Andy Warhol Really Did Like Campbell's Soup

Published Sep 15, 2015, 4:00 AM

Andy Warhol gained fame and notoriety as the godfather of Pop Art. His electric-colored screen prints of Coca Colas, Marilyn Monroes, and electric chairs are iconic pieces, despite their iconoclastic origins. But there's more to Warhol than Day-Glo portraiture: he was an author, commentator, filmmaker, sculptor, and socialite. Host Alec Baldwin talks to Eric Shiner, director of The Andy Warhol Museum, about the hyper-inventive multimedia star, and learns about the surprisingly deep emotional basis for Warhol's obsession with Campbell's Soup.

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policy makers, and performers, to hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Andy Warhole's images of campbell soup cans and billow boxes upset the distinction between advertising and art. His Prince of Maryland and Eliza raised questions about the relationship between celebrity, culture, commerce and artistic expression. Warhole was an openly gay man before stone Wall, and his New York studio was a place where artists, drug addicts, and celebrities came to party, crash, and play a role. In one of Warhole's experimental, often sexually explicit films, in nineteen sixty eight, Warhole was shot by Valerie Salonis, who had appeared in two of his films. After the Shoe and until his death in nineteen eighty seven, Warhole kept to a tight circle of friends and family and relied heavily on Vincent Fremont, his exclusive sales agent, and Fred Hughes, his business manager. My guest today is Eric Scheiner, director of the Andy Warhol Museum, when Shiner began his work at the museum twenty years ago, he had a much different job interned at the Warhol Museum the year that we opened in nine, as an intern in the curatorial department twenty years ago. That was you had a contact with exactly connection with That's where I started, and then I jumped off to Asia and always did Asian art through the lens of Warhol and pop art. And then after working many years here in New York in that field specifically, I got a call out of the blue to go be the curator at the Warhol Museum back home in Pittsburgh. You would interned when the museum first opened, And I want to go to that point because I'm interested in Warhol died what year in seven, so we died seven years earlier. He had been shot in sixty eight, ten years RFK. That's right, what transpires after Warhol's death? Was there a planned when Warhol was alive to build this institution or did it all come to fruition after he was gone. There was no decided plan. It had been a conversation point and certainly people had talked to Andy about the idea of one day having a museum, which he liked that idea, but there was nothing definitive about it whatsoever. Andy's will was incredibly basic, and it said that he wanted his estate to support art and artists, and that was all that had said. And so who with a catalyst behind building the museum? And it must have Those things cost a lot of dough. There are a lot of urban legends that say that several New York museums were approached a partner to have the Andy Warhol Museum based here in New York City. But it's very important to remember that in the late nineteen eighties, Warhol's reputation was about as low as it could possibly because the result of as the result of most of his exhibitions throughout the nineteen eighties receiving horrid reviews in the art press. So a lot of institutions here really questioned the sustainability of Andy Warhol as an artist and really asked if he would even deserve his own museum. Do you think that Warhole in that period was doing something different than Warhol had done or was he just being And he was an innovator in all things, and what's constantly trying new ways of making art through new mediums, through new subject matter, new color palettes. He was always trying to stay ahead of the curve, and that often affected him negatively, and that sometimes the work that he was doing was too fresh, it was too current. It was two of the moment. For example, for example the dollar sign paintings and thinking about what that year paintings in that two dollar bills was his very first exactly. So that's in early nineteen sixties work nineteen sixty two. So he was being dismissed for that. He was and um, you know a lot of people said that it was too tacky to paint money. It was too ghosh. And when we look at those paintings today, what's more indicative of the early nineteen eighties in New York than the almighty dollar? He hit it square on the head. But Andy loved money. I mean that was one of his driving forces, and he drew and painted money really throughout his entire career. We have to say he loved money, not just his art, but loved money in terms of his own wealth. Oh absolutely, But he became that way. He did not monetize well in the sixties, and he stopped painting. What year when did he stop painting well and he went into his filmmaking period in nineteen sixty four is when he really shifts focus to the film making. Um he starts experimenting in nineteen sixty three, in sixty four declares that he's going to be a filmmaker, and yet never stops fully painting or fully making. He was always making something, but he definitely put the onus of his focus on film in nineteen sixty four, and then he comes back to painting, and not that he really ever left, but he shifts back again, concentrating more on painting when early nineteen seventies is when he really goes back to it. The shooting has a lot to do with that as well, when he starts to rethink his life in that he does quite literally die as a result of the shooting. He's miraculously brought back to life after hours and hours of change after the shooting. Because I think to myself, is that when he decided he wanted to I don't say this in the vulgar sense. Warhole really shifts the whole Warhole incorporated into fifth gear. After he's fully recovered from the shooting, he thought we only lived so long right. It was a huge wake up call, and he really did start to think about business in a much more serious way, mortality and mortality. He'd certainly been somewhat lackadaisical and business records and feelings prior to the shooting, but after that he brings on Fred and Vincent to help run the business. Is they know what they're doing, and they really pull a lot of order into his life. And I think it's also important to think that post shooting, he becomes much more insular and much more protected. So we all know about the parties at the factory that ends at that period, it ends, and everybody we shed us, he sheds a skin. He does. He still gives him to shed a skin social in ways, but he doesn't allow. Many people in in security and safety have a lot to do with that. When I think of Warhol, he seemed um not on the surface, but underneath, very jaded and very cynical, and very playful and very boyish and very guileless. At the same time. It was tremendous yin and Yang and him. Is that an accurate portray? Accurate? You hit it directly on the head. And when he trust, his trust was probably very difficult to get wheel trust. He trusted his family, stayed in regular contact with his brothers back in Pittsburgh with weekly telephone calls. They were the rock Ums. Two brothers. What did they do? Paul and John. Paul was in the scrap metal recycling business, and Paul just died about a year and a half ago at the age of ninety one. Um the first to come in, the first to go worve. Now, how old would he be? Um? Andy would be, Let's see eighty seven this August. Wouldn't it be great to have an eighty seven year old Warhol around? It would be Could you imagine seven year old Warhol? Oh? He loved so Um and the other brother And the other brother was John, and John was a businessman and a salesman and was very much Andy's confident. In so many ways, was name itself changing? Because he's photographing fame? Did fame have to become different? It's such an interesting thing to think about because in so many ways Warhol becomes famous because of his depiction of fame. So he is really linking himself to the very concept of fame and to the celebrities that drive the fame machine. Certainly when you think about what fame meant across America in the late nineteen fifties early nineteen sixties, it's a very different universe. It's a much more private world. Celebrities are certainly famous for their acting, for their persons. They're singing, but a talent, and that the world of press that puts that out as a completely different media universe, the media completely but changing them and certainly changing. But when you think about it, it relies so much on press and print, visual in visual images in the newspaper or are huge, huge Life Magazine. Is the internet be all? No Internet? And Warhol realizes that not only do people like Maryland and Liz become famous through that media angle, but so do artists. And he's looking very carefully, and where is the art in fame? Well, he asked himself, I think, because where is the art here? And he knows that Jackson Pollock and a few other abstract expressionist painters who have been um featured in Life Magazine and other mainstream media sources our household names and famous, and that's what he wants more than anything, not only to be respected as an artist, to be known as an artist, which is really one of the major driving forces in his life. I think that, um, you know, television obviously is coming into its own in the early sixties, TV engaging with someone's imagery. It's not just a void coming out of the radio. And to me, Warhol represents someone who starts that process in modern life of taking famous people and saying they're here to be consumed by you like a product exactly. And that's why he does what he does, because he realizes that celebrities are a consumer product product just like buying the Campbell soup can just like buying brill like air and water that we need to survive in ways and yet um, we can certainly live without them, but we need to have them in our lives, and we buy them because you do buy those gossip braggs, you buy into something. Well, well, obviously we've we've evolved to that. We take the television and pair it with what Warhol is doing. Certain people who shall remain name less, they have a debt of gratitude they owe to Warhole, absolutely, And when you think about his front and center depiction of fame and consumer products, there's also another side of the coin that has to be factored in, which also plays directly into this. And it's about death and disaster. It's about his car crashes, it's about his suicides, it's about mortality. And Andy was very keen and very aware of the fact that when we buy gossip Braggs, when we watch television, the two poles tend to be glamor, wealth and fame on one side, death disaster on the other. And we can't where none of us can go and where all of us will go. That's exactly right characterized from me in terms of his friendships and how he behaved. UM. More specifically, if you can, if you're willing to, how is life changed after the shooting? He immediately the leaves. First off, the Valerie Salonis is going to come back and finish the job. And why was she only given three years in prison? Why it's incredible. I just read a book about her biography and it's really really insightful. Um. Valerie gave Andy's script and it was a play slash potential film that she had written called Up Your Ass, and she gave it to Andy hoping that he would produce it either as a stage play or as a film. Now for people that don't know that she they knew each other, They didn't know each other. Um not she. Yes, she was one of the factory changing out chicks. She appeared in one of Andy's films in a very She was around background role, Yes, she was around, but a player b maybe player. And Valerie had a lot of really deep, dark, horrible things that had happened to in her life and it created a lot of psychosis, and she was not stable, had any sense, and yet she was incredibly smart. And it was a feminist who wanted to eradicate men from the world. That's what the play was about. She started a one woman um group called um Scum, the Society for Cutting Out Men, and wanted to eratic men from the earth. I think that Andy, being a man, probably didn't like that idea so much, and when he read the script he just thought it was not worth a conversation. Can you think of anything that Warhole exhibited towards women? What did Warhole do do you think that might have provoked her? If anything? Well, entirely very simply said Valerie, I'm not doing this. I don't like it. It's not any good. And then he lost the script and didn't return it to her. She thought he was going to steal it from her take the credit, and she went to get it that day and when he couldn't produce it, boom. Did she always go on her rounds collecting her scripts with a gun on her No, absolutely not. She purchased the gun just either the day or two told me, in case somebody comes to pick up any scripts for me at my apartment building, I want to be should watch out a metal detector? Yeah, but no, she had it out for him. And she really thought that Warhol was controlling her life. She was psychotic enough that she um. No. Valerie died um in the late nineteen eighties and she only got three years. Did anybody, to anyone's satisfaction, find out why? Um? It was, you know, a case of her psychiatric status because she was deemed um insane and went to a mental mental facility. She didn't go to prison, She went to a mental facility and somehow and the standards are a little more lax, that much more lax. And because he didn't die, um, she didn't have a murder up and was there ever ever even the most remote intersection of them. Again, well, she did reach out, Um, she would call the factory occasionally after she was instructed not to do exactly, and Fred and Bridgid and anyone who would answer the phone would just have to say, never call here again, Valerie, but periodically she would. She eventually made her way to San Francisco and died there, penniless and addicted. So it's a very sad life that she led. This is the I Shot Andy Warhole suite written by John Klee. For the movie I Shot Andy Warhol, Valerie Selonis was played by Lily Taylor. Take a listen to the Here's the Thing Archives, where I spoke with artists Eric Fischel about his own dreams regarding art and commerce. I used to have this fantasy that when my muse left me, I would still be able to make product right that I that that I wouldn't be making art anymore, but I'd be making things that look like art, and that that was okay. Take a listen and Here's the Thing dot Org. My guest today is Eric Shiner, director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Warhol's work has inspired countless artists and filmmakers. One of Warhol's own influences was Marcel du Champs, best known for his porcelain urinal titled Fountain. Du Champ was by far and away his favorite artists, favorite Warhol. Oh, absolutely yeah, they met, they became friends in the nineteen sixties. Du Schamp is in several Warhol screen tests, for example, and they had a very interesting back and forth about the ready made, about taking something literally off the grocery store shelf and turning it into art. And most concepts of Warhol's find their foundation in Adu Shampi, an aesthetic. People mentioned either that Warhol painted the soup cans and the different flavors was one side of the corner of the other, either because his mother made in the soup all the time and he liked the soup, or his mother made him sup all the time and he hated the soup, which was he loved the soupe absolutely and she really didn't serve it to him every day. And we have at the museum in our collection what if one wanted it to be, could be the Rosetta stone of Warhol. And that is a drawing that Julia, his mother made in ninety three of two Campbell's soup cans and two cats, and in her amazing cyrillic script. It says Campbell's soup very good gut. So she beats him to the punch by nine years in this drawing and depicting Campbell's soup. And we know that Andy knew about this drawing because he kept it. So Andy's paintings are not just of campbell soup, They're paintings of his mother's rendering of He goes even more than everything goes back to Andy's mother. She was an artist. They were incredibly close. She was an artist. She was an artist drawings of cats and angels. We have many up on display at the museum. She was incredibly talented. And she also, and this is really formative, Frandy makes sculptures um in the form of little pots of flowers, and she makes them out of tin cans and they just happen to be Campbell soup cans. So she literally cuts the cans to make metal flowers and makes these arrangements, and then she goes door to door and the rich neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, Squirrel Hill, Shady Side, and sells these things door to door with the boys hiding in the bushes watching her, so that she can make a little bit of extra money to make ends meet, to help the family. So not only does Warhol have this artistic um training from his mother, he also has a very important economic training in that he sees that one can make money from art. And certainly when he arrives here in New York and starts making cold calls immediately, it's exactly what he saw his mother doing when he was a kid. So incredibly important relationship. And Julia was so convinced that her little baby boy could not take care of himself here in the big city. About eighteen months after Andy moves here, Um he arrives nineteen nine. In early nineteen fifty one, Julia makes the move and moves here to New York and moves in with Andy on his apartment to his apartment on Lexington and lived there for how long until the end of her life, And it was early nineteen seventies, so she was ill. She went back to shear through his shooting. She did. She rushed to the hospital to be with him and take care of him, and sadly, she fell ill when she was visiting relatives back in Pittsburgh and Um died about six months after that. But they were incredibly close and collaborators. So throughout the entire nineteen fifties. If you see any script on any Warhol drawing, any commercial work, whether it be a title or um, some sort of um nomenclature referring to the subject or Warhol signature, it's all Julia's hand. Warhol was the most prolific and produced the most of his paintings and Prince and so forth at during what period nineteen sixty to nineteen eight seven is the true period of his painting, But he does experiment in the nineteen fifties, and of course it does have fits and starts in between. Would you say that that after the shooting he was even more prolific. Absolutely, So that's that's the most prolific periods period the mid seventies through the end of his life. When you have a museum that is dedicated to one person's work, I'm assuming people are giving you things to exhibit all the time. And and how much of it do you own? How much of war whole stuff do you guys have? We have the biggest collection of Warhol in the world. First off, and as everything for the most part came directly from Andy's studios, he had been holding things back from every period, every series. Why he was doing that, we have to question whether it was to hold it back so that one day it would be more valuable so that he could sell it for a lot more than when he made it in the nineteen sixties, for example, or if he was thinking about their one day being a museum. And there are arguments on both sides of that equation, but UM I would say that we're in the percent range in terms of what we have. We're really only missing about ten prime examples of specific paintings from specific series and those vactms that we have access to and can borrow from UM the owners. But people are normally accommodating for the most part. Yes, support the mission absolutely, and those are the things that one day we hope those collectors will think about donating one day to the museum so that we have a full survey of his work. How would Warhole describe to people his filmmaking career, which to me is Warholes films. I still have a trouble getting my hands around that in my head around that that it's not kitch and that and that and to use that word. Do you have an archive of his films obviously screens tis that we have all of them, We actually own you all of the films are Oh, there are literally a million feet of film, if not more. And how many were actually cut into actually actually titled, probably about twelve dozen if you look at a film in as much as there's some sort of an arc or a storyline, but not always. And then the screen tests, of which they are well north of five hundred of his filmmaking portraits of people that he knew, beautiful people, in complete strangers, and everything in between. So Warhol's film is a complete treasure trove that is very untapped. Uh. I mean many people in the art world have, um, I don't want to say reluctantly, but they've they've come to an appreciation of warholes places in a contemporary art. Are there people in the film world who have done the same thing? Absolutely? And Andy is viewed as one of the earliest and most important avant guard filmmakers here in New York, along with Jonas and with Jack Smith. So Jonas Mekas, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol always viewed as the top three. They're at the very beginning. What's the film you think that is that represents his work as a filmmaker best. That's the one. What what do people who come to the museum, what how do they respond? What film do they respond to most? I think that Empire is the one that really gets people because it's a static shot of the Empire State Building for over eight hours, and Andy sets about making the most boring film ever made, and it was all about deconstructing the notion of cinematic narrative, of taking a storyline out entirely and focusing on one object. The only thing that happens is as it becomes dusk, the lights turn on. We recently realized that the lights on the Empire State Building were a very new thing in nineteen six four to celebrate the World's Fair, the year that it was filmed, and people think of it as a durational um experience. When it came out, people challenge themselves to try to stay awake to watch the entire thing, and I don't know if anyone has ever done that. Actually, Blake Blake Gopnick, the art critic who's working on a Warhol book right now, has actually stayed awake for the entire thing, and he should be alatted for that. But it was just this idea of completely redefining what film was and could be. And I think because of that Um Empire or Sleep, his two earliest films UM are important, But Chelsea Girls is also a critical um film for Andy Warhol and that it's this idea of voyeurism. It's the idea of being a fly on the wall at the Chelsea Hotel and seeing all of the strange denizens of that very um, odd and quirky environment and seeing the drama that unfolds their room to room. And there's a script it's not really adhered to very closely, and it in many ways becomes the emblematic symbol of New York in that very specific moment of time. And I also think is the first iteration of what we know today is reality television, of being that voyeur, that spy who has insight into a world that you otherwise wouldn't. And I think we can safely blame Andy warholf for I never did you never met him? From what you gather from people who knew him, what was he like on the most elemental level, like when did he wake up in the morning and what did he have for breakfast? And not his sexuality, meaning was he ever in love? Yeah? Absolutely? Who was? Describe him described typical guy who would tend to wake up a little bit late ten ten thirty, have breakfast the crack of ten. Oh yeah, absolutely. He would call Pat Hackett, his assistant, or he would call Bridget first thing to gossip about what happened the night before. He would often call them the night before as well to gossip about what had just happened, and then would remember the rest of the next morning. But then he would go to work. And he was an incredibly hard worker. He was working constantly and he would tell his staff, his family, and he mentees that he had you have to work hard to be successful. This is not something that comes just because of your talent or your skill. You really have to work. And he was a workaholic. So I would assume that he was working eight to ten hours a day every day on Sundays. For example. Where he did his painting was where back then, well it depends which his house was on sixty six Streets between Park and Madison. The first house was at eighty nine in Lexington and right across from Gristi's. He lived there until the early nineteen seventies. UM. And then he bought a mansion on sixty six Street between Park and Madison. There's a plaque on the house, so anyone walking on the north side of the street there. Um, I'm not at liberty to say, but it is someone that has seven Warhoulian connections. Okay, yeah, and it's he's kept the house exactly as anti Um had it, except for a new kitchen and things like that, but otherwise it's just like walking into the house. It's amazing. But um Andy of course was a social being, so he would throw lunch parties at the factory, especially down at eight sixty Broadway on the northwest corner of Union Square. And when you say the factory, the factory was where the first factory was on forty seven Street between Second and third Um. Sadly that building was torn down seventies right over by the un in Japan Society and it's now a parking garage. Um. And where did it move to? Then it moved to the west side of Union Square. Um. Well, the first move happened in let's see late UM sixty nine. I'm thinking to the temporary space on the west side of Union Square. And then they moved to six a D Broadway, Um, which um served its purpose just into it's the north very northwest owner of Union Square. There's a petico on the ground floor Broadway. The switch the northwest corner of Broadway. And what well it's Union Square, northwest corner of Union Square. So Broadway and what fifteenth or sixteen near coffee shop, Yeah, exactly, And um there was the till when until he died, No, no, no, until UM three and into eighty four. Then and he buys an old con ed building in the fifties and he moves everything there. It's a massive building and it only served its purpose for what four years or so until he dies. And that building has gone now as well, it was torn down. So the two middle factories still survive. The first and the last are gone. What was love is in his life? Love for him was his family and also his partners, and he did have three long term partners public and who were there John Jorneau, the American. It was his first really true boyfriend and they dated for a while. Um, but they got along incredibly well. And John was a huge positive influence on Andy and appears in many of his early films and John is still with us. He's today still doing his poetry and is an amazing, lovely human being. Um. Then later on in the nineteen seventies, Andy has a long term relationship with Jed Johnson, the interior designer. Jed and j Johnson were twins who moved to New York and UM got jobs as messengers, and UM happened to make a delivery to the factory one day, and as soon as Andy saw them, UM realized that he was dealing with talent because they were incredibly good looking. Um. He took them both under his wing and ended up starting to date Jed not too horribly long after that, and that relationship lasted well into the late nineteen seventies. Um they broke up. Um, they had their doc sins together, and there was a bit of a scuffle over who was getting the dogs. But they had a very loving long term relationship. You made a literal scuffle a little m not that way, but yeah. And then his last long term boyfriend was John Gould, who was a Hollywood executive at Paramount, and they had a long distance relationship between New York and l A and would often meet in Aspen to spend time together and that was Andy's last boyfriend and it was in a time, uh well before there was any discussion about gay marriage and so forth. But somebody tells me that even if there were gay marriage, he wasn't the marrying kind. No, he was a solo act, wasn't he. He really was in so many ways. And you know, Andy Toad the line right down the middle of those two poles. He wasn't radical and out with an agenda, nor was he closeted and hidden either, but he somehow was right in the middle of that. Interesting he just didn't talk about it and was incredibly queer in his outward presentation to the world, and yet he didn't define his life by his sexuality. That was a you know, certainly a major part of him, but it wasn't what he led with. If he were alive today, what would you ask him or would you want to say to him? It's interesting to think about if you had access to this person. And I will say that, Um, there are occasional um seances and um people who try to talk to Andy in the afterlife and send messages to me through an artist and it's a very creepy thing. And I never asked any questions because I don't really quite buy into that. How your job it does, We'll trust me. There's a lot of weirdness that comes along with my job in the Warhol world, which is fantastic, which is why I love it. But I think at the end of the day, I wouldn't be much more interested in the psychology of Andy Warhol and how he everything had played out. Was he happy with the way his life unfolded. I can pretty much guarantee you that he would say yes, but one never knows, so I would want to get into his career in his mind and how he viewed everything is had played out. Did he feel as though he mattered? We know today that he did in so many ways, and that's what our daily work at the museum. And then of course i'd want to ask if he was happy with the museum. If Andy Warhol were to visit the museum that Eric Scheiner directs, he'd be one of over one hundred thousand people each year who tour the seven floors full of his work, which includes over nine hundred paintings, four thousand photographs, one hundred sculptures, and sixty feature films. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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