00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Keurig, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this
00:07afternoon to speak to Jean Waynton Wright. And this is such an interesting exhibition which you
00:12are curator for, guest curator, Andy Warhol, 1928-1987. It's a summer exhibition running until
00:21September the 14th at Newlands House Gallery in Padworth. Now, Jean, why Andy Warhol? Why should
00:29we be remembering him for nearly 40 years after he died? What's his significance to us now, do you
00:35think? Very interesting question, because he is significant. And why I called it My True Story is
00:44you can walk round and you can have your own story about Andy Warhol. Whether it's looking at that
00:53Mona Lisa four times, Mona Lisa's in the press at the moment, because of course, he's going to be
00:59given her own room at the Louvre. There's this whole story behind that work. But there's also,
01:06I think, all the time now, we're discovering aspects of Warhol that perhaps we didn't know about. We
01:13know he wore a wig and glasses. We know he was a party animal. We know that he was connected with
01:21pop art. He was the ultimate pop artist. But in this exhibition, we've got interviews with his
01:28family, his two brothers now sadly dead. But, you know, their interviews reveal a part of him just
01:36being an ordinary guy, really. And it's quite easy when we look at celebrities or very well-known people
01:45that we form a kind of opinion of them. But actually, there is all these things under the
01:52surface. So I was trying to, in this exhibition, give people all these different aspects of Warhol and
02:00say, well, yes, he did illustrations, he did drawings. But he also did these wonderful screen
02:07prints, many of which you probably won't have seen. And also, at the end of the exhibition,
02:13there is this fabulous film that he made of his mother that was part of a whole trilogy of films
02:21that he was working on. But I also wanted to give him a contemporary relevance because Warhol was
02:30always working with artists. He loved artists coming to the factory. And of course, we know about
02:40John Miskell Basquiat. But I thought, why not show contemporary artists that have been influenced by
02:46him as well, that they have been, you know, they probably would have been at the factory if they'd
02:53been around because they're really influenced and they've taken elements of Warhol's work.
02:58And, and in the exhibition, they're kind of integrated into the exhibition. And I think again,
03:07talking to those artists, it's because Warhol for them had something that really intrigued them that
03:13they could take and make their own.
03:17And it must have been such an fascinating exhibition to curate because he's such a fascinating character,
03:23isn't it? And you were talking just now about the fact that there are two, there's probably more than
03:27two Andy Warhol's, isn't it? There's a public persona and the very frightened private guy with his phobias
03:35and complexity.
03:36I agree totally. I think the thing is, I was once told by Glenn O'Brien, who was the work for interview magazine,
03:45Warhol's interview magazine, don't try and plot Warhol. Don't try and track Warhol. In other words, what he was saying,
03:52whatever you know about him, you know, you are actually going to get tripped up because you think
04:00you captured him. And then he dissipates, you know, he's, he's off doing something else. You go, Oh, but I thought
04:07he was this. And now he's that. And also Glenn said something really fascinating. I thought we were talking
04:15about how Warhol responded. Why was Warhol so popular? Why did people want him to be an artist?
04:21And Glenn said, well, of course, one of his gifts was he said, he always said everything was great.
04:27But he said, the thing was, we knew what he meant by that. Was it great? Which meant fantastic. Or was it
04:35great? Which meant not really good at all. But the wonderful thing was, he was always saying it was
04:41great. So he couldn't argue with it. And I suppose to bring it back to your question. Although he claimed
04:51or let someone else claim for him that his work was about surface, you can actually think so much
04:58about every work in the exhibition. You know, why is there a drawing of a child with a cat on their lap,
05:07but cats barely visible? And yet he loved cats and had lots of cats. There's always some kind of quirky
05:13little thing in his work. Or why have we got feet on a piano and then all the piano on the Steinway
05:20piano and the keys look broken? Or a foot with a little ribbon around it? Or...
05:27So he's always wrong footing then, isn't he?
05:30He's always wrong footing. He is indeed. He's kind of like saying, look and look again,
05:35because you think it's about surface, but actually, there's so much more to it in the composition,
05:44in the subject matter that he chose. The sitting bull, which has never been seen before,
05:50is quite extraordinary because it shows his working methods as well. And you see how he works
05:59through an idea. So he takes a photograph, which is a very famous photograph, the historic sitting bull,
06:07and then he does something to it. So he's all, even when he copies something, if you like,
06:13he makes it his and recognizable as a war hole. And I think that's what, you know, contemporary
06:21people and contemporary artists, they want to do that as well. They want their, you know,
06:28their Instagram feed to be unique or whatever, you know.
06:32Well, it sounds like a fascinating exhibition. It's going to prompt endless discussion. It's
06:38at Newlands House Galler in Petworth, running until September 14th. Jean, really lovely to meet
06:43you and to speak to you. Thank you. Thank you.
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