Over at the New York Review of Books, Richard Dorment has an unintentionally hilarious piece on that most enigmatic of epistemological enigmas, the quest for a “genuine” Warhol.
Dorment starts off smart, explaining that early Andy was pumped by silk-screen prints because they didn’t look hand-made. “I wanted something…that gave more of an assembly-line effect,” Andy said. As Dorment says, “Warhol’s new paintings didn’t look as though they were painted by hand; they looked like mechanically reproduced photos in cheap tabloid newspapers.” So, if paintings that look like mechanically reproduced photos are hip, what about paintings that are mechanically reproduced photos? Wouldn’t they be even hipper? And a lot less expensive?
Poor Dick can’t make the final leap. Instead, he takes up the cause of art collectors who are stuck with Warhol “originals” that are denied authentication by the “Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, Inc.” (already I’m dying) Andy’s ghost must be chuckling, or at least languidly snickering, at the sight of high-priced lawyers and “respected” scholars bitch-slapping each other over what constitutes a Warhol “original.” As Andy always knew, it’s all about the money.
Afterwords
Dorment clings to the notion that any work “signed” by the artist becomes an imperishable work of art, even if it’s Duchamp’s name scrawled on a urinal with magic marker. To my mind, the perfect Warhol would be a painting he didn’t make signed with a forged signature and then sold to the MoMA for $20 million. Twenty million! That’s genius, man!
