Andy Warhol: Sometimes Soup is Just Soup

Are you as amazed as I that, in our culture, individuals with little talent can become famous and even filthy rich? Oh, I know, you Warholians out there will spit at me and call me sacrilegious, but the man was no artist. If he had talent it was for using available technology to produce what would pass for Pop Art; for having a neurotic life played out with other neurotics; and for exploiting the media.

It's not really Andy's fault. He's just an example of the larger cultural problem. We all buy poorly written books; plunk down good money to watch wretched movies; hang on our walls what somebody else calls art; believe everything on television; eat at restaurants where the food and service are mediocre, all because we let the media tell us what to think and how to live. We seem incapable of knowing the difference between audacity and talent. Plus, we are all so soaked in the media that our own lives are no longer real to us.

So what to do? Think! Think for ourselves. If it's really self help why do we need famous people to tell us what and how to do it?

Additional Reading: "Box Pop;" by Morgan Falconer; The World of Interiors; December 2008 issue; www.worldofinteriors.co.uk. This magazine article reports on Warhol's 600 time capsules, i.e., boxes filled with the 'flotsam and jetsam of his daily life.'