Did Andy Warhol want to be a machine?
to Warholstars News September - December 2018
The National Galleries' website for their Warhol/Paolozzi show based on a quote that Andy Warhol never said
September 27, 2018: An exhibition of works by Warhol juxtaposed with works by Eduardo Paolozzi opens at The National Galleries of Scotland on November 17, 2018 and runs until June 2, 2019. According to the blurb for the show, "This exhibition takes its theme from a much-quoted remark by Andy Warhol: “I want to be a machine”. Behind Warhol’s seemingly facetious quip was the serious belief that art would become increasingly mechanised."
But, as recent research by Jennifer Sichel showed (published in the Oxford Art Journal), Warhol never said he wanted to be a machine. I've covered the topic in a book I've written which will hopefully be out next year and which I quote from below. In my manuscript, I mention the new information about the machine quote in reference to a conversation I had with the art writer William S. Wilson when he was in London:
From The Real World (Chapter 26: "Is Bill, Bill?"):
While we walked back to Bill's B & B from the British Museum, I noticed that he was checking out some of the the guys who passed us and it reminded me of the comment that Ray Allington made about how good looking English guys were. I said the same to Bill and he responded with "yes, and they know it." I asked him about his wife, the artist Ann Wilson - whose first name he sometimes spelled with an e at the end as in "Anne." Why had he left her? To my surprise he said it was the other way round - that she had left him. And even more suprising was the fact that the person she had left him for was Gene Swenson.
Gene Swenson was an art writer and curator who was responsible for the interview that produced Andy Warhol's famous "I want to be a machine" quote - something which Warhol never said. The original interview tapes show that Warhol did say that "everybody should be a machine" but it was during a conversation about men and woman and homosexuality and how everyone should like "everything," including homosexuality. The point that was being made was that people should be as judgmental as a machine, which was to say, not judgemental at all.
The tapes also include a conversation with Warhol and a few others discussing whether Hess would include the comments about homosexuality in the interview or would edit them out. Bill had previously warned me about Hess' editing when I published his article "Prince of Boredom: The Repetitions and Passivities of Andy Warhol," on my site. The article had originally been published in 1968 in Art News, but when I put it on my site in 2004, Bill added a preface which drew attention to Hess' editorial biases. Bill wrote that Swenson "interviewed artists with questions which had a erotic slant" and that his "interviews with artists were not printed as he submitted them to Art News, because Thomas Hess changed words in both questions and responses, editing Art News as a magazine for a wholesome family." (Real World, 161)
(References: Jennifer Sichel, "Do you think Pop Art's queer? Gene Swenson and Andy Warhol," Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 41, issue 1, March 2018, pp. 59-83 and William S. Wilson, "Preface" published on warholstars.org, 2004 for "Prince of Boredom: The Repetitions and Passivities of Andy Warhol.")