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!
Writers and artists have always carried on a clandestine love affair between the pages and on the canvas. Life gets expressed through the visual, and the literal, and both genres meld as they influence and are influenced in a mutual admiration society giving to the world the unique perspectives through the combined literary and art expression. This is a blending of spirits, of like minded souls, and it’s pretty awesome! Check out “Just Kids” Patti Smith’s, personal expose of her artistic journey with her soulmate, the avant, underground, photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. These two comrades in their artistic journey into the unknown, wandered through the East And West Village, in the 60’s and 70’s, searching, dreaming, ultimately knowing that their future was intertwined in the Netherlands of art, its pain, it’s passion, the fuel driving it’s undeniable rewards. She is enamored of the French poet Rimbaud, and her dual identity as both writer and singer is clarified by her own words, “Please no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.” There. She says it. And she means it. Her story, ” Just Kids ” is pure gold, for us pioneers, the writers and painters, who have walked the walk so to speak. If you are a “creative”, ignoring this book is a BIG mistake! Get it ASAP! It is a love story, a trippy art journey, and it also gives the younger reader a chance to experience a glimpse of the downtown hippie lifestyle of the past, far removed from today’s hipster world of tech, commerce, and astronomical student loans!
On the other hand, let’s go on a vastly different trip with Steve Martin as he takes us from North to South, literally speaking, from the authenticity and earthy Greenwich Village experience of Patti and Robert, to the cold culture where Cash is King, and art is a commodity of the pocketbook first, not the innate soul purity of “Just Kids”.
But getting into the nitty gritty so to speak one should start with “The Recognitions”, published in 1955, Bill Gaddis’s, lengthy, detailed, wordy, story of the life of Wyatt Gwyon, art forger, describing his craft of fakery, this book is an expose of the contradictions life offers in Wyatt’s counterfeit world where real is fake and fake appears to be real, and the perception as seen from the outside is everything, similar to viewing a painting, so subjective, yet coming from that intangible mix of the inner and outer mechanisms of mind and matter combined. In this fat novel, books and paintings are intertwined. The philosophies expounded by the characters release so much expertise and insight from the writers, artist, painters, business, point of view, that though a heavy read, it’s challenging, and it forced me to delve in with the persistence of a miner digging for gold in that pit of dirt. The results SO worth it!
There are many reminders of the indisputable link writers have with artists and vice versa. Witness Picasso’s best friend Max Jacobs, and the poet Appolinaire, known for his “AlCools,” devoted, bonded in their artistic life, in their Montmartre Bohemia, where eating, and sleeping came far behind creating, and dreaming. The true sustenance being, the preferred art of the subjects at hand, be it Satie and his classical Gymnopedies,Lautrec and his bordello posters, Picasso, and his circus paintings of harlequins and acrobats, or Valladon and her nudes. Perhaps it was Baudelaire and his absinthe infected poetry, or Jane Avril, friend and model for so many of Lautrec’s posters, celebrity of Montmartre, as star attraction at the Moulin Rouge, they all had a common goal -Art- the making, living, eating, breathing, the food they thrived on that kept them alive, and provided them with nourishment that no simple meal ever could!
Henry Miller, the novelist of all times, love him or hate him, he can’t be ignored! He was a self taught water colorist, which he claims was fulfilling, in a way that transcended his writing. Thousands upon thousands of watercolors, he produced joyfully, giving away randomly, at his will, to friends and fans. Talk about a writer – art love affair, Miller, epitomized this duality with his novels , his Tropics series, and his future essays, where he talks as if he’s sitting with us , about his favorite subjects like, art, writing, spirituality, people, Big Sur, Anais Nin, and Paris! In Big Sur, The Henry Miller Museum, is a unique dream place, a stone’ s throw from his old hangout Nepenthe, the former love nest of Orson Welles and his lover Rita Hayworth. It was recreated into a bar, restaurant, hanging off a cliff over the Pacific Ocean, a favorite hangout for Miller and his friends during his Big Sur years. The museum, a picturesque cabin, and the former home of his best friend Emil White, displays his works, paintings, and obscure writings, not commonly found in your local Barnes & Noble. Standing under the majestic Redwood trees, Pacific Ocean crashing below the rocky coast, this humble cabin holds a wealth of artistic bounty, that only the fortunate traveller is led to discover!
Miller’s watercolors are a spontaneous, pure, colorful expression of his thinking, always soulful and pure. In his novel, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, he confirms his spiritual relationship to the Divine, as authority for the creative genius he has expressed through his prolific writings, his paintings, and his individual life story, from Brooklyn to Paris to California!
One of the most interesting artist stories in contemporary fiction is “Spending”, by Mary Gordon. A sexy, hot and spicy, page turner, depicting a tale of the relationship between a powerhouse commodities broker, who decides to collect her work while also being her Muse. It’s a lush, witty, sophisticated story of this complex relationship in which art and commerce meet and lead to an emotional quagmire. He spends and she spends and both of them achieve an ambiguous cocktail of experiences as they mix the artist with the money man.
The San Francisco Beats, hung at the Cedar Tavern, in Nyc with the ab – ex painters of the day like, Kline, De Kooning, Pollock, all sharing a similar life force, mutual interest and ambition. Rarely will you find a division. when people love painting, they usually have a fully stocked library as well. It’s a natural match.
E.E. Cummings. Poet extraordinaire. Long inhabitant of 4 Patchin Place, a tiny enclave in Greenwich Village, where he lived most of his life, writing poetry, next door to his neighbor 
EE was just doing his thing, that is writing poems the way he wanted to. His style, his ideas, his way of taking the inner and transmitting it to the outer, with his own concocted, kooky word play and conflicting images was not only brilliant, it raised his creative power to a higher level.
What IS that? Is he playing with all of us, or is he using poetry to stimulate our minds and force us to rethink, analyze, dissect and then form our own conclusion as to what exactly did we just read? A common phrase I overhear while gallery browsing, is “Oh my 4 year old could do that, or that’s art?…. Are they crazy”? When facing 
The goal for the artist should be to keep inspiration in high gear and continue to work. EE Cummings, in his tiny studio on Patchin place morphed into one of the most well known poets of the 20th century! Jackson Pollock threw paint unto his canvases strewn on the floor of his barn and made history. Edward Hopper looked out the windows of his Washington Square North studio and documented the solitude of the city in startling realism. Night Hawks, the painting inspired from his daily walks in Greenwich Village to his favorite diner, now so intrinsic to 
AmerIcan culture that Everybody recognizes it. William de Kooning helped make that new crazy art form, named abstract expressionism , more than just a fad of the 1950’s, but a serious new chapter in art, like cubism, impressionism, surrealism, pop, and there are so many more examples, that define the creative genius spawned from that supernatural gift, that says it’s Your making and doing and so what if people don’t get it now one day they will.
Speaking of art – one doesn’t have to be under the green fairy’s spell to achieve a similar effect of drugged out stupor, when looking at certain paintings be it a Jackson Pollock, a Basquiet, a Twombly, be it the colorful swirls of a Van Gogh, also an absinthe drinker, or the street scenes of Utrillo, an absinthe devotee. The varied shades of the French impressionists, the New York Ab-Ex group, the graffiti artists of the 70’s and 80’s, the surrealists from Dali to Magritte and the pop wonders of 
It’s not easy making art and though the paint may flow easily, from your brush, the ideas may be more difficult to give birth to. Retreating to your studio- the sanctuary where the birth takes place,means leaving behind the outer world of society’s conformist rituals in order to reach deep inside and extract the magic from the soul, that gives life to ideas, transforming them unto the canvas, the page, as the painting, the poem, the novel, the song. The additional impetus of alcohol, or opiates serves to assist in this process and enlighten the sub – conscious where new and extraordinary visions reveal themselves and in the process art is formed.
So interestingly, today in our Pop culture urban life, we see absinthe bars popping up all over the Nyc metropolis. Absinthe cocktails on the bar menus of the hippest hottest restaurants in town. Absinthe had a resurrection, and became cool again, but only in the dumbed down version, the watered down let’s pretend it’real, and of course, minus the dreaded wormwood. Let’s call it a Virgin Absinthe. Yet it still holds an allure of danger, of romance, of risk, that people associate with the artists world , and if the Brooklyn hipster landing in Nyc from Cleveland, or Philly, or Seattle, can sample a small part of that taboo life, of the days of Oscar Wilde and Toulouse Lautrec in the confines of a dark, sleek bar possibly one of the new ones springing up every week in Brooklyn, in Union Square, on Pell street, in FlatIron, with the Green Fairy working her spell, stopping time, and unleashing the fantasies as you trip the light fantastique into the unknown, heading towards that mysterious place where YES!”