Althouse: What Andy Warhol thought of Jasper Johns: "Oh, I think he’s great. He makes such great lunches."

July 11, 2018

What Andy Warhol thought of Jasper Johns: "Oh, I think he’s great. He makes such great lunches."

#1 on the list "The 30 Harshest Artist-on-Artist Insults In History" (Flavorwire).

24 comments:

rhhardin said...: Richard Serra and Georgia O'Keeffe could create a cross-country vulva.; 7/11/18, 1:07 PM
Achilles said...: 30 people bitter about the success of others.

Popular topic today.; 7/11/18, 1:21 PM
robother said...: Oh, I don't know. Coming from a man whose masterpiece was a tribute to Campbell's Tomato soup, making great lunches might be considered high praise indeed.; 7/11/18, 1:22 PM
rehajm said...: Leighton sure walked into that one.; 7/11/18, 1:35 PM
mikee said...: I admire Warhol for monetizing both his self-promotion and his artworks.
There are a lot of pictures hanging on walls that are better than Warhol's, but his usually cost more to own. Entrepreneurial artists are now a dime a dozen, but he was a standout who changed the entire art industry to suit himself.

Give me a happy Klee any day, though.; 7/11/18, 1:46 PM
PM said...: Catfights.; 7/11/18, 1:53 PM
Fernandinande said...: What do you think of Jasper Johns?

I don't.; 7/11/18, 2:09 PM
madAsHell said...: Anyone can be an amateur shit-doodling hooligan.

I am sooooooo stealing that!; 7/11/18, 2:29 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: It wasn't an insult. Warhol was just a high-functioning retard.; 7/11/18, 2:43 PM
Friendo said...: I don't care who you are, that's just funny; 7/11/18, 3:59 PM
SDaly said...: I'm not a fan of Warhol's art or movies, but there's no denying he was a genius and one of the best comedians of the 20th Century.; 7/11/18, 4:10 PM
George M. Spencer said...: Not retarded. He either was autistic or had Asperger's Syndrome.

"I want to be plastic," he once said.

Not a put on.; 7/11/18, 5:01 PM
The Godfather said...: When I arrived in NYC in 1965 to go to law school, a college friend who'd interned on one of the (then-many) NYC newpapers recommended several restaurants and bars, one of which was "Max's Kansas City" steak house. That became as regular a hang-out as any steak house could be for an impecunious law student. It was only years later that I learned that Max's was a major hang-out for Warhol and his crowd. I never saw anyone like that there. Not even that really tall skinny model, what was her name? I'm sure I'd have noticed her. Steaks were good, though.; 7/11/18, 5:08 PM
Henry said...: Now I'm curious. Did Jasper Johns make great lunches?; 7/11/18, 5:43 PM
lonetown said...: At was at a talk on The Spiral Jetty where Smithson was asked what he thought of a contemporaries desert living project (can't remember the name). Smithson seemed a little annoyed and said, it's nice if you like to live in pottery.; 7/11/18, 6:04 PM
Henry said...: One of my favorite anecdotes is drunk Jackson Pollock hanging out with drunk Willem de Kooning:

"You're the greatest artist in the world."

"No, you're the greatest artist in the world."

Pollock was scared of de Kooning. de Kooning though Pollock was insane.; 7/11/18, 6:35 PM
Henry said...: Pollock was the youngest of 5. Andy Warhol was the youngest of 4.; 7/11/18, 6:39 PM
Robert Cook said...: Why assume Warhol's remark was intended to be an insult? It's entirely typical of how he would discuss everything, sideways quips he employed to sidestep being pinned down. Warhol would say publicly say "everyone" was "great." Before becoming famous as a Pop artist, he was one of New York's most successful professional illustrators. He was no dummy, no one's fool.; 7/11/18, 7:47 PM
Ann Althouse said...: “Warhol would say publicly say that everyone is great.”

New theory: Trump has Warhol syndrome.; 7/11/18, 8:02 PM
LordSomber said...: I was hoping to see someone ripping on Rothko.

As much as I actually enjoy his paintings, the Rothko Chapel is a complete abomination.; 7/11/18, 8:36 PM
stephen cooper said...: well, Warhol was a Christian, of sorts, and he knew that he was not the kind of artist who people - the sort of people who never were going to be artists, try and understand, we are talking about almost every friend anyone has ever had, all the 100s of people we partied with under Titianesque sunsets, drinking one beer after another on the roof of the frat house, and the several hundred other people whom we liked to hang out with but who would not have felt comfortable enjoying life with us back in the day on the roof of the frathouse, drinking one beer after another in defiance of the odds that one of us would get to drunk to refrain from falling off the roof (none of us did, but that is not my point) - well, Warhol was a good artist, but not a very very interesting one, poor little guy. And he knew that and if you do not know his whole shtick was "I am sorry for my lack of talent, but look, I am trying to show some similacritude of luckier artists that me, Titian with his portraits, Leonardo with his precision" then you are missing what he was trying to do, with his little (and expensive, but still little) cries for help from his likable, I guess, but genius-deprived heart ... poor little man, remember he wanted to be liked, that is what the money is sarcastically and non-ironically about !!!

Poor Rothko was just a sad little man who humbly tried for sincerity, but people without sufficient love in their hearts are never sincere - God, i wish that I could go back to those boho days and tell Rothko that, and could see in his eyes some understanding of what I had just explained to him!!! Well, he never met me, but history tells us that he tried, and one thinks of him as someone who tried to show that he felt and knew what love is, by his allegiance to one version or another of varied and same colors - well you can make real coin off of investing in Rothko but you and me both know he was not, in his heart of hearts, an artist ....

none of this matters, if you are a young artist, try to paint a face, or draw a face, and if you fail try again. Don't worry about Warhol and Rothko, they had their day, and they had their rewards. if you are an old artist you know that you know as much about art as I do, try tomorrow to paint again as if you saw the world before the world had been so unkind to you.

My artist friends, remember this

EVERY day the world gets older

that is good for people who are happy because it is a blessing to live in a world where one is happy as that world gets older

that is good for people who are unhappy because everybody knows (even the poseur atheists) that God's plan for us is a good plan, and that those who suffer and who still pray to God have a beautiful future ahead of them

since it is good for the happy and the unhappy stop worrying about it, paint a good portrait

everybody, even the great sinners, can be a good sitter for a portrait, although if you are painting a great sinner, make sure to pray a lot

for obvious reasons. Proverbs 8; 7/11/18, 9:08 PM
Zach said...: The sly almost-compliment is the highest form of insult.

New theory: Trump has Warhol syndrome.

Nonsense. That would require Trump to have comically bad hair ... maybe you're onto something there.; 7/11/18, 11:51 PM
Robert Cook said...: "well, Warhol was a Christian, of sorts...."

I guess you could say that...given that he was a Catholic who attended Mass every Sunday.; 7/12/18, 8:06 AM
stephen cooper said...: Robert Cook - in England - and even here in DC - many nominal Anglicans attend church every Sunday just for the music .

The biographers of James Joyce - all of whom readily admitted they did not understand him well - noted the same thing about Joyce, in his later years, that you noted about Warhol.

As for me, if I did not believe that Jesus rode (fix that typo - rose) from the dead and saved humanity thereby, you could not get me into an honest church on any Sunday even if they gave out free vintage champagne beforehand and primo cigars afterwards, with the choir from the Metropolitan Opera singing the musical parties of the liturgy during.

I would consider the clergy to be peddling a lie and I would not acquiesce in it.

But I am an honest person, not everybody is.

Maybe you are too, my young friend. Anyway, I hope so!; 7/12/18, 7:40 PM