«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

BALTIMORE - In the last 10 years of his life and career, Andy Warhol sold out. He jumped into the crassest of pop culture: He appeared on junk TV such as "The Love Boat," turned out junk TV himself ("Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes" for MTV), applauded celebrities in his Interview magazine and made junk portraits of any of them who would pay. This "junk" turns out to have made Warhol one of the most compelling artists of the 20th century. That's the artist on display in a show called "Warhol: The Last Decade," on tour to the Baltimore Museum of Art from the Milwaukee Art Museum. By the time he died in 1987 at age 58, Warhol had turned selling out into his principal art form. He held a mirror up to our commodity culture by selling himself as a cultural commodity. This launched a major movement in art. Warhol on "The Love Boat" leads to Jeff Koons's radical experiment with hard-core shots of his wedded bliss with porn star Cicciolina. The diamond dust that Warhol sprinkled on the most sold-out of his portraits foreshadows Damien Hirst's diamond-studded skull. Warhol's ads for Coca-Cola are just a step away from Takashi Murakami's purses for Louis Vuitton.

-Washington Post