Susan Kirkland (bio)

There are many examples of a “total unwillingness to cooperate” such as every gifted person who chooses to dabble in their free time instead of choosing to make a living with their art. They pay a heavy price of never reaching full potential because they practice part time. Then there are the professionals who either abandon their art to play the game or show their disdain by what they produce (or don’t produce). Andy Warhol figured out the game and milked it for all it’s worth. After ten years as a hard working commercial artist, Andy sat alone in his studio with a single can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Apparently, the soup can convinced him to paint its portrait instead of scarfing down the vile contents. Here's an interesting review of the upcoming PBS special on Warhol from his home town.

Let’s face it, there are days when artists can afford nice thick porterhouse steaks and plenty of days when jello is the entree. One guy I went to art school with worked at a fancy restaurant every summer so he could eat his fill every day. He intentionally put on 30+ pounds, which he gradually lost during the year when the cost of oil paint drove him to a regular diet of Cream of Wheat. So it’s not hard to imagine how Andy Warhol, a Mother Hubbard with bare cupboards, decided to paint his last remaining food stuff. Funny that he later called his studio The Factory. Not so funny when you realize Andy applied the rules of commerce to the kind of art he felt the public deserved—after all, he knew their tastes were in the can. This leads me to another artist who worked part time at a Campbells Soup factory and warned us off ever eating the stuff. “If you knew what they put in it, you wouldn’t eat it either.”

Pablo Picasso was a great artist, and he couldn’t resist a good game, either. At the height of his success, he paid for everything with a check. He had discovered early on that no one would cash his checks since anything with his signature was now art. What a great conman. And then there was Mark Rothko, an artist who spoke about the cretins who bought his art. He mourned the separation and eventually stopped sharing his art with the public. No, he didn’t stop painting; he just stopped expressing himself on canvas and slowly moved from vibrant expressions in color to vast fields of dull medium gray. Shortly before his death, he revealed in private conversations that he accepted the commission of the Rothko Chapel under duress. He needed the money. So in spite of his abhorance of the public, in spite of strong feelings of resentment, he took their money and gave them big blank gray canvases; which they blissfully adored without realizing it was the product of his contempt. This served to validate his opinion that they knew little or nothing about art.

Let’s face it; there’s always an inside and an outside. Watch what Ed Sullivan would call “a really big shew” on Andy Warhol this week on PBS and see how much reality filters in. One things for sure, Andy Warhol was from Pittsburgh, and that's a real factory town.

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