What Andy Warhol Was Really Thinking on Commodore's Amiga Demo Day (ourboard.org) 11
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Thirty five years after Andy Warhol's death, the NY Times reports on a new wave of Warhol-Mania as the famed pop artist is currently the subject of a Netflix documentary series (The Andy Warhol Diaries), an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum and multiple theatrical works. The documentary revisits the 1985 launch of the Commodore Amiga, where Warhol demonstrated the Amiga's then-unparalleled graphical power by 'painting' Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry's portrait. Even as the flood-filling goes bad, Warhol does his best to put on a brave public face ("This is kind of pretty. Oh, it's beautiful."), but reveals his true thoughts in his demo day diary entry.
"The day started off with dread as I woke up from my dreams and thought about my live appearance for Commodore computers," Warhol recalls in the documentary (in an AI-generated voice). "And how nothing is worth all this worrying, to wake up and feel so terrified. Commodore wants me to be a spokesman. It's a $3,000 machine that's like the Apple thing, but can do 100 times more. The whole day was spent being nervous and telling myself that if I could just get good at stuff like this, then I could make money that way, and I wouldn't have to paint. The drawing came out terrible. And I called it a masterpiece. It was a real mess.
"I said I wanted to be Walt Disney and that if I'd had this machine ten years ago, I could have made it."
Five NFT versions of Warhol's recovered Amiga artwork were sold for $3,377,500 last May to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation.
"The day started off with dread as I woke up from my dreams and thought about my live appearance for Commodore computers," Warhol recalls in the documentary (in an AI-generated voice). "And how nothing is worth all this worrying, to wake up and feel so terrified. Commodore wants me to be a spokesman. It's a $3,000 machine that's like the Apple thing, but can do 100 times more. The whole day was spent being nervous and telling myself that if I could just get good at stuff like this, then I could make money that way, and I wouldn't have to paint. The drawing came out terrible. And I called it a masterpiece. It was a real mess.
"I said I wanted to be Walt Disney and that if I'd had this machine ten years ago, I could have made it."
Five NFT versions of Warhol's recovered Amiga artwork were sold for $3,377,500 last May to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation.
NFTs, appropriate. (Score:2)
Andy Warhol is one artist who would be very happy to see his art shamelessly commercialised long after his death, and doubly so if it is in a form that is arguably completely worthless.
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NFTs are not completely worthless. After all, isn't a mechanism designed to extract money from idiots worth at least something?
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MIB's take (Score:2)
I love the take on Warhol in Men in Black III (the movie) ... he's an under cover agent without any artistic talent at all, creating whatever blathering crap he can think of.
It's an appropriate homage, and, to the point. One might expect a similar not-too-off-target parody of Bansky in some similar future motive.
Warhol was part of a new wave of artists (Score:2)
So you buy a piece of art for $100,000, claim its value is now 1 milli
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It's not just an art dodge, it's also part of the art valuation scam.
Warhol art, especially. There are rich people who are basically scouring every art auction for any Warhol original. The instant they find one, they just bid it up - the whole goal is because they have so much money invested in Warhol art, that if it starts going down in value, it's a real loss in value. So they will bid up art work, even paying more to win it, just to ensure that it never sells below a certain value.
That ensures that every
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I love the take on Warhol in Men in Black III (the movie) ... he's an under cover agent without any artistic talent at all, creating whatever blathering crap he can think of.
It's an appropriate homage, and, to the point.
Yes, I agree
One might expect a similar not-too-off-target parody of Bansky in some similar future motive.
Well, Banksy at least can sketch somewhat better than the average schoolboy, while Warhol could not.