About the future

It is inevitable that the most perceptive prediction about the near future I’ve seen so far this year comes in the form of a meme. It’s also appropriate that I have no idea who created it, and rather piquant that, partly because of the technological and social changes it implies, hardly anyone under the age of 45 will get the joke.

About Warhol

Tracey Emin, quoted in Dylan Jones’s newish oral history of the Velvet Underground:

When I was at school, I used to imagine that I would go to New York by boat and when I walked down the gangplank Andy Warhol would be there waiting for me.

The thing is, I still believe that...

PS: From the same book, and in a similar vein, Jones himself gets in on the act:

...I even went through a phase of rolling up my drainpipe jeans – skinhead style – worn with pink socks and black Dr. Marten shoes, in the vain hope of trying to advertise the fact that I owned records by people who lived in New York.

About farts

I am intrigued by the tale of TikTok star Stephanie Matto, who sold her farts in jars then claims to have ended up in hospital from over-indulgence in high-fibre foods. Not because of the product itself – that’s just a half-arsed (sorry) take on Piero Manzoni’s Künstlerscheisse – but because of her decision to sell non-fungible tokens of her bottom burps instead, proving once again that NFTs attain a level of conceptualist purity that would leave Duchamp gasping in admiration.

And while we’re on the subject of artists not averse to making a quick buck, this picture just popped up on Twitter, depicting a little soirée Warhol threw at the Factory for (among others) Quentin Crisp, Keith Haring and, uh, Marilyn. A dream dinner party for many – so why do they all look so bloody glum?

About Warhol

Alice Cooper has discovered a version of Andy Warhol’s Electric Chair print in a locker alongside some of his stage props. I was initially amused by the comment from his manager, Shep Gordon, about a discussion the then-drunk rock star may or may not have had with the artist: 

“Alice says he remembers having a conversation with Warhol about the picture... he thinks the conversation was real, but he couldn't put his hand on a Bible and say that it was.”

Which is something that would doubtless have tickled Andy. But I’m not sure how he would have taken another of Gordon’s reflections:

“Andy Warhol was not really ‘Andy Warhol’ back then.”

I suspect what Gordon means is that Warhol didn’t command the vast sums on the art market that he can attract now he’s safely dead – which goes for any number of big names. But it seems oddly appropriate in that ‘Andy Warhol’ (as distinct from Andy Warhol) was his greatest work, the spectral, silver-wigged entity, umm-ing and gee-ing and generally being, blurring the lines between art, business, performance and celebrity. In fact, by the mid-70s, it’s possible that Andy Warhol had ceased to exist and only ‘Andy Warhol’ was left.