ART

King of the Banal dark glasses a social critic was lurking.

This fitted the mood of the period neatly.
“A movie producer friend of mine hit Ten years later, however, Warhol’s cans
on something when he said, ‘Frigid people and Cokes and Marilyns look somehow
really make out’. He’s right: they really stranded. Incessant exposure has dulled
can and they really do.” The best proof of their impact, and what one sees is the brisk,
this Warholism is, of course, Andy Warhol elegant and paper-thin sensibility of a
himself, who in the 20 years since his days commercial illustrator—designed-in rawness,
as a shoe illustrator for I. Miller has managed hand-rubbed indifference.
to parlay his cool into one of the social Radical Chic. When in 1973 Warhol
myths of our time. During the ’60s, Warhol’s began painting portraits of Mao Tse-Tung,
silence about himself and his knowingly critics praised them as a “radical”
dumb utterances about the culture he helped gesture—the translation of Mao, revolutionary
form—“Pop art is liking things”— hero, onto the walls of the American rich.
underwrote his durability as a star. Indeed, The artist as non-alienated man: Andy Warhol But the Oriental superstar was chic already;
his banality endowed him with an air of there were Mao jackets all along Fifth
mystery, since few people could bring business. The same tone of grayout pervades Avenue. Though the Chairman was tubbier
themselves to believe that any artist could every remark. For example: “I really like and more paternal, he was just as embalmed
possibly be so banal. They may soon be to eat alone. I want to start a chain of by celebrity as Jackie Kennedy or Elvis
convinced of it, however, for Warhol is now restaurants for other people who are like Presley, Warhol’s earlier subjects. Moreover,
both the author of a book and the subject me called AndyMats—The Restaurant for the peacock colors in which Warhol
of a retrospective exhibition. the Lonely Person. You get your food and packaged Mao’s face had all the lushness
In a time when every trade, from market then you take your tray into a booth and that one associates with the most edible
research to plumbing, is said to have a watch television.” commercial art. The whole enterprise was
“philosophy,” we sooner or later had to get Shock Value. Warhol’s retrospective, about as subversive as a department-store
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (Harcourt which opened last week at the Baltimore window display, and it set the tone for the
Brace Jovanovich; $7.95). This necessarily Museum of Art, shows how this legendary rest of Warhol’s output.
slim volume will be one of the curiosities affectlessness took form as painting. Since then, the café society portraits
of the coming fall. Lack of appetite means Organized by Brenda Richardson, the which now provide Warhol’s bread and
dull writing, and Warhol’s specialty is museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, butter do not pretend to be anything else.
absence of Lebenslust. His act has been to the exhibition consists of 40 works. From To see Warhol entering a drawing room,
desire nothing more than fame, money and the outset, Warhol’s reputation was based pale eyes blinking in that pocked bun of a
the occasional Hershey bar. He has become on a sort of iconic shock value—nobody face, surrounded by his Praetorian Guard
a parody of the Astomes, those fabled since Marcel Duchamp had been so flat of chittering ingenues, is to realize that
inhabitants of the medieval bestiaries who, and matter-of-fact. Warhol presented a row things do turn out well after all. The right
living entirely on air, possessed neither of stenciled Coca-Cola bottles as a work level has been found. New York—not to
anus nor mouth. Indeed, Warhol appears of art, turned out a series of 32 Campbell’s speak of Rome, Lugano, Paris, Tehran and
to have no metabolic system at all, and soup cans differing only in color and the Skorpiós—needed a society portraitist.
though a number of interesting things (like flavor printed on their labels, silk-screened The empty angel of the ’60s has effortlessly
getting shot in 1968 by one of his deranged the same photo of Marilyn Monroe or Liz become the Boldini of the ’70s. The alien-
hangers-on) have befallen him, he makes Taylor over and over. One could find these ation of the artist, of which one heard so
them sound uniformly tedious. passive, no-comment images either dumb much talk a few years ago, no longer exists
The book consists of a string of reflections or threatening, according to taste; and for Warhol: his ideal society has crystal-
on friendship, privacy, celebrity, sex (which despite Warhol’s own efforts to dispel it, lized round him and learned to love his
Andy thinks is work) and how to run an art a belief grew that somewhere behind his entropy. ■ Robert Hughes

Passive images:
whether it’s dumb
or threatening,
Warhol’s work
has the paper-
thin sensibility
of commercial
illustration

TIME, AUGUST 4, 1975 65