In “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol”, Warhol, discusses in a chapter entitled, Time, his “So What” theory.
It’ s pretty radical in it’s simplicity, and it’s an awesome freeing message!
Andy says ” sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, “So What?”
“My mother didn’t love me.” So what?
“My husband won’t ball me.” So what?
“I’m a success, but I’m still alone.” So what?
He goes on to say that he has no idea how he survived before he learned that trick, but that once he got it he never forgot.
WORD. To. The. Wise.
So fast forward to Today Speak, we can translate Andy’s “so what?” Into “whatever”. Right? Nothing is THAT important, that serious! Isn’t it all kind of blown up from that deflated balloon reality where it all begins? Light hearted, whimsical, fun, POP! The lofty, uber pretentious days can be historically interesting but in real time also a colossal drag!!!
His book, a masterpiece of ingenious witticisms, logic, and unique observations, is a real X-Ray into Andy Warhol’s Head. A head full of confetti. Like one of those old school bubble gum machines with prizes mixed in with multi colored gum balls. Put the penny in and you don’t know what you will get. But you will get something you didn’t have before. And that’s what Warhol’s book gives us – new ideas, a new way of looking at everyday things. It’s all about the NEW, because face it people don’t really dig the old. Not really. They may pretend they do, but actually— Noooooo.
We want it hip, hot, fresh, right off the grill, spicy, the day after Today!
And his art was like that. The pop concept, everyday things become artworks. A soup can, a shoe, a dollar sign, a cereal box, Marilyn Monroe, anything really that caught his eye. And his method of reproducing his art using silkscreen, so there was no possibility of ever running out of a painting with a one time sale. He was guaranteeing the infinite, removing limits, his eternal dollar signs multiplying with every copy the silk screen spun out. His photographic technique for his portraits of the jet setters he worshipped and who followed him around like the pied piper of NYC, were all inherent components in achieving his popularity and fame. He turned the boring stuff of life into something exciting and new. But only through art, and his cutting edge, off the grid lifestyle, that attracted everyone from the down and out in Beverly Hills types to the hoity toity silver spooners of Park Avenue. They all wanted to join Andy’s fraternity of pop! Membership guaranteed your POPularity , the ticket to Oz, the trip from dullsville to Crazytown, where everyone wanted to live in the psychedelic sixties!
But only the Cool could enter. And that could be anyone from his drugged out blue blood friend Edie, to his Factory drag star UltraViolet, to his best bud Samo aka Basquiet, Ingrid Superstar, and of course his telephone mate Bridgette, his alter ego earpiece from “The Andy Warhol Diaries”, his prime requirement is that they are funny and they entertain him. “Funny people are the only people I ever get really interested in, because as soon as somebody isn’t funny, they bore me.”
Who can overlooked the fact that he refers to his tape recorder as his “wife?” I could read so much into that but I am sure you could too, so I will just leave it alone for now.
And boy, his pop art certainly fulfilled that need to be entertained, in it’s color, it’s whimsy, it’s humor, it’s cultural relevance, it’s 60’s iconography, they all integrate to promote his psychology, his pov, his kooky perspective, and he didn’t give a shit whether or not you dug him or not. Actually in his “philosophy”, he makes it clear that he goes for the opposite of the current reality. On purpose. His take on money is beyond the pale because it is sooo radical, he loves money, clearly his shopping excursions on Madison Avenue attest to that, but he also dismisses it and has a voyeuristic attitude toward the rich and famous people he associates with who 
clamour around his factory parties looking for the newest kick to amp up their boringly money infested lives. He sells his art with this kind of ambiguous talking point, sealing the deal, because hey it was the sixties, and if it was hip and new , and involved drugs, sex, and rock and roll, it was a hit! Andy managed to do all of this and then some. Capote got axed when he spilled the dirt on his so called friends in that hated tell all ” Answered Prayers”, taking him into a spiral of doom, as his friends banished him from their social circles, after he betrayed their trusts, in an embarrassing expose. But Andy does it differently because he philosophized from his own point of view about the generalities of people and situations without really getting specific, but you got the message! No harm. No foul. He managed to slide by, while Capote fell off and got stepped on.
That’s art! Get the message or don’t get the message! I look at Matisse’s “Woman with a Hat”, and see stuff, that you don’t. Great! So What? Why can’t everything be like a big SO WHAT? Why are we soooo concerned by minutia, the idiotic crap that energy is expended on daily, that’s of no real importance or substance, just time filling misdemeanors?
In the Philosophy of… Everything is simplified according to Andy’s world. He turned his interests into art and business. A joint affair. He loved gossip! LOVED. Hence “Interview Magazine.” Loved celebrities, hence the pop portraits. He loved commercial style, and fashion, from his clerking days in Bergdorfs, and his store window dressing making a living 9-5 days at Bonwit’s, hence his chosen icons and the neon colors he used coming straight out of the sixties, and the psychedelic moroelight show acid trip world he lived in at the time !
I can read the “Philosophy of Andy Warhol”, and still get new crumbs from the golden nuggets of pop isms, after the fifth reading, because it’s just one of THOSE books, but for me it’s also a genuine artist book written by the Master of Pop Art, an art legend that the hipsters of today have only read about in art class or perhaps viewed his Gold Marilyn at the MOMA, or strolled by that funky silver statue in front of his old office building in Union Square in NYC.
His breakdown of philosophy into the major life areas: is genius. He is right on. Like what else really matters?
Love. Work. Beauty. Fame. Time. Death. Economics. Atmosphere. Success. Art. Titles. The Tingle. Underwear Power. That’s it!
The beginning. The middle. The end.
You want to paint? Paint. Want to write? Go for it . Act? Yes. Sing? Ok!
Think about cool stuff? Like Philosophy?
“In the 60’s everybody got interested in everybody.
In the 70’s everybody started dropping everybody.
The 60’s were clutter.
The 70’s are very empty.”
What about Today? in 2014, Millennium years, what have we become? What would Andy call us ? How would he define us in a chapter in his book, published in 1975? What kind of art would he be making today?
He wouldn’t.
It was a time, HIS time, HIS generation, and HIS mark in history, a pop culture icon, the most famous celebrity pop artist on the planet! He once said , “everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”. It’s a universally known easily identifiable Warhol quote. Reality Shows of today prove his prophecy, as well as people’s personal Youtube videos, sex tapes, and the various computer resources available for publicity hounds seeking attention. Everybody seeks that fame Andy talks about , even if it’s fast and furious, the 15 minute in and out.
In his own case, however he didn’t need any of our super tech assets to stake his claim to fame. And it is a lot longer than 15 minutes! It’s Forever!
Coney Island is hip and if in doubt there’s always Brighton beach. That’s the new hipster word on the street for Summer in the City. Hot times! Thank you Lovin Spoonfull! Thank you Lawrence Ferlinghetti, West coast’s answer to poetic genius! His Coney Island of the Mind is an awesome collection of his Summer of Love point of view with the Coney spin working overtime! Check it out! They are cramming the B the A the F the Q, anxious to hit the boardwalk and the gritty pebble filled sand of these two iconic Nyc legendary beach escapes. Oh Coney has the history of the proverbial cat where it keeps coming back to life, over and over, and Brighton, well is it really America? Whenever I go, I know I’m in Kiev, stepping down from the 75 year old steps of the elevated subway platform engulfed by the smell of knishes, the sound of Russian spoken , the sight of the old world shops and inhabitants of a NY village they have claimed as theirs and made it home. 
Coney is Pop Central! The dreamland of colorful, kitsch, whimsy, childhood fun of past memories, from Mermaid parade to Famous Nathan’s the Emperor of hotdogs, the Polar Bear clubs meeting place every New Year, and those frank photos iconic and so real of the under the boardwalk make out sessions, of the fifties when coney was the cool summer beach paradise everyone who was anyone escaped to whenever they could.
old cool becomes new cool only through hype and bullshit, word of mouth blah blah with a dose of the media megaphone thrown in for good measure.
The elite hop the jitney, and head for the Hamptons, or hop their Town car without a look back. But for the Brooklyn, Manhattan transplants who are young, voted for Obama, bearded, tattooed, fedora headed, skinny jean, techies, the Hamptons seems kind of square. Stuffy, old, and wayyyyy too rich. I mean these hipsters aka the young, the “are we gonna be able to get hired after we graduate?” kids, are shacked up 3 and 4 in an apartment, in order to make rent. Hamptons? Uh, isn’t that the Mecca of the Wall Street screw ups who basically have these hipsters in hock for life , with unbelievable student loan bills they won’t ever be able to pay ????? Like, really, are they heading for Hampton hell? Nooooo. It’s Coney, it’s Brighton all the way!
A quick train ride, transversing the hinterlands of avenue H,J,M, Kings Hwy, Sheepshead Bay, graffiti left over from the 80’s providing an entertaining view as the train takes you closer and closer to the seaside amusement park , that’s hard to believe still exists – a place soooo much cooler than the picture perfect, oasis, aka Hamptons.
It’s POP all the way, from that iconic boardwalk ingrained in the bowels of history, to the sparkling icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
One of my favorite blogs is 
Us Boomer types remember Nyc was a place, where artists thrived, and grew on inspiration that came from living in an environment where raw energy pulsated the minute you stepped outside. It was a feeling that was both invigorating, as well as intimidating , the perfect combo for aspiring artists to do different unique things, like make art, make music, or make those ideas come to life between the pages of a novel, a poem, a dance. To stake their claim on that city that Never slept!
Nyc offered up a symbolic plate littered with dirt, graffiti covered subways, Bowery winos, Times Square hookers , and Union Square junkies, Washington Square folkies, and the hustler bars of the now mad glam Meat Packing District. Not the sterile, frigid, boring, redundant duplicity of businesses, all controlling, and infiltrating our city with the power of money that is accelerating the city’s artistic and cultural demise. Yea, Broadway is still lit up,but do you have 200$ to pocket a ticket? Culture has become a very expensive commodity where it once was a natural life force available for everyone, not relegated only for the wealthy. James Agee, author of in praise of famous men said in his Letters to Father Flye, his mentor, “the general verdict is that I can do a lot if I don’t write advertisements. If I remain convinced they’re right, I’ll croak before I write ads, or sell bonds, or do anything except write. Little writing as I ‘very done, and little confidence as I’ve a right to, I still feel that life is short and that no other earthly thing is as important to me as learning how to write. And for that you must have time!” Agee went on to write “Let us Now Praise Famous Men”. Check it out!
Today, do artists have the luxury of making statements like that and actually achieving it? In a city that used to be an artists paradise, the point of no return, Greenwich Village,a place the artist could live cheaply and devote himself to his art, where writers like Dawn Powell, Djuna Barnes, Edna st v Millay, Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Eugene O’Neil, Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, photographer Diane Arbus, and many more,made their mark as icons of the literary world forever . Well, none of them could afford to live in today’s Village. NYU owns it and it is EXPENSIVE! Today’s artists don’t live in NYC, unless they are in the minority of the wealthy class, but aside from that, that ” lovin feeling” is no longer here. That Real Thing has Vanished into the abyss of commerce and so called progressand leaving us with a counterfeit, that seduces with the allure of fantastically pricey dreams where celebrities ,models ,and Wall Street tycoons, abide in lofty penthouses and multi million dollar town houses and uber fabulous lofts sipping Veuve, taking the art out of the equation, and replacing it with the art of the $$$$.
Vanishing New York? Yes. Vanishing artists? Ditto. Because the left over artists still here are starting to flee. In a revealing book’ entitled, ” 
Beware of the gentrification, the sterilizing process, stripping Nyc of it’s personality, uniqueness, soul, and transforming it into the proverbial Disney-esque shopping mall. For an artist this is Not a good look. A city barren of small galleries, bookshops, music stores, dive bars, diners, small businesses, family owned shops, is not cool. This glass towered condo dominated, yogurt infested paradise might appeal to the hipster nation who don’t know any better or to the Nouveau New Yorker , but to the pioneers , the locals, it’s a royal bummer.
The hipster, trust fund babies, Wall Street climbers, celebrity bubble wannabes, cell phone addicts, 15$ cocktails slurpers, shoppers mall paradise automatons, Starbucks swamped computer mesmerized stool sitters, and tourists, the huge tourist mob crowding our streets, all eager, desperate, for a taste of the NY State of Mind. Except it’s really NOT. Now, it’s just a really glitzy, over crowded, obscenely expensive city, with a whole lot of entertainment, all yours to indulge in, if only for a very high price tag. You will be raiding the ATM, and it will empty out faster than you can say “dinner and drinks at The Gansevoort!”
And no, a CBGB would not survive today. or a Mudd Club. Too raw, too dirty, too rough, for the affected poseur trends that the young hipsters are besotted with today. After all they know today’s Nyc , the new cleaned up version. Because the truth is what Jeremiah document s every day in his on top of the moment blog! New York City Is REALLY VANISHING, and with it go the artists, that made their home here, thrived, leaving their footprints, their thumb prints, their DNA, from the days of the Provincetown Players to the Warhol headquarters at Union Square, to the 8th street Bookstore, to the Soho rookies, OK Harris, and Leo Castelli, to LeRoi Jones and Diane diPrima, the Beats, all earned their street cred here in the Art Capital City of the World when it was not only a possibility, but a dream expected to manifest into reality and so it did.
Today, NYC is about Reality, not the dream. The dream, these days, is about another New York, of yesterday, but the harsh reality of today’s New New York hits the ever expanding flock, the minute they begin their city march, subway bound, plugged in, automatons on the beat, fedoras cocked just so, eyes glued to the ubiquitous iphone, oblivious to the Vanishing Artist City before them, and what is forever lost.
Every time I turned on my radio in 1970 I heard The Supremes, Motown’s Darlings, With Jean Terrell, Mary Wilson, and Cindy Birdsong blasting the top bit of the day which was about climbing a ladder to the roof. Diana wasn’t around for this tune.
Roofs were the perfect escape and fun stuff happened there in the clouds way above the fray and chaos of Manhattan madness!
No Thanks. I’ ll take the roof and whether or not it’s at the Whythe, the infamous 
It’s Brooklyn, it’s Manhattan, it’s Queens, it’s Coney, it’s Bronx, where painters, musicians, poets, writers, painters, the Beats, the Hippies, The Rockers, The Punk, meet, mingle create, from corner to corner, the garbage strewn gutter, the filthy subway, the stench, the human cesspool, rats to reggae, royalty to rags, mind numbing noise, eerie silence, it’s all here in our faces and that’s why sometimes we need to climb UP and get close to the sky the stars, the lights of manhattan below watching us! Keeping us going on our Art fueled journey, where space holds no limits and the Roof is our launching pad in our unique City of the World.
My favorite place for this exploration of artist bio is 
Whether it’s 
So I go to get a glimpse, distant it may be, of a world of art where the sterile gentrification the expensive and expansive environment of today, did not exist. The perfect studio Joseph Cornell created his magical boxes of wonder at his mothers kitchen table in College Point Queens, so opposite to today’s celebrity gathering at the Hottest NYC gallery in Chelsea, or is it Bushwick ,or wait maybe Williamsburg, no Harlem? SoHo is Over for art and artists that’s a given. The only thing even slightly reminiscent there is the closed down frontage of OKHarris, on West Broadway, the 1970’s Gallery that was the Kilimanjaro for any aspiring painter. But now it’s most likely scheduled for a glitzy condo building that only the 1%’can afford.
Whether it’s