries. In this sense, the arrival of pop art Jn the early would be aestheticized as art was recontextualized as part of, rather than
sixties was just one element in a much more general cultural shift:(Warhol and separated from or exterior to daily life. But for Cage, unlike the COBRA
Lichtenstein should be seen alongside cultural critics such as McLuhan (or Eco artists with their surrealist background, this was primarily a spiritual rather
or Barrhes), writers like Burroughs, obsess<cdby advertising._theimagebank, than a political project.
the word virus and the 'Reality Studios'--,------aI1d---0Lcourse,film-makers like Cage's ideas and practices gradually spread out of the music world into the
Godard. Artists had to come to terms with the new images, whether through related dance world (especially through his collaboration with Mcree Cunn-
~~rony, ce!ebratiqn, aesthetic enha~c~~ or dttournement. But if Warhol ingham) and eventually into the art world through Black Mountain College
stands out among them as anything more than a har.bi--Hgerof this new (to Rauschenberg and thence to Johns) and through the Fluxus group (to De
~)on the media, it is because his work has a more complex Maria, Morris and others). It was through this radiation of Cage's aesthetic
nit.'.aning. Like hiS great contemporary, Joseph Beuys, 2 Warhol (another that minimalism came to Warhol, although Cage himself notes analogies
master of disguise) was able to shift the optical and se-1!1J.2.ti.£ field of art between his own love for Satie's 'furniture music' and Warhol's manufacture of
towards a new, and potentially troubling, theatricality. This in turn left an Brillo and other boxes which could be (and actually were) used as furniture,
important political, as well as aesthetic, legacy: in the case of Beuys to be being treated as coffee tables. 5 Rauschenberg and Johns were initially
found in the Green Party, and in the case of Warhol in the gay liberation Warhol's role models in the art world. Like him, they designed window
movement. Warhol's key achievement, within the field of pop, was to bring displays for Bonwit Teller but, unlike him, they were recognized in the
together the a~ coorcaries of 'minimalism' and 'camp' in a paradoxical gallery world for their fine art. 6 Like him, too, they were gay artists who came
and perverse new combination. from art-sea.provincial backgrounds, who had fled to New York to

1S8 1S9
 '01/;i¾\%'%

nurture their will-to-art. They offered an alternative avenue to those who 1 like millions of feathers . . And, on a more theoretical level, there is the
Warhol, could hardly identify with the straight, macho posturing of the redemption of banality, the transcendence of 'the nausea of the replica', tht
Cedar Tavern and the claims of abstract expressionism to seriousness and volatile intermixing of sheer frivolity with passionate commitment, the tast(
mastery. Rauschenberg knew Cage from 1951 (when he collaborated with for excess and extravagance, 'dandyism in the age of mass culture'. Camp, o
him on an 'automation' piece in which Cage drove his Model A Ford along an course, involves a rejection of the whole late-modernist aesthetic, that citade
inked section of roadway and then across twenty pasted-together sheets of of high seriousness and good taste as elaborated by Greenberg, who sav
paper) and grew close to him in 1952 when they both spent the summer at himself as defending the gates against the barbarians of kitsch masse<
Black Mountain. 7 Rauschenberg meanwhile had been working on all-white without. 11 In this sense, camp taste, with its hyperbolic aestheticization, it
and all-black paintings, analogous to Cage's work in their early minimalism, playful connoisseurship of kitsch, was fated to play a decisive part in th
but the important collaboration which took place there was at the now- demise of modernism. At the same time, it was pushing insistently coward
legendary Event, a precursor of the multimedia performances and happenings performance, towards the theatricalization of everyday life.
of the sixties. Rauschenberg operated the gramophone for Cage, and films and ,':JtrWarhol's own version of camp is visible everywhere in his commercial ar
slides were project~ onto his white paintings, beneath which Cunningham work, where, however, the inclination to excess is prudently held in check. 1
danced, poems were read and Cage's music was played. There are limits: limits that often seem calculated in their containment. Gol(
The Black Mountain Event was the first of a series of artistic collaborations leaf remains decorative, foot fetishism remains whimsical, boys and cherub
between Mcree Cunningham and Rauschenberg which persisted till the mid- remain charmingly precious. It was not till the Factory days that camp was le
sixties. Rauschenberg worked on other dance performances too, designing off the leash of good taste, no longer limited by a self-conscious censorship (t,
sets and/or cos#.nes, and in the early sixties he became closely involved in the be evaded in 'private' scrap books, like the 'Foot Book' and the 'Cock Book'
work of the Judson Da,,.ce Theater, founded by dancers from Cunningham·s but channelled within a rigorous and austere aesthetic. It was minimalisn
company and deeply influenced by Cage. They were joined by other dancers that enabled Warhol to release an orgy of camp. And it was at the Judso1
who performed at the Judson Church, a space and refuge made available to Church that this encounter of minimalism and camp crystallized for Warhol
artists in many fields and from different backgrounds, a catalyst for the arts, to be transposed later into a new register. There the discipline of minimalis
avant-garde, bohemian and 'underground', whose activities had a deep and dance met the flagrant masquerade of femininity.
lasting impact on Warhol. It was because of Rauschenberg's involvement, Warhol was already aware of the minimalist direction in which the ar
Warhol said, that he first went to the Judson Church. 8 It was there that ~ world was moving. He had acquired a set of small paintings by Frank Stell
encountered the theatricalization of minimalism, and it was there too that he (through De Antonio, who was Stella's agent, as well as Rauschenberg's an,
saw that same theatricalization reach into the realm of glitter, extravaganza Johns's, and who played a crucial role in encouraging Warhol himself to pain
and camp. 9 and exhibit) and must also have known the Stella black painting that D
'Camp' of course, emerged as an art-historical category with Susan Sontag's Antonio owned. 13 He was also a dedicated gallery-goer. Moreover, he pride,
brilliant 'Notes on "Camp"', first published in Partisan Review in 1964. 10 himself, when he was a commercial artist, on his facility, his ability to dra,
This was the year in which Warhol had his Flowers show and made his first fast with only one line, and he had also always been interested in print media
sound films in the Factory which Billy Linich had decorated all over with in techniques of replication, such as the blotting technique he made his ow
silver foil a few months previously. Reading Sontag's essay today is like and the stamps he carved out of erasers. His longstanding interest (encourage,
reading through a litany of Warhol's tastes, allusions and affinities. It is all by commercial considerations) in doing as much work as possible as fast a
there: the Tiffany lamps, the Enquirer headlines, the Bellini operas, the possible was bound to push him towards a minimalist reduction. But he wa
Firbank novels, the old comics, the bad movies, the idolization of Garbo, also interested in content and in performance. Here the example of dance wa
post-rock'n'roll pop music, 'corny flamboyant femaleness', dresses made of crucial.
• a
160
161
 AAIDING THE iCEBOX
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND

The exemplary minimalist dancer and choreographer at rhe Judson Church plain, one that also relates Waring and Warhol to the other camp and E
was Yvonne Rainer. 14 Her first work, 'Three Satie Spoons', at the Cunn- performance groups of the sixties, such as the Playhouse of the Ridiculous
ingham Studio in 1961, was a repetitive structure, based on Cage's work, and Jack Smith's 'mouldy' extravaganzas. 17 .Indeed, Warhol was particula
performed to music by Satie. The next year, Warhol was at Judson to watch enthralled by one ofWaring's star performers, Freddy Herko, who also danc
her 'Ordinary Dance' and there in 1963 he saw 'Terrain' (lit by Rauschen- in a number of pieces and programmes with Yvonne Rainer. Herko shared
berg), which included a series of partly rule-governed activities (walking, apartment with Billy Linich (Billy Name) who moved into the Factory a
jostling, passing, standing st.ill), of choreographed walks, runs, falls, somer- became Warhol's longest-lasting and most enigmatic associate of the sixti
saults, ballet and cheesecake postures, games (with a ball, wrestling) and a Warhol made three films with Herko, and was fascinated by his beauty,
love duet in which 'she delivered hackneyed expressions ("I love you", "I don't 'star quality', his use of glitzy window-display materials, paste jewt
love you", ''I've never loved you") in a flat monotone which one critic likened feathers, glass flowers, the whole tawdry fairyland of fake glamour tra
to the recitation of a grocery order'. In 1966 Yvonne Rainer wrote a cended by a spectacular stage presence. For Warhol, looking back on Herk
retrospective manJfesto for the dance work of the period, drawing parallels career after he became a speed freak and, in 1964, 'choreographed his o
between sculptural and dance minimalism ('A Quasi Survey of Some "Mini- death and danced out of a window' in a sensational camp suicide, the root~
malist" Tendencies .'), in which she likened the 'energy equality and the tragedy were in Herko's lack of confidence, concentration and dis
"found" movement' of dance to the 'factory fabrication' of sculpture (or pline. 18 It was a career of unchannelled excess.
'objects'); 'equality of parts, repetition,' to 'modules'; 'repetition or discrete Warhol transposed his own interior discipline into the exterior form of 1
events' to 'uninterrupted surface'; 'neutral performance' and 'tasklike activity' machine and the factory as site of automation and of productivity. Butt
to 'nonrefere~al forms' and 'literalness', etcetera. 15 Though she was presum- factory was a minimalist factory that simply recorded rather than transforrr
ably thinking of oth{r artists than Warhol, the parallelism would still hold its raw materials. The techniques of standardization, repetition and assemb
good, both for Warhol's gallery work (including the 'sculptural' Brillo boxes), line throughput were used to assemble not complex finished products ~
except for 'non-referential forms', and for his film work, except that Warhol's literal replicas of what was already there, more or less unaltered. (Though
predilection for exhibitionistic 'routines' replaced 'neutral performance', at critics and connoisseurs have often chosen to stress the tiny percentage
least in the later films. (Eady work like Sleep, Eat, or indeed Empire, was often 'personal touch' they are able to trace. 19 ) Warhol's Factory was a travesty c
neutral). There is a sense, perhaps, in which we can think of Warhol's real factory. Warhol had farmed out work to assistants and friends when
relationship to Rauschenberg as analogous to Rainer's relationship to was a commercial artist, holding 'colouring parties' when he produ<
Cunningham. handmade books and experimenting with handmade printing devices. 20 I
Before she became involved with the founding and programme of the assistant, Nathan Gluck, did original drawings for· Warhol which the lat
Judson Dance Theater, Rainer had worked with the James Waring company of then corrected, as well as doing the blotting that was part of Warhc
dancers, an experience she later recollected: technique. Warhol's mother was entrusted with doing lettering. Warhc
Jimmy had an amazing gift which - because I was put off by the mixture of practice at the Factory was simply to update these habits and procedures
camp and balleticism in his work - I didn't appreciate until much later. His new, relatively inexpensive technology became available to him: the si
company was always full of misfits - they were too short or too fat or too unco- screen, the Polaroid, the tape recorder, the film camera. All these devi,
ordinated or too mannered or too inexperienced by any other standards. He had
simplified and speeded up the work and removed Warhol himself fu
this gift of choosing people who 'couldn't do too much' in conventional
·arduous mvolvement. It was much easier that way (as indeed, it was for Fore
technical terms but who - under his subtle directorial manipulations - revealed
spectacular stage personalities. 16 But Warhol's rationalization of the work process was half serious, b
theatrical. In an article on Fordism, published recently, Robin Mun
Here a completely different parallel with Warhol and his Factory 'company' is describes the impact of Ford's methods and ideas in the Soviet Union:

162
163
 RAIDING THE ICEBOX NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND

Soviet-type planning is the~f Fordism. Soviet industrialization was visitor to the Picture Collection of the New York Public Library where 'h
centred on giant plants, the majority of chem based on Western mass-
would often come and check out hundreds of pictures'. 26 To produce work fc
production technology. So deep is the idea of scale burnt into Soviet economics
that there is a hairdresser's in Moscow with 120 barbers' chairs. The focus of gallery spaces he acquired an 'iconographic programmer' (Henry Geldzahle:
Soviet production is on volume and becauseof its lack of consumer discipline, it and restructured his system of production. The innovation of Warhol's gestu1
has caricatured certain features of Western massproduction, notably a hoarding was that of displaying display.
of stocks, and inadequate quality control. 21 In this circuit of display, Warhol's particular position was to be with, to I
alongside the recording apparatus. Indeed, he seemed both to identify wit
These 'caricature' elements of Soviet mass production are precisely the ones the apparatus and to perceive it as an extension of himself, a prosthesis, or,,
Warhol prized: volume ('Thirty Mona Lisas are better than one'), hoarding he came to call his tape recorder, a 'wife'. 27 At the same time the apparan
and (deliberately) inadequate quality control, leaving errors of alignment 'mechanized' its controller, turning Warhol himself into a phantasmat.
uncorrected, etc. 22
machine, in line with his desire: 'The reason I'm painting this way is because
It is easy to imagine the delight Warhol would surely have felt at seeing the
want to be a machine. Whatever I do, and do machine-like, is because, it
120 barbers' chairs~Warhol often reiterated the ideology of Fordism (Ameri-
what I want to do. ' 28 Only if the apparatus was too complex or tiresome t
canism, or 'common-ism' as he once called it) in the form which Robin
operate would Warhol let go of it: like the 35mm still camera he gave to Bill
Murray describes: 'In the welfare state, the idea of the standard produce was
Name because there were too many controls to work (Billy Name used it t
given a democratic interpretation as the universal service to meet basic
document the scene at the Factory). Similarly Warhol hired Gerard Malan!
needs'. 23 Warhol frequently commented on the way in which post-1945
to do the silkscreens because it was too much effort to do it all himself. 1
Fordism proAced a form of basic social levelling (without, of course,
Geldzahler these pieces of apparatus were 'baffles' which Warhol needed t
redistributing wealth)', through standardizing consumption (Campbell's
function in the interpersonal world. He could only have a conversation ov<
Soup, Coke, and so on). 24 But, of course, Warhol's own standardization was
the telephone, and if it was being recorded. He took his tape recorder t
precisely on the barber's shop scale.
dinner parties and took Polaroids of the other guests. He wanted everybod
Warhol's attitude to the mass consumption commodities whose packaging
1 who came to the Factory to be filmed in one of an endless series of 'scree
lh-e replicated is often described as 'ironic'. But I _think it might be better
understQ.Qdin. teems of tbearre, of performance or roasqnecade Ratherthan tests'. It is as ifby submerging himself into machine-like-ness, Warhol coul
producing images of commodities, he was repackaging packaging as a enter, in phancasy, a world of pure seriality and standardization, in which, ,
commodity ,in itself. In this process it was the element of display that one and the same time, the 'otherness' of the image of the 'other' was efface
fascinated Warhol, the transfer to a new space (the art gallery) of images ;hose and ~ identity of the self was obliterated through the agency of a
display was already familiar in different spaces (the supermarket, the daily impersonal machine-like 'Other'. Thus imaginary difference was erased an
newspaper, the fan magazine). lt was precisely the proliferation of'spectacle', the identity of the subject was reduced to the purely symbolic dimension <
of the 'to-be-looked-at', _thesaturation of everyday life by a new scopic regime, the name, fu~tioning like a logo, 'Andy Warhol', like 'Coca-Cola' or 'Wa
that Warhol chose to replicate in a further gesture of theatricality. Warhol was Disney'. 29
not particularly concerned by the problem potentially posed in terms ofloss of Trusidyllic vision of the Andymat stands in obvious tension with the cam
originality or authenticity. He was already used co working on assignment in world of caricature and masquerade. Yet the baffle was itself a form of mask:
the commercial art world, where he was told what kind of image to produce shield or screen which promised immunity from the exchange of intersubje<
and then produced it as fast as possible in a given format. He was already used rive looks, while permitting a whole economy of voyeurism and exhibitionist
to copying and tracing from photographs (in fact, his first recorded drawing ii:i.._!heform of recorded spectacle/ Here the excess and extravagance <
was a childhood copy of Hedy Lamarr in a Maybellene ad 25 and was a frequent ma~querade and display were neutralized by the apparatus, framed, registere

164 165
 Bllil'ff1fiti-MLYH~i\,&JA4CJ

and re-projected on the exterior blank of screen or wall, under the supervision
single aesthetic imperative) it should adopt a serial procedure of segmentation
of the passive yet sovereign master of ceremonies.
and ordering, based on arbitrary data (the length of a reel of film) or decisions
At the same time, recording was also a form of storage, Warhol recorded
(for his second exhibition in Los Angeles, in 1964, Warhol sent a roll of
everything endlessly. He ended up becoming a compulsive hoarder of every
silkscreened Elvises, with a request to 'cut them'any way you think it should
derail of his daily life. Not only did he have fourteen hundred hours of taped
be cut. I leave it to you. The only thing I really want is that they should be
telephone conversation with Brigid Berlin alone, but he saved records and
hung edge to edge densely - around the gallery. So long as you can manage
samples of everything that passed through his hands, packing it all up in that, do the best you can.') 33
boxes each month and sending it to storage as 'time capsules'. This mania Raid The Icebox records another poignant moment:
extended far beyond the bounds of an artistic strategy. It became constitutive
Back in his office, Robbins [the museum director] informed the curator of the
of Warhol's being-within-the-world, so to speak. Once again this accumu-
costume collection that Warhol wanted co borrow the entire shoe coJJection.
lative drive was channelled into a serial form, that of the regular scheduled 'Well, you don't want it all', she told Warhol in a somewhat disciplinarian
'time capsules': 'What you should do is get a box for a month, and drop tone, 'because there's some duplication.' Warhol raised his eyebrows and
everything in it and at ths, end of the month lock it up. Then date it and send blinked. In fact he wanted all the shoes, all the hatboxes (without caking the
it over to Jersey.' This indeed is what Warhol did: accumulate 'clutter' and hats out), all the American Indian baskets and ceramics, all the parasols and
then empty it out of his immediate space into his 'closet' in New Jersey in an umbrellas, all the Windsor chairs, and so on. 'All of them - just like that.'
orderly fashion, accumulating an endless series of identical sealed and labelled This same attitude inspired Warhol's approach to film-making. He would
boxes. 30 shoot a single reel of film for each episode or each movie. He would shoot only
In 1970 Andy ~rhol was invited to curate an exhibition selected one take. Then he would show the movie (the take) either as a work in itself or,
personally from the storage vaults of the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island like Kiss, as a serial - a different Kiss opened every screening at the Film-
School of Design in Provid;ncc. In his preface to the catalogue (Raid The Makers Co-op for a period of time. Or, as with the longer works, such as
Icebox) the museum director remarked that Chelsea Girls, a series of ten-minute takes would be joined up and shown end
to end. There was no editing. Nothing was selected within each take and,
there were exasperating moments when we felt that Andy Warhol was
since there were no second rakes, there was no selection between takes. 34 Here
exhibiting 'storage' rather than works of art, that a series oflabels could mean as
much co him as the paintings to which they refer. And perhaps they do, for in Warhol's approach is completely the opposite to that of William Burroughs,
his vision, all things become part of the whole and we know that what is being who also rape-recorded and photographed everything incessantly, but preci-
exhibited is Andy,Warhol. 31 sely in order to edit it, to cut the word lines and reorganize the images in
complex photo-collages. Burroughs's paranoid fear of being taken over by
It is as if the label 'Andy Warhol' would signify, not a person, in the sense of a alien words and images is the exact converse of Warhol's 'reverse-paranoid'
human subject, but storage: boxes, reels, spools, Polaroids, all labelled 'Andy desire to be taken over. Both recorded compulsively in order to sabotage
Warhol'. It would be an immense museum of junk (or rather, since it could all (Burroughs) and to facilitate (Warhol) the workings of the semiotic machine.
be metamorphosed into commodity form, a department store or gigantic Warhol's reluctance to edit was a constant in all his activities. Unedited
thrift shop). 32 At the root of this attitude we find once again many affinities tape transcripts became the basis for his novel a and, later, for his magazine
with Cage's aesthetic: the refusal of hierarchy or consequence or narrative _ Interview. With Cage this refusal of selectivity had both an aesthetic and a
(hierarchy and consequence of events o~r time). Ev;;ything is equally worth spiritual, quasi-religious foundation, but with Warhol we can sense another
recording and storing and hence all that is needed to record and store it is an dimension, a more social and psychological fear of rejection, which could
automatic process, the simplest possible algorithm. The recording/storing express itself in the attempt to reintegrate the rejected. Talking about Freddy
apparatus should not make evaluative distinctions, and to avoid 'clutter' (the Herko and the Factory 'company', the San Remo crowd of faggots and

166 167
 amphetamine freaks, Warhol recollecred, 'rhe people I loved were the ones charge for him. 'I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look a·

( like Freddy, the leftovers of show business, turned down at auditions all over
town. . . You had to love these people more because they loved themselves
less. ' 35 Warhol surrounded himself with 'leftovers' and set about turning
the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better am
emptier you feel.' Warhol's fascination with images was bound up with hi
dissatisfaction with his own image, his unat'tractiveness. He had hair that fel
them into 'stars': these were not just ordinary people, as in the Hollywood out, blotchy odd-looking skin, a bulbous nose that reminded people ofW.C
myth, but rejects, people 'turned down at auditions all over town'. Fields (his family called him 'Andy, the Red-Nosed Warhola'). He had a nos
In Raid the Icebox, Daniel Robbins remarks that Warhol 'picked an entire job and kept out of the sun and acquired a wig. 'I really look awful, and I nev,
row of Windsor chairs but, from an antique connoisseur's point-of-view the bother to primp up or try to be appealing because I just don't want anyone t
chairs he chose were of secondary interest. In fact, they had been kept, get involved with me'_ 39
according to a venerable entry, for use in spare parts!' Robbins continues, Tina Fredericks, his first picture editor (at Glamour) comments, 'Like th
commenting, 'What violence the idea of spare parts does to our fanatical harem guards at ancient courts, he had the power that comes from bein
notion of uniqueness and the state of an object's preservation. Our present totally unthreatening and endearing'. 40 The power, that is, which emanate
curator will not affow a piece to be exhibited at Pendleton House if it is from an imaginary castration. In his novel, a, Warhol is called 'Drella', th;;
"married" - that is, if all parts are not original to it'. Of course, Robbins is is, a mixture of Cinderella and Dracula. 11 The magical transformation fror
right: Warhol's aesthetic does challenge ideas of uniqueness and authenticity. out-take to stardom was achieved for Warhol through voyeurism, as a kind c
But it is also important to note that the chairs in question 'were of secondary ocular vampirism. The look recorded, appropriated and re-projected 2
interest'. In fact, they were the leftovers - the understudies, the rejects. spectacle the magical transformation of other leftovers into stars. At the sam
Elsewhere, Wl!l!,ol said: time, it conferred a magical aura on Warhol himself. He acquired not beaut
or attractiveness but glamour and fame.
I always like to work ~n leftovers, doing the leftover things. Things that were
discarded, that everybody knew were no good. . When I see an old Esther For Warhol, the kind of love that counted was that of the fan for the scar-
Williams movie and a hundred girls are jumping off their swings, I chink of love that linked private fantasy with public image, a love at a distance
what the auditions must have been like and about all the takes where maybe one mediated through merchandizing, maintained by the obsessive hoarding c
girl didn't have the nerve to jump when she was supposed to, and I think about fetishes~ the process described so well in Edgar Morin's book The Stars, whic
her left over on the swing. So chat the scene was a leftover on the editing-room Warhol acquired, I assume, when it was published by Grove Press in Ne1
floor- an out-take - and the girl was probably a leftover at that point- she was
York in 1960. 42 And as Warhol acquired confidence and assurance, as h
prob.ibly fired - so the whole scene is much funnier than the real scene where
everything went right, and the girl who didn't jump is the star of the began to savour his own success and fame, he turned more and more to 'eh
out-take. 36 stars of the out-take', a process only ended when he was shot by one of the out
takes in 1968.
There cannot be much doubt that the girl on the swing in the fantasy scenario In 1965, in Paris, Warhol announced his intention of giving up paintin,g
is Andy, the childhood reject and misfit, bearen up at school, kept in bed with He had started making films the previous year and, on his return to Nel
nervous disorders, 'the girl who didn't have the nerve'. 37 The fear is mingled York, he would soon become involved with the Velvet Underground and eh
with the anxiety of not being like everybody else, like the ninety-nine other world of music. The Soviet artists who moved out of painting in the 1920s di
girls on their swings. So, on the one hand, we have the deep desire to be so in order to enter the field of commercial 'and industrial art: advertisinE
exactly like everybody else 'I don't want it to be essentially the same. I want it design and even their own functionalist version of fashion. This, of course
to be exactly the same.' 38 And, on the other hand, there is the identification was the world Warhol was coming from. His trajectory was towards perform
with the rejected. It was 'the stars of the out-take' that Warhol loved, who ance. In retrospect, it is possible to see tell tale signs of the impending move i
were meaningful to him. The others, the ninety-nine, had no emotional the art works themselves. There is a move from the generic products as subje(

168 169
 h\\Vtf;i'l\j\.\jfT
-%)1\"fu";7>'\,W&l½f4t.§f%9

matter (Campbell's Soup, Coca-Cola) to the stars (Marilyn, Liz, Jackie) and childhoods and their doomed, unrequitable groping inco a dismal future, The
then to the increasingly 'frivolous' flowers and cows (subjects from Du~ art is pasty because this is not only the subject matter but, properly, its form
genre painting helpfully suggested by Geldzahler). At the same time, the gaH~ry ) and method and surface. 46
space was being threatricalized: the wrap-around Elvis paintings, the Brillo
boxes littered all over the gallery floor, the cow wallpaper with the inflatable Warhofs most successful pop art simply recycled an obsession with stars and
silver balloons (perhaps the turning point was 1963, when Warhol first wore a glamour and celebrity, an obsession that never left him and eventually
silver-sprayed wig). Warhol was deeply impressed by the scene at his opening propelled him into celebrity himself. But for Jack Smith, and no doubt for
in Philadelphia in 1965, when a crowd of fans screamed at Warhol, Edie Warhol too, buried behind his own mirror-glass fa<;ade, there was a recog-
Sedgwick and his entourage: nition that Hollywood glamour was a fantasy surface, even, in Baudelaire's
phrase, 'a phosphorescence of rotten-ness'. As another underground film-
It was incredible to think of it happening at an art opening. . But then, we maker, Ken Jacobs, put it: 'Pop Art was a thing we hated .... it lacked
weren't just at the art exhibit - we were the art exhibit, we were the art terror.' The "'Human Wreckage" aesthetic' he shared with Smith was built on
incarnate and the sixties were really about people, not about what they did; 'the
garbage and hopelessness. Hollywood was 'a seedy garbage heap' and the 'low-
singer/not the song', lt:c. Nobody had even cared that the paintings were all off
the walls [removed because they were in danger of getting crushed by the
budget personalities' they loved were condemned to waste and suffering.
crowd]. I was really glad I was making movies instead. 43 There was nothing left but 'a hilarious and horrifying willingness to "revel in
the dumps", to create some sort of "garbage culture" '. 47 But Warhol's key 1
In one sense, of course, films were just another form of wallpaper: wallpaper decision was to combine the minimalist aesthetic he brought with him, and
that slowly began;i move out of stasis and silence into movement and sound, which was naively present in many 'bad' cheaply made films, with an equally
even eventually into colour. But in another sense they ratified Warhol's need minimalist refusal to direct. His instructions to his scriptwriter, Ronald Tavel
for theatricality; they made possible his plunge into the world of camp, the (whom Warhol approached when he acquired the Auricon sound cameratwere
underground, the bohemian avant-garde. 44 Warhol traces his interest in film that h~ wanted 'situation' and 'incident' rather than 'plot' or 'narrative'. At
back to the days when he would go to 'bad' movies on Forty Second Street with first, he· wanted Tavel to invent situations and provoke responses from off:
De Antonio, and this camp inflection of his taste was strongly reinforced by screen. In fact, much of the soundtrack came from off-screen comments.
the films he saw at the Co-op screenings organized by Jonas Mekas, especially Later, he realized that with a cast of confessional exhibitionists, he could
films from the gay scene, like those by Jack Smith. All this led him on to even dispense with the idea of a writer entirely. Given a forum, they would talk.
'worse' films like Arthur Lubin's cut-price stagey desert melodramas. The Moreover, Warhol made it clear that his non-interventionism meant that
aesthetic was one he shared with Jack Smith and the other film-makers there would be no censorship. Warhol benefited from the freedoms that had
devoted to what Carel Rowe calls 'moldy art' and the 'Baudelairean cinema'. 45 been won by others, who had to face legal actions: Allen Ginsberg, William
Smith himself talked about 'pasty art'. Ronald Tavel, the founder of the Burroughs, Jack Smith (and Jonas Mekas), Kenneth Anger. The liberties
Theatre of the Ridiculous and later Warhol's scriptwriter, described Smith's Warhol enjoyed meant that not editing meant not censoring. This was an
project for a new film, Normal Love: outcome of the minimalist aesthetic which accommodated Warhol' s own
voyeurism and love of sexual gossip, and made it possible to combine
Normal Love is meant to define and reach the heights of 'pasty art'. What chat is
minimalism with a scabrous sense of the histrionic and the breaking of taboo.
can sooner be gotten from studying the film than speaking of it. But briefly,
'pasty art' refers to what it suggests - bad art. But bad in a very special sense. It Warhol believed so strongly in a certain kind of literalism that he was worried
is bad and 'moldy' and 'pasty' because it involves all that is pitiful and miserable when filming Sleepthat he was missing moments because of having to change
and lose and degraded about people. It encompasses their wretched, deceitful, the reel in the camera. (Later when he was recording interviews for his book
inherited dreams, the abominable fantasy prisons that follow their twisted Pop-ism, he would come with two tape recorders and start them at different

170
171
 times, so nothing could escape). To make up for the missing moments, Notes
Warhol slowed down the projection speed of the film, so that it would be the
1. For discussion of the historic impatt of Fordism on culture more generally see chapter 2.
length he felt it should have been, without the gaps. It is exactly this 2. For Joseph Beuys, see Joseph Beuys, Ideas and Acti(lns (New York: Hirsch & Adler, 1988) and
literalism, this insistence on missing nothing, on suppressing nothing, that Skulptt1ren 11ndObjecte(Berlin: Martin+Gropius-Bau, 1988).
3. For John Cage and his influence on Rauschenberg and others, see Calvin Tompkins, The Bride and the
made the connection between minimalism and outrageous camp Bache/(lrs(New York: Schirmer, 1981). See also Michael Nyman, Experimmtal Music: Cage and beyond
performance 48 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976).
4. For COBRA, see chapter 4.
Finally, Warhol moved into the music world, with the Exploding Plastic 5. See John Cage's comments in the 'Madame Duchamp' section of Andy \Farhol, a transcript of David
Inevitable, a mixed-media performance environment, with mov.ies, light- Bailey's ATV documentary (London: Bailey Litchfield/Matthews Miller Dunbar, 1972).
6. For Rauschenberg in general, and the work he did with Johns for Bonwit Teller in particular, see
show, expressive dancing and the Velvet Underground. 19 Warhol recognized
Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wall (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980).
in the Velvets a group that already shared the same aesthetic, minimalist and 7. For Black Mountain, see Marrin Duberman, Black M(l11ntain:an experiment in wmmunity (New York:
outrageous. John Cale had been a student of Cornelius Cardew in England, Dutton, 1972).
8. For Warhol and Rauschenberg see Emile De Antonio's comments in Patrick S. Smith, Warhol:
where he had already absorbed Cage's ideas. In New York, he was close to conversatiom about the artist (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988).
"
another minimalist composer, LaMonte Young, and played in John Cage's 9. For Judson Church and New York bohemia in general, see Ronald Sukenick, Down and In: life in the
underground (New York: Macmillan, 1988); Barbara Haskell, B!am.' The Exj;/wion of Pop, Minima/iJm
1963 eighteen-hour performance of Satie's 'Vexations', a series of 840 and Performance 1958-1964 (New York: Whitney Museum, 1984); and Sally Banes, Terpsichorein
repetitions. (This was a performance which Warhol attended.) 50 At the same Sneaken (Middletown: Wesleyan, 1976) and Democracy'sBody:JudJon Dance Thea/er, 1962-1964 (Ann
Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983).
time, Lou Reed brought a star presence, as bard of drug-taking and paranoia. 10. 'Notes on "Camp"', in Susan Sonrag, Axaimt lnterpretalion (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux,
Warhol both cxpanjd the theatricality of the Velvets by turning every 1966), first published in 1964. For a modernist response, sec Matei Calinescu, Faces of Modernity:
avant-xarde, decadence,kitsch (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977).
performance into a mixed-media event (shades of Black Mountain) and also
11. See Walter Hopp's comment in Jean Stein and George Plimpron (eds), Edie (New York: Knopf, 1982):
sought to minimalize the pe;formance. 51 'One of the ideas he came up with, 'No chic, no chi-chi, no frills, no nothin'!' For Warhol's own comments, see Andy Warhol and Pat
which was very beautiful, was that we should rehearse on stage, because the Hackett, POPi.rm:the Warhol 1960.1 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980): 'It was exactly the
kind of atmosphere I'd pay ro get out of. . I tried to imagine myself in a bar striding over to, say,
best music always rook place in rehearsals.' 52 Similarly he had irritated Tavel Roy Lichtenstein and asking him to "step outside" because l'd heard he'd insulted my soup cans. I
by preventing any rehearsal for films, so that the take was in effect the mean, how corny.'
12. For Warhol's commercial art, see Smirh;Jesse Kornbluth, Pre-pop Warhol (New York: Random House,
rehearsal.
1988); and Donna M. DeSalvo (ed.), 'S11ccess /JA Job In New York' (New York: Grey Art Gallery,
Warhol was many things. He was the revenge of graphics on fine art. He 1989).
13. For De Antonio's impact on Warhol, see Emilio De Antonio, Painters Painting (New York: Abbevi!!e,
was the revenge of the 'swish' on the 'macho'. 53 He was the revenge of camp on
1984), and Warhol and Hackett; Stein and Plimpton; and Smith. These three works remain the basic
high seriousness and of the underground on the overground. Perhaps, one source material for Warhol's life.
might even say he was the revenge of the Ballets Russes on the Great 14. See Yvonne Rainer, Work 1961-1973 (Halifax: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1974).
15 'A Quasi Survey of some "Minimalist" Tendencies . .' in Rainer, and reprinted in Gregory Battcock
Masculine Renunciation 54 His legacy has passed to different hands in a (ed.), Minimal Art: a critical anthology (New York: Dutton, 1968).
number of different directions. The most obvious has been assimilated into 16 . Rainer.
• 17 See Stefan Brecht, Queer Theatre (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), and 1960s numbers of Film
mainstream postmodernism and simulat.ionism. But the potential of the other Culture.
dimension- the underground, the camp, the Velvets - is still available. It left 18. Warhol and Hackett.
19 See Richard Morpher's essay in R. Morpher (ed.), Warhol (London: Tare Gallery, 1971). In contrast,
its trace on punk and on the emergence of militantly gay art. In the last see Malanga's comments in Smith: 'This one he may have purposely decided tO leave that corner blank.
analysis, it may be, to borrow Walter Benjamin's categories, that he will be But, as far as this part here is concerned, we didn't know what was going to happen.'

remembered not as the artist of the 'copy' but, more subversely, as the artist of w According to Malanga: 'Andy even had his mother's penmanship- the script - made inro Leuasers so
that he would have instant lettering.'
distraction', whose Chelsea Girls rampage through the perverse aesthetic 21. Robin Murray, 'Life after Henry Ford", Marxism Today, October 1988.
realms of the underground imagination. 55 22 Nathan Gluck remembers an early example of lack of quality comrol, in Kynaston McShine (ed.),

173
172