publication-Warhol's Wife

Researching on pop art this year i came across a very interesting article on the Internet on the Art monthly website.The article based on Andy Warhol who played a huge part in the pop art 'era' and he's way of working educated me on a technique he used set aside from his screen prints he also used audio tapes which i was unaware of.


This article by Jean Wainwright an art historian and critic living in London was originally published in March 2002 ,named 'Warhol's Wife' can be found on the website -http://www.artmonthly.co.uk/warhol.htm.


Referring to the tape recorder as his 'wife' ,the artist treasured his cassette audio recorder and would bring it around every were with him .Acquiring his first machine through a deal ,this acquisition began his relationship with the faithful machines that were both surrogates and mediators.The commonly held stereotypes of Warhol as speaking one liners with a sense of metaphoric meaning underlying them ,such as 'I never fall apart because i never fall together,were like a verbal smokescreen .\in contrast to his many self -portraits the audio tapes are a multifaceted representation of the artist .He declared that his tape recorder finished whatever emotional life he had;an interesting problem 'was an interesting tape'.The curiosity driven artist was interested in to how people live their lives and made it his business to ;listen to people then transfer it very cleverly in to a piece of art work.I assume by focusing in the emotions shown by the 'interviewee' he was able to create these pieces .In a sense i suppose it could be thought a taking advantage in a way that someoneelse's downfall for example is the base for his creative uprising.


Warhol stockpiled a knowledge system,an anthropological and sociological portrait of 'lived lives'.In1968 Warhol launched his first novel which was constructed from transcripts taken from four different sessions that recorded a day in the life of Ondine,one of his most celebrated talkers.Warhol's drive being to see what people do especially those without sleep,this partial erasure and misregistering of what is said are consistant with his artistic methods at the time.Of course when we are starved of sleep our brain is unable to registrar properly and you find it unable to complete an intire sentence with it actually making any sense.I can see exactly why this was of such interest to warhol as it probably is of much more interest than just doing a straight forward interview with a person who has already thought up his lines at least this method of working changes the interview from becoming flat and repetitive rather more playful and humorous.


Something that caught my attention when reading this article was a section on page two which was of Bridget Berlin one of his 'lifters',who suffered from O.C.D ,her obsessive cleaning habits,Warhol was fascinated her daily stream of consciousness,and would speak regularly on the phone to Bridget .What interested me was that apparently Bridget had her own artistic technique ,when Warhol taped her she would tape him taping her.


Warhol- 'So once i said "well that means that there are two originals"and there can never be two originals of anything. I love this idea it is like going back on yourself a combination on what you have set out to do and doing also with the recorded process all at one stage.


I would definitely suggest reading this article as i was both inspired and educated through what i read .