Teuber_Warhol

Warhol's "Saturday Disaster" Andreas Teuber (For Rose Museum Tour--Dratt_

Imagine yourself to be in Andy Warhol's shoes. Imagine you are Warhol before this "Warhol." that you are standing before a blank canvas before "Saturday Disaster."

Imagine you are Warhol before "Warhol."

What was he thinking before he painted this painting?

If we start with Warhol rather than the painting itself, because, after all, before "Saturday Disaster" there was Warhol, we hear, we might have weil heard the following. ..

I am quoting Andy Warhol now: "I like things to be exactly the same over and over again."

Now, now look at the painting.

What do you see?

You get the same thing again, no?

A disaster? Doubled.

A double-disaster.

A newspaper photo of a car crash, a tangle of machinery, of arms and legs, repeated, the same photo stacked one above the other or one below the one on top, in black and white.

The painting declares itself to be a painting of a disaster.

A "Saturday Disaster."

But the disaster it depicts pre-dates the painting, having appeared earlier in a newspaper account.

But there, there it is, no in the painting?

Or is it?

What is Warhol's "Saturday Disaster" a painting of?

What is it about? What does it mean?

Ordinarily for a thing to mean something, to be about something, it has to point away from itself to something else.

The belief that the capitol of France is Paris is about something because it is directed away from itself to Paris and the capitol of France.

A table is not about anything. A table is a table is a table.

Warhol's portrait of a disaster remains in a stubborn terrier-like grip of its subject, putting the very thing it purports to depict into the picture, putting the very "disaster" it purports to represent into its re--presentation of it.

go back to Warhol again, to standing before "Saturday Disaster, to being Warhol before "Warhol."

Here's Warhol again:

"I like things to be exactly the same over and over again."

Now look at the painting, again.

And now listen to Warhol, to Warhol again:

"I do not want it to be essentially the same. I want it to be exactly the same."

"Exactly the same? exactly?" you may want to ask?

To which Warhol will answer: "yes."

"I want it to be exactly the same."

"But now, but, but now," you may wonder, "why would you want THAT?"

To which Warhol will answer:

"I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away. . ."

And that may just puzzle you.

To which (again) Warhol will say:

""If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings. . . and at me, and there I am."