Andy Warhol: "No Poetry!"

At one time Andy Warhol seemed the pinnacle of mysterious fame and glamour -- beyond comprehension. He certainly seemed that way to me -- and I published interviews with him in three different magazines. But when Andy died ten years later, it turned out he was secretly a practicing Roman Catholic. I was surprised. So were people like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. I was raised Catholic. The Banal Catholic Church I call it; it’s as real as sparrows. Allen and William were not raised Catholic; now they understood why they hated Andy.

Over five years of welcome at the Union Square north Factory, Andy asked me to interview anybody for his magazine, Interview. I decided to interview Daniel Berrigan, S.J., a poet and activist. Bob Colacello was Interview’s right-wing editor and he was skeptical. Nor did Dan understand Andy. Andy to Dan symbolized wealth and decadence. Colacello rejected the interview.

Interview was originally Inter-View. Gerard Malanga was the first editor of Inter-View. He viewed Andy’s magazine as an update of Charles Henri Ford’s avant-garde magazine View. And consequently in his first issue Gerard published poetry by Kenward Elmslie. Andy was annoyed. “No Poetry!” Andy ruled.

Poetry is not Pop Art. Catholicism however is always art.

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My interviews with Andy were in the old print Unmuzzled OX, Art NEWS and Small Press Review. The Small Press Book Fair at the time was offered a free billboard. Suzanne Ostro, the Book Fair organizer, suggested I trade Andy a free table for Interview if he would do the billboard. After approximately ninety seconds consideration, Andy agreed. When the other exhibitors got wind, however, they were outraged. They didn’t understand Andy either but they knew they disliked him. The billboard was never done.

Magicians of the Earth Revisited

John Baldessari that bastard, the late Jimmie Byers, the late Nancy Spero, august Louise Bourgeois, Claes the great Oldenburg, and Alighero e (and) Boetti are International School artists sharing space with Third World or “marginal” or “vernacular” or “outsider” artists in Back to the Earth: Revisiting Magiciens de la Terre at Fleisher/Ollman in Philadelphia through December 5.

The original Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth) opened twenty years ago at the Pompidou in Paris, united the diverse esthetics in this show, and subsequently served as a curatorial template for the dissolution of the dichotomy between insider international Big Boy art and the local outsider Little Guy stuff. Such is Fleisher/Ollman’s especial forte.

The best piece in the current show is by James Lee Byers. Byers was an insider’s outsider. The retired epistemologist, John Brockman, introduced me to Jimmy, and I published him in the Unmuzzled OX newspaper. As I continue to encounter his work years after his death, I am always struck by its beauty and brilliance, its modesty and wit. To me, Byers takes the academic beyond the vernacular into the truly Universal.

The Village Voice, on the other hand, asked me years ago to interview John Baldessari. I published John, too, in an OX paperback. But I have unfortunately come to regard him as Mister Cal Arts Lightweight. His reputation greatly exceeds his achievement. To me, his art is “academic” in the particular sense of “irrelevant.” Baldessari represents Big Boy Art at its shallow pretentious worst. John is personable and charming, but that only serves to conceal his vacuity -- and, of course, makes me personally feel like a mean-spirited ingrate.

Of the outsider art my favorite is a wooden Australian aboriginal “shield” portraying two Joeys. You know Joey, right? The baby kangaroo? The artist goes by the name Murumuru today at Fleisher/Ollman, but 20 years ago in Paris he was called Wunuwunu. Something tells me he did not attend Cal Arts.

And who could dislike the coffin car by Kane Kwei?

But the most interesting piece in terms of the theme of the show is Trixie of the Night by Julio Galan. I loved this painting. Is it Surrealism? Or is it the “primitivism” which Breton and Freud so admired? Or should the distinction matter?