POST WARHOL PREDICTION

IN THE FUTURE MAGAZINES WILL ADVERTISE: HOW TO LOOK 99 AT 150!

19yo friends flex


«So many people have such great bodies today that the sort of lumpy, sit- around-the-house flab that used to be «normal» now looks really bad. You can't go anyplace in America without seeing boys and girls and men and women who look like they 've been professional athletes their entire lives»


-Andy Warhol

MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER

«In a celebrity fixated society which often equates style with substance, Warhol's canny exploitation of fame and image are particularly resonant. He understood celebrity and branding. He came from a commercial world and made it part of his art.That is why he is so relevant».


Tobias Meyer
Head of contemporary art Sotheby's

CAMILLE PAGLIA ON THE LATEST WARHOL MOVIE

«But I was still amazed at all those servile TV reviewers who raved about the recent four- hour Ken Burns PBS documentary about Andy Warhol. What a tedious pretentious program -with its funeral music and preening jargon-spouting talking heads. Show like this that do incalculable damage to the reputation of the fine arts in the US. Warhol who came from working class Pittsburgh spoke directly to the mass audience with his Campbell soup cans and Brillo Box».

THE MERGING OF LEW WASSERMAN AND ANDY WARHOL

Lew Wasseman the last Hollywood mogul used to say «Dress British Think Yiddish». On the other hand Andy Warhol always marvelled at how some people in New York City were acting gay during the day and then go back to their wifes at night. In the 21 st century these two rules have now merged à la Robin Williams: Act gay gentile, think jewish.

THE FIRST "REALITY" STAR

WHAT HE WOULD PREDICT NOW

«IN THE FUTURE NOBODY WILL SEND THEIR RESUME" THEY WILL SEND THEIR SEX TAPE

COMMENT DÉPASSER LE DÉBAT STÉRILE DROITE GAUCHE: LA CLÉ WARHOL

GAUCHE-DROITE : LA CLÉ ANDY WARHOL.


Dans les débat droite- gauche dont on parle périodiquement je m'étonne souvent du peu de cas que l'on fait des transformations apportés par les médias de masse depuis les dernières décennies. Et pourtant. Ce ne sont pas les leçons de plusieurs individus majeurs qui manquent et qui permettraient de mieux éclairer cette question. Pour un le cas de l'artiste Andy W arhol est exemplaire. Aucun autre artiste n'a en effet prédit avec autant de justesse le monde culturel dans lequel nous nous retrouvons. Et aucun artiste ne recoupe une aussi intéressante carrière brouillant sans cesse les frontières de la droite et de la gauche politique. Au Québec Normand Bratwaite et Marc Labrèche ont jadis chanté sous le mode ironique les plaisirs d'être des putes médiatique. Warhol bien avant eux se qualifiait lui-même de plus grand prostitué médiatique.

À travers Warhol d'innombrables aspects du monde contemporain sont présents voire décuplés. À commencer par celui du marketing. Tout au long de sa carrière il n'a jamais affiché un semblant de désintéret pour la chose. Il disait un jour sous forme de boutade qu'il ne comprenait pas comment certains avait pu le considérer artiste underground à un certain moment puisque tout ce qu'il avait toujours voulu c'était se faire remarquer. Des artistes ils disaient qu'il était important pour eux de se trouver une bonne gallerie afin que la classe dirigeante les remarque tout en ajoutant que si votre promotion n'était pas faite de la bonne manière on n'allait pas se rappeler de vous.

Ses fréquetations sont aussi très éclairantes. Dans les années 60 les artistes et marginaux étaient légion dans l'entourage de la Factory. De même que les drag queens. Puis par la suite quand il s'est mis à exécuter ses portraits de stars ou de grand financiers un pan de la gauche y a vu là une forme de trahison. À quelqu'un qui lui demanda alors ce qu'il faisait puisqu'il ne peignait plus et ne faisait plus de films il répondit qu'il ne faisait qu'aller à des partys. Un peu comme Paris Hilton ou Nicole Ritchie aujourd'hui en quelque sorte. À un autre encore il répondit qu'il n'avait pas cesser de peindre puisqu'il se peignait les ongles chaque jour...

Côté cash il disait que faire de l'argent est le plus fascinant des arts ajoutant que s'il avait commencé comme artiste de l'art il s'était par la suite davantage intéressé à faire de l'argent. On ne sera guère surpris sachant qu'à sa mort en 1987 sa fortune personnelle était évaluée à 600 millions. Mais il poussait aussi l'ironie plus loin. En entrevue il disait qu'il souhaitait de l'argent pour tout le monde puis dans une autre soutenait qu'il ne fallait pas que tout le monde en ait parce que sinon ça deviendrait trop compliqué et on ne saurait plus de qui être jaloux ou de qui dire du mal.

La question du sexe chez lui est toute aussi fascinate. Warhol était convaincu que quatre choses font que l'on tombe en amour. Le visage, le corps, l'argent et la célébrité. Il affirmait alors que tout ce qui comptait était d'avoir une combinaisaison équivalente de quelques-uns de ces éléments pour que cela puisse fonctionner en amour. Cependant s'il y avait trop d'écarts entre les divers éléments cela n'allait pas marcher. Mieux encore il soutenait que l'amour et l'absence de sexe était très bien ou inversement mais que l'amour et le sexe ensemble était à éviter. Une tendance qui de nos jours semble manifestement prendre de l'ampleur.

De Warhol l'ex editeur du magazine Interview Bob Colacello disait qu'ils se disputaient souvent ensemble au sujet de la politique Warhol se situant plus à gauche de ce dernier. Mais cette opposition était plus superficielle qu'autre chose. Certes Warhol avait fait le poster de la campagne Kennedy dans les années 1960 mais il devint aussi très près de Nancy Reagan par la suite.

Un autre élément révélateur du cas Warhol est certes le choix de sujet pour ses oeuvres. Bien sur les plus connues sont celles des années 1960. Celles qui de par leurs thèmes valent aujourd'hui à Warhol sa reconnaisance critque. Les séries telles «Most Wanted Man» ou encore «Dead and Disasters». Plus tard il devait pousser cette ironie en illustrant la faucille et le marteau symbole du communisme alors sur le déclin. Mais la plus grande leçon est ce que disait Warhol à propos du cinéaste Emile de Antonio lequel voyait dans ses oeuvres (dont sa préférée intitulée «Black Electric Chair») un fort commentaire social. Et Warhol d'ajouter. «That's funny» .Dans son ouvrage sur le monde de l'art Tom Wolfe avait déja moqué cette attitude si propre à un certain milieu artistique d'affecter une soi-disante révolte pour ne mieux qu'être récupéré par la suite. Aujourd'hui l'ironie entourant cette démarche est désormais à son apogée.

Encore aujourd'hui l'influence des thèmes propre à Warhol est multiple. Et pas seulement à travers les visages de Marilyn aux couleurs criardes sur les robes de designer. Mais son influence majeure reste le changement de perception du rôle de l'artiste envers les médias de masse. La position romantique de retrait né du mythe de Van Gogh, l'artiste génial et incompris a aujourd'hui disparu. Disparu au point ou nous sommes même passée à un autre extrême le marché de l'art connaissant une nouvelle flambée des prix sans précédent. Et Warhol n'est pas étranger à cela lui-même qui est devenu l'artiste dont les oeuvres sont les plus prisées après Picasso. Ce même Picasso qui disait lui aussi d'ailleurs: «Je voudrais vivre comme un homme pauvre avec beaucoup d'argent».

NEW YORK CITY

«When reporters asked the Pope what he liked best about New York he replied, «Tutti Buoni-everything is good. That's my philosophy exactly» .


-Andy Warhol.

Madonna1984 - Keith Haring Show - Dress You Up

POST WARHOL

«In the future everyone will be famous to fifteen people»


Scottish artist Momus

BEAUTIFUL!

Call it the attitude of a dandy, but there is something strangely similar in the way both Oscar Wilde and Andy Warhol adressed the beauty question. For one Wilde believed that only superficial people didn't care about appearances. As for Warhol he used to say that «beauty is a sign of intelligence», adding interestingly in another comment that if everybody wasn't a beauty then nobody was.

Fifteen Minutes Of Fame Are Up (Stop Pop Music)

WARHOL & GIORGIO DE CHIRICO

«Evwery time I saw De Chirico's painting's I felt close to him. Every time I saw him I felt I had known him forever. I think he felt the same way. He repeated the same painting over and over again. I like the idea a lot so I thought it would be great to do it. I believe he viewed repetition as a way of expressing himself. This is probably what we have in common».


-Andy Warhol.

ART MARKET

Last week a portrait of Andy Warhol by american photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was sold for $643 000 at the auction house Christie's. It is a new record for a Mapplethorpe picture.

GETTING YOUR 15 MINUTES OF FAME THE PET SHOP BOYS WAY!

«We're shameless
We will do anything
To get our fifteen minutes of fame
We have no integrity
We're ready to crawl
To obtain celebrity
We'll do anything at all».


-Pet Shop Boys
From the song Shameless

PRO WRESTLING

« When you first start watching professional wrestling on TV you think you're seeing brute force without much thinking behind it. But then you watch for a while, or you go to a match and get up close, and you see all the effort the wrestlers put into getting an unusual name and outfit, all the physical work and what real gymnasts they are, and how hard they act «brute dumb» for the show they're in».

-Andy Warhol

The Andy Warhol Museum

THE RISE OF THE BEFORE & AFTER CULTURE

When in 1962 Andy Warhol did a Before & After painting of a nose job, he probably didn't imagine that this image would later describe perfectly the pop culture of the early 21st century. We now live in a celebrity culture without major achievement where the most important news seems to be wondering if Jennifer Aniston got a boob job or if Ashley Simpson suffer from a plastic surgery addiction. And clearly this trend is not about to end as the various ragazines keeps growing in popularity.

ANDY WARHOL ON THE EARLY MADONNA

«I asked madonna if she would be interested in doing a movie and she was smart, she said she wanted more specifics, that she just didn't want to talk and have her ideas taken. She's very sharp».


-The Andy Warhol Diaries
Nov 17 1984

MAYBE YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A GENIUS...

«Andy Warhol is the only genius with an IQ of 60».


-Gore Vidal

Brokeback Mountain songvid

LONESOME COWBOY

«I always thought cowboys loooked like hustlers. That's nice. Cowboys and hustlers are quiet. They don't know many words».


-Andy Warhol

THE OTHER HIP HOP: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH GAY RAPPERS FROM THE MOVIE «PICK UP THE MIC»

Remember when Elton John and the Pet Shop Boys had to defend Eminem from GLADD? Well it seems a lot happened since then. Namely more and more gay rapper boys and girls taking their place within the larger hip hop community. To get the pulse of that growing scene I asked some questions to the guys involved in the documentary film Pick Up The Mic. From the state of gay hip hop today, gay men's love -hate relationship with the genre to the future of gay Hip Hop porn...


Q- It seems Hip Hop is moving in so many directions now and influences so many other musical genres. Do you see the same trend in gay hip hop as well?


A- «Definitely» say Pick Up The Mic filmmaker Alex Hinton. «The film really showcases a wide array of styles from the roots and soul inspired leanings of Deep Dickollective to the gangsta styles of JenRo and the HIP HOP with pop hooks of God-Des to the raunchy but hilarious styling of Jonny Dangerous. There is something for every Hip Hop fan in this scene".

Over the years there have been a lot of talk about the place of gay artists in the larger hip hop community. The rapidity of that progress may been seen differently by some but there's clearly a trend towards growing acceptance. «I personally have found that much of the black music industry have given me nothing but respect for the amount of success I have achieved, all without any manager or record label behind me» says British rapper QBOY. «Having said that you have to wonder why I don't have either of those two support frames-it's because the music industry as a whole don't know what to do with me. They believe I don't fit their idea or market for hip hop because I'm gay and I don't fit their gay market because I'm hip hop. However attitudes are changing» he adds. For Alex Hinton some progress cannot be denied: «We did get a 4 page spread about the scene in URB magazine a straight urban music and lifestyle mag. And artists like JenRo and Scream Club are working in the straight hip hop scene guesting on tracks and performing confortably well with straight rappers».

What about the other way around now? People always talk about homophobia in the hip hop community but is there also some prejudice towards hip hop among the mainstream gay community? «Well historically the gay community has had a prejudice to hip hop as the homophobic lyrics of some hip hop songs have been magnified by watchdogs groups like GLAAD. Homophobia exists everywhere in the music industry and musical forms. It just seems that hip hop has been targeted as it can be demonized by some as as the other since it is so often showcased as just a hyper masculinized form of music» says Hinton. «But the film really proves witness that many members of the gay community grew up on hip hop and they don't feel that it is this negative force. They feel that it is their true medium to express themselves. »


Go to most gay bars and it won't be often that some shirtless pumped up guy will be dancing on Hip Hop tracks. For one QBOY has a lot to say about the so called mainstream gay culture:«There is a lot of underlying racism in mainstream gay culture, there has not often been much visible black gay men and lesbians with that scene and now the traditional black culture is creating it's own path within the gay community, the mainstream gay scene is having to adjust not all with ease.» Fortunately personal experience often alter that general impression: «There is also something I call rap-phobia where people's idea of what rap is about is associated with guns, drugs, crime, violence, gangsta culture and somebody shouting in an angry intimidating fashion». add QBOY. «This is because the only conception with rap is the mainstream junk that is so accessible to them. However I have found that many people who have seen me perform parents, grand parents, lesbians and gay men in their fifties none of whom have never identified with rap before all come to me at the end and say: you know I never I liked rap but I like you».


In that world of testosterone-charged young male bravado, Miss Money is for many something of an oddity. A gay christian hip hop artist. And as a female she got a somewhat different opinion about all that male swaggering thing and the so called homophobia of Hip Hop : «I don't think there are prejudices but just reaction to the hate spewed at gay people. You'd be prejudiced too if every man with a mic and knowledge of a few vowels said faggot.....The hip hop males are so ever indulged in testosterone they're the first to hate on gay people but anyone with common sense can see it's their own insecurity . It really has nothing do us gay people».

Bodybuilding muscle: Guns Volume 9 preview

BODY CULTURE

«Muscles are great. Everyone should have at least one they can show off».

-Andy Warhol


Warhol's fascination with muscles and bodybuilding was obvious early in the seventies. Mr Bodybuilding himself, Arnold Schwarzenneger later remembered of that era: «I became very good friend with Andy Warhol and used to hang out at the Studio in the 70's because he was a big believer in bodybuilding and (like other hip celebrities) helped get bodybuilding out of the dungeon to make it a hip activity to do".

Andy Warhol Japanese TDK Ad

A PREDICTION ANDY WARHOL WOULD HAVE LIKED

Commenting on Google buying YOU TUBE Andrew Leonard noted today on the webzine Salon: «The Global conversation will be GoogTubed».

PREDICTING THE FASHION TREND IN THE 21st CENTURY

«Saw the Christian Dior show and the Valentino show. With the male models, all the really straight -looking models are gay and all the really gay-looking models are straight".


The Andy Warhol Diaries
April 6 1981

PRECURSOR OF REALITY TV

«The year 1969 began with a flurry of ideas. What about a television show, Andy suggested called «Nothing Special» consisting of six hours of people walking past a hidden camera. Or a film called Orgy a large cast version of Blue Movie which would be shot on a jouney around the world? »

Victor Bockris ( The life and death of Andy Warhol)

BOGGING IS ANDY WARHOL'S TIME CAPSULE FOR THE 21st CENTURY

YOU TUBE: THE ANDY WARHOL'S DREAM COME TRUE!

We often forgot that when Andy Warhol made his famous prediction in 1968 he actually predicted that in the future everybody would be WORLD FAMOUS for fifteen minutes. Today this prediction has become reality with the like of YOU TUBE or Google video. Flexing their muscles for the camera, proposing their new songs, or showing their acting talent to the worlds, kids from the YOU TUBE generation are an Andy Warhol's dream come true.

LOVE IN THE 21st CENTURY

«Let's say you have an OK face, a great body, medium money and no power or prestige. That means you should go after other people who also have two mediums, a terrific and a nothing. It's not supposed to matter which categories the different things fall in as long as it's two mediums, one terrific, one nothing. You could get a husband with a medium body, medium money a terrific face and no prestige or one with a medium face, medium power a zero body and lots of money -whatever you're interested in, as long as the person's in the same love league. And it should work out OK».

THE BEAUTY QUESTION.

Sure Andy warhol was obsessed by beauty. But even though he once said that if everybody was not a beauty then nobody was he also noticed the increasing presence of beautiful people everywhere long ago. On august 16 in his diaries one can read:« But tell me why is that everybody is so good-looking now. In the fifties there were the really good-looking people and then all the rest who weren't. Today, everybody is at least attractive. How did it happen? Is it because there is no war to kill the beauties?