Image of The Andy Warhol Diaries, taken by Eduardo Navas, December 2007

Written on March 18, 2004
Second Draft: April, 2004

Note: Andy: Meta-dandy is part of the online artwork titled Diary of a Star, which consists of selected reblogs of Andy Warhol Diaries. I developed the project between February 28, 2004 and December 31, 2007.  This text has been available online as a PDF file since March 18, 2004. I re-release it on Remix Theory to make it part of my text archive.  For a PDF copy, click here. For more information on Diary of a star in relation to Remix, see my previous entry Completion of Diary of a Star.

Andy: Meta-dandy while theoretically driven is also a piece of creative writing (thus, it provides footnotes and a bibliography).  The reasons why I combined creative and academic writing can best be understood when reading the project’s context page.  I also chose not to revise it–even though I am aware of how I could improve it based on what I have learned since 2004.  Individuals who may have read my previous research will notice that this text is in large part an early exploration of my interest in remix, even though I don’t focus on the term, or use it directly.

The text compares Andy Warhol to Baudelaire’s Flaneur (as dandies) in order to explore the definition of art in modernism and postmodernism.  “Andy: Meta-dandy” explains the philosophy that led to the development of Diary of a Star.

———–

Baudelaire’s Flaneur is the quintessential character of modernity. Being lost in the crowd enjoying anonymity is what the nineteenth century Flaneur is best known for. Andy Warhol may very well be the most famous flaneur of the twentieth century. He was known for taking daily walks in the city streets every morning, with copies of his Interview magazine under his arm, ready to give them to people who recognized him.[1]  Unlike the flaneur, however, Andy loved attention.[2] He always wanted to become a star. He achieved this by immersing himself in a crowd. That such a crowd would be the rich and famous complicates this analogy. Yet, he paradoxically managed to keep a sense of anonymity when he “used the limelight in order to hide in it.”[3] To give credit to the Modern Man of the twentieth century, this was an inevitable transition. Craving attention was and still is one of the greatest desires in modernity, especially as media culture became more established after the 1950s. So Warhol was the new and improved flaneur. Today he is the icon of a man-machine who cranked works out of a factory, which later turned into an office.[4] A flaneur who constantly searched for ways to separate himself from the creative process. And like the new improved man of modernity, he not only embraced media, but mastered it to create some of the most important artworks of his time.

Like the flaneur, we know things about Andy but all based on surface, all based on public interactions and records. Andy in many ways is still a mystery, a persona that becomes a desirable object of appropriation when we find a need to step out of our selves and explore the unknown, to go to places where we dare not go. Today, recalling this persona is most appealing when navigating the World Wide Web. Indeed, the flaneur has been referenced by new media theory to better understand the dynamics of anonymity when exploring the internet.[5]

As I begin to develop an online project on the Warhol Diaries, in which I create weblinks to people, places, things, and events that were part of Andy Warhol’s daily activities, I also decide to create my own personal log recording my own explorations of virtual space.[6] One of the dilemmas for the online flaneur, the meta-dandy (that would be me at this point) is which door to open when the web browser is launched—where should one navigate once on the streets of virtual space? On the World Wide Web, the net surfer, or flaneur, has several places from which to start navigating, several doors to open and begin the journey through the crowds, where link after link can lead to unexpected places one could never conceive of. But how does one even begin to choose when the doors are almost limitless? Today, chance is already predictable, as it is a well conventionalized strategy; and randomness is not really random in the end, but only a smokescreen to free oneself from the burden of choice. Ultimately, one chooses to choose, and this is the reality of a creative practice… So, where to begin? How to navigate?

I decide to let Warhol decide for me. My approach then is to surf the web according to the Warhol Diaries. I use an entry a day as my starting point for navigation. And so, I click on links across the Web according to his daily records. As I do this, I recall the similarities between the flaneur of the nineteenth century, known as Mr. G., and our famous Andy of the twentieth; both men belonging to very different versions of modernity. One is the French stroller and the other is the American self-made star. Mr. G. was a self-taught water-colorist, who became “a powerful master in his own style,” by being careful to deliver only that which was necessary to present “unexpected extra flavours” with his art.[7] Likewise Andy had a special touch that made him unique, that led him to become one of New York’s most successful commercial artists.[8]  Like the flaneur, Andy constructed his Warhol persona all on his own—in this aspect he was self taught on how to act like a machine at all times. Andy, however, had been trained as a commercial artist, who, like the nineteenth century flaneur, started out painting watercolors. Unlike the flaneur however, Andy did it for a living, for commercial reasons, something that Mr. G. would never be caught doing, for he was a dandy, a man of leisure, whose only reason was to enjoy his time doing nothing,[9]which really meant observing his surroundings to later make records of such happenings in his watercolors.[10]

Here appears a difference in the modern times of these two observers of everyday life, these dandies, because (yes) Andy was a dandy as well but a very different one. Unlike the French Flaneur who did not care about money, and  could be happy “to live indefinitely on credit,”[11] Andy was always worried about going broke.[12] He was and still is an exemplar of the all American Dream of the working class rising to the top (that such people are quite fewer and farther in-between than in reality is unimportant, because it is the myth that is fed as the ultimate example of progress around the world, to this day). Andy was the icon of a new time period that surpassed Baudilaire’s era as well as Greenberg’s high modernism. Indeed, Andy deliberately exclaimed “I am starting pop art!” when exiting an art supply store in New York, immediately following with “because I hate abstract expressionism. I hate it!”[13] And because of this dismissal of high modernism, he may very well be the predecessor of what some intellectuals and critics came to describe as postmodernism. The reason such a word sounds blasé—even pretentious—at this point may be due to its overuse, or perhaps its impropriety in attempting to debunk that great cultural juggernaut known as modernity.

Some thinkers have claimed that the postmodern is that which comes before the modern,[14] and others announced that the modern relied on “transcendence” while the postmodern lacked such quality.[15] Perhaps this lack of quality (transcendence), which is enacted when the limitations of formal exploration in search of purity become exposed—or put simply, a suspension of politics is openly acknowledged when considering an object aesthetically, may be closest to what Warhol did. Unlike Baudelaire’s Flaneur who keenly observed, memorizing people in different activities, to then reuse such samplings in his watercolors,[16] exposing a state of “genius arising from instinct,” Andy, who also observed his surroundings keenly, has been immortalized as having paid one of his friends fifty dollars to tell him to paint, nothing-more-nothing-less than, money and Campbell soup cans.[17] Lack of transcendence it may be because how could a person who pays for ideas become one of the most important artists of the twentieth century? (Whatever happened to the genius?) Why would Andy commit such an act of Barbarism, as Baudelaire would call it?[18] The reason for this is that, like a real flaneur, Andy had to be true to his time, and report that which would become a record of his own culture, which came to rely on a state of self-reflexivity,[19] dependent on systems of social analysis, bringing a sense of objectivity to the artist. Like Mr. G.’s paintings, which Baudelaire claimed would become “valuable records of civilized life,”[20]

Andy’s art has also become a record of his own time, a time that came to expose that which a previous modernity had suspended in order to become autonomous. Andy did not need to memorize like Mr. G. did, because he had his camera, and his tape recorder (which he called his wife).[21] And like any normal couple, they went everywhere together. Yes, Andy had machines and so he did not need his memory. This luxury, possible thanks to mechanical reproduction, enabled Andy to free himself and claim “My mind is like a tape-recorder with one button—erase.”[22] Such indifference may have led to an insatiable drive to archive everything. When his home was opened at 57 east Sixty Sixth shortly after his death, art dealers and appraisers could hardly walk through the amount of material that was found throughout the rooms.[23] There were boxes and boxes of things Andy had bought and archived for his entire life, which would eventually be sold for a total of $25.3 Million.[24] He did not need to remember anything because he could always record it in one way or another—archiving it not for his own consumption but for the art history that would be created after him. And, he not only used a tape player, but also produced a number of films that to this day are considered quintessential in the underground film movement of the 60s and 70s—Chelsea Girls, Blow Job, Dracula, Loves of Ondine, Vibrations and Imitation of Christ are some of Andy’s films to name a few.

Why would Andy have to remember anything when all he had to do was let the camera roll and let people be themselves? Here Andy resembles the nineteenth century flaneur in a very odd way, however. The French flaneur would not dare call himself an artist, he was a man of the world. To Baudelaire, an artist was someone with very limited intellect, a craftsman who would not be able to converse about much, and who would quickly bore true intellectuals; but a man of the world, a dandy, could be an observer who would be able to extract the essence of life and report it. This was Baudelaire’s Flaneur’s ultimate task. That the Flaneur had a passion for what he observed was a paradox, because a dandy was always disinterested. And yet Mr. G. was a dandy nevertheless.[25] Such paradox is keenly found in Andy—our twentieth century flaneur. He was always sober, recording the rich and famous, taking their photographs as he went to parties and night clubs. Andy was a reporter of high and low culture, the true stroller of his time. Just like Mr. G., Andy reproduced with great mythical accuracy that which he considered important; that such things were money and soup cans is only proof that, like Mr. G, Andy was willing to keep track of that which seemed most important. That such things came to be called kitsch was not his problem, for he was a reporting machine. And like a true man of the world—a dandy—he did not bore but became bored. Being true to his role as a cultural reporter, Andy produced paintings of advertisements; comic strips including Popeye and Superman; consumer products such as typewriters, toilets, bathtubs and telephones; canned goods like Del Monte peach halves, and all 32 versions of Campbell soupcans including (but not limited to) tomato, tomato rice, chicken with rice, pepper pot, bean soup, vegetable soup, clam chowder, chicken noodle, cream vegetable, onion, green pea, scotch broth, split pea, vegetable beef, cheddar cheese and beef broth; he painted dollar bills, as well as green stamps and airmail stamps; generic ship-and-handling-labels stating “handle with care GLASS thank you,” “FRAGILE HANDLE WITH CARE,” “THIS SIDE UP,” and “OPEN THIS END;” he painted Coca-Cola and Pepsi bottles; plus “do it yourself paint by numbers;” he reproduced excerpts from the Daily News, clocks, and coffee labels; he silkscreened, teen stars, like Warren Beaty, Natalie Wood, and Troy Donahue; Andy immortalized Marilyn, Elvis, and Elizabeth Taylor, and he gave the Mona Lisa a color lift.[26] Andy recorded everything he considered important in the media, if it caught his eye, he would keep it for posterity—just like Mr. G.; but unlike the French flaneur, Andy did it with a lack of transcendence, which inevitably led to a new type of transcendence, which could not be known by Mr. G.

To better understand this dynamic let us step back and consider how Andy problematized some aspects of his modernity—he was the opposite of Mr. G. In his early days as a commercial artist, Andy dressed raggedy on purpose. He was known for buying expensive clothes to then bathe them in paint and cat pee; Andy would not wear a clean suit like a nineteenth century dandy would. Yet, he loved extravagant activities, and would hang out at trendy cafes, and go to plays, while not taking care of his living quarters.[27] Andy was a product of his time; a time where consumer culture had taken over the way people defined themselves based on products rather than an inherited status. The Bourgeois that Andy bought his way into was dependent on money and the myth of fame more than on the understanding of and respect for their history. Andy took advantage of this to make a career. Unlike the nineteenth century dandy, who has been mythologized by Baudelaire as having an interest in not being famous, Andy desperately tried to become famous. He wanted to be a star, and that he became. Andy has now been mythologized in certain versions of his biography as an artist who specifically searched to do something different, to do something that no-one had done before.[28]

What no one had done in the past was to throw back at high culture that which defined it—low culture. He turned low art into high art and people loved him for it. Like a true twentieth century Flaneur, he only observed to then report with his machines; with his films, and silkscreen portraits, his recordings of drunk celebrities who revealed in detail their sexual encounters, to later regret it.[29] Andy was transparent, just like his times, he was ready to let it all come through him, because his time lacked transcendence, and that is what made it all beautiful—especially the freaks that hung at the Factory. If Mr. G. believed in reporting the great things of life, Andy believed in doing so only if such things could become exposed according to their social context, which meant as a spectacle. He lived in a time where media ruled, where nothing was real and nothing mattered except being seen on the scene. Andy became responsible to the narrative of the literal, of the excess of meaning (the backbone of modernity, at least according to some critics)[30] that drives the rhetorical state of an artwork into a tension that cannot be overcome or suspended, but instead acknowledged as a means to understand the limitations of modernity itself.

While Mr. G. could look forward to the promise of crowds in cities, Andy could only see the limitation and potential (also known as conflicts) that consumer culture was bringing about with its superficial beauty, supported by endless signifiers running, promoting desire. Andy loved the artifice of his world, he craved the beautiful, but only if it did not fall under that expected idea of beauty that the modern had carried with it. Andy wanted that which was new (fully knowing that such a concept was only a myth in his time period). He wanted that which had not been done or experienced before, and this meant that Mr. G.’s idea of beauty could never be accepted by Andy. Andy could not accept such predictability because he was the Flaneur of a new kind of modernity; a modernity in which not even beauty could be defined, simply because his time would not permit it—thanks to the lack of transcendence he had inherited and which would make him responsible for promoting it into the latter half of the twentieth century under the umbrella of a post. Andy lived in a time of constant questioning, where progress was no longer seen in linear terms, where history was being questioned and rewritten; where media ruled claiming that “nothing was true”and that we all lived in “the dessert of the real.”[31] Simulation was at large during these times and Andy became a master of this postmodern practice. Pop art, which incorporated every strategy explored up to that time, including the marginalized aspects of commercial art, was Andy’s game. This type of modernity, this post, placed Andy in a position of great skepticism, for he could not, or rather would not, claim to know anything. Especially when it came to beauty, he loved it, but in the end he did not know what beauty was. In this sense Mr. G., our nineteenth century flaneur, was more fortunate, for he knew exactly what beauty was in his time.

Mr. G, Baudelaire’s fictional extension inspired by a friend he so admired actually known as Mr. Constantin Guys, had a very specific idea of what beauty was not.[32] In the end, Mr. G. only had to indulge in the beautiful in order to record it for posterity. And
this Baudelaire claims that Mr. G. did very well. For Mr. G. understood that the beautiful was not “a man’s idea of what is beautiful [that] imprints itself upon all his attire and bearing; [and that] it crumples or smoothes his coat, rounds out or straightens his movements, and in time subtly penetrates even his features.”[33] No, the nineteenth century flaneur would consider this definition rather ugly, barbaric even. Mr. G. would reluctantly acknowledge an enlightening comment by Stendhal, an unpleasant writer, who so eloquently wrote: “Beauty is only the promise of happiness.”[34] Baudelaire saw this dangerous definition as an escape from academism. This urge to “escape” is what led the avant-garde, in which Andy can of course be included, to keep moving and reevaluating that which becomes “academic.” This of course meant that the avant-garde was to play an end-game of constant re-evaluation, where things needed to be dropped as soon as they became academic kitsch.[35] Indeed Baudelaire already sensed this when he claimed “happiness” to be bound with the beautiful.

Andy had no choice but to search for happiness in exactly that which Mr. G. considered barbaric. And so, kitsch was Warhol’s inspiration. Therefore, he claimed Brillo boxes worthy of aesthetic appreciation in the white cube, and painted Jesus Christ juxtaposed with a motorcycle, an American Eagle and a “for sale” label of 6.99.[36] Andy claimed the portrait of Mao along with Debbie Harry’s and countless versions of Marilyn as his ultimate statements of beauty. That these beauties were riding on the exact barbarism despised by Mr. G. was only inevitable, because Andy, like Mr. G. had to report. And in the end, like Mr. G., Andy used his creative powers to take that which was naturalized for the sake of consumption—especially celebrities—and made them really special, Andy made them beautiful, not in a physical way, but in a way that could “promise happiness” in the disguise of a displaced desire, based on a literal reading, enjoying that which is presented as a reinterpretation (as ironic beautification, in earnest), just what Mr. G. would have disliked, but in the end would perhaps like for its honesty as a true work of art. But unlike Mr. G., Andy could never claim to know what is beautiful because his times would not allow him—or rather he would not allow himself to do so, for doing so would immediately place him in that barbaric academism that the avant-garde is constantly trying to escape. Instead, in order to keep his status as an avant-garde artist he opted to explore beauty based on that which was dismissed by those romantics searching for happiness. This was the only option he had when facing the well-established paradox of modernity, which Baudelaire defined so well when he claimed: “What is this unwritten constitution that has created so naughty a caste? It is a sort of cult above all, a burning need to acquire originality, within the apparent bounds of convention.”[37]

Of course Baudelaire was referring to dandyism; an activity which Warhol embraced as soon as he could afford it, but which he had to also problematize due to his status as an avant-garde artist. One way he did this was by functioning in various worlds simultaneously. While he would be seen in Studio 54 with all the Hollywood celebrities and rock stars, Andy was also part of the underground world centered in his Factory, and he also had a cushy position in the artworld.[38] In these worlds, he could not just claim to know, he could only say he did not know. And this he did very well. In short, on beauty he claimed “I honestly do not know what beauty is,”[39] while further elaborating that beautiful people should take care of themselves in very specific ways. He defined beauty based on physical appearance as a constant round for displacement and deferment, a place which could always be reinvented; Andy was not interested in “happiness,” or at least in showing you that type of beauty directly. To Andy, beauty was “being something,” and not “being in a state of being.” Like the dandy who lived with “a burning need to acquire originality, within the apparent bounds of convention,” Andy was bound to denounce Mr. G.’s convention of beauty, by embracing that very thing which the nineteenth century flaneur considered barbaric—that is the synthetic surfaces that men with no culture would wear on their clothes—and make this banal subject matter truly beautiful. Hence he escaped academism by fully embracing the products of low-culture, by acknowledging the rear-guard, itself, as the true arena where progress could be measured. That it was measured with exhibition value was not Andy’s problem. This investment in that which already exists and that is also well conventionalized pushed Andy to appropriate artworks from the past. And here is where he became the meta-dandy (fully fit for super-websurfing), indulging in reproduced images of classic fine art. He revisited, as already mentioned, the Mona Lisa—Da Vinci’s masterpiece which found itself reproduced in black-and-white, yellows, reds, blues, purples and greens, along with metallic browns and ghostly whites; Andy also took de Chirico and outlined his lonely surrealist paintings is violent silkscreens, exposing the true terror hiding behind the carefully painted canvases; he also took on Munch’ Scream and multiplied it into an endless series of meaningless screenprints, that no longer offered angst but were simply banal—here the terror came about when it was no longer scary to be scared; Andy took details of Piero de la Francesca’s painting Madonna del Duca da Montefeltro, and created “unique silkscreens,” presenting an emptiness, an abyss that becomes more intense and obvious as one experiences the seriality of the prints; He cut off Sandro Botticelli’s Venus, and turned her yellow, black, white and light blue, with the occasional fashionable green hair; but Andy’s greatest co-option of all may very well be the Last Supper, which he carefully reproduced, like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with his unconventional understanding of serial pictures.[40] Sixty-one black-and-white last suppers have to be better than one, right? More is more. Yes, Andy understood metadata very well. He knew the power of information and reproduction of images of images; he mimicked the mimickers.

And for this reason Andy is the perfect avatar, the perfect web flaneur, the virtual stroller who can surf the web in quest of meta-data. This is exactly what Andy would have done, and what no-one would dare to do, because it would be too low-culture to even consider doing it—to mimick a mimicker— how unoriginal! This is why the Warhol diaries are becoming meta history on the world wide web. Like Mr. G., and Andy, (both men of the world) the web avatar (my virtual character) will travel the world, only this time it will be the world of virtual space. And my Avatar (I) will drink Absolut Vodka while reading Architectural Digest, Artforum, Harper’s Bazaar, Detail Magazine, Elle, The Enquirer, Esquire, Forbes, Fortune, Glamour, GQ, and Andy’s own, Interview Magazine. I will revisit Beatlemania, listen to Billie Jean, learn about the early Commodore Computers, criticize Barbie Dolls, listen to the BBC, read the daily news, and drive DeLoreans. I will visit and talk business or at least cheap gossip with people at A & M Records, Arista Records, Elektra Records, Electric Lady (recording studio), and Goldwyn Studios. I will party at AM/PM Club, Area Disco, Beat the Zombie, Billinaire Boys Club (in L.A.), the Bluenote Club, Bolero Club, Bonds Club, Cheetah Disco, Copacabana Club, Club A, Club September, Cotton Club, Danceteria Disco, Disco Disco, El Moroco Club, Embassy Club ( London), Garage Club, Go-Go Club, Heaven (club in London), and the Ivory Club (Princeton). I will have meaningless conversations over coffee at Café Central, Café Condotti, Café Flore (Paris), Café Luxembourg (Venice), Café Royale (London), Café Seyoken, Café Roma; and I will stay and relax at the Americana Hotel, Barbizon Hotel, Bel Air Hotel, Hotel Berkshire, Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Biltmore Hotel, Carlyle Hotel, Fairmont Hotel (Philadelphia), Four Seasons Hotel, George Washington Hotel, Grand Hyatt, Grand Union Hotel, Hotel Hilton, Hotel Brassels, Hotel des Artistes, Hotel Lenox (Paris), Hotel Plaza, Hotel Seville, and the Hyatt Hotel.

I will get lost in the myths of Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the Prince of Saudi Arabia, Alan Alda, Muhammad Ali, Barbara Allen, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Armani, Louis Armstrong, Desi Arnaz, Rosanna Arquette, Ashaf (prince of Iran), Fred Astaire, Dan Aykroyd, Kevin Bacon, Brigitte Bardot, Count Basie, Kim Basinger, Warren Beatty, John Belushi, Toni Bennett, Ingrid Bergman, Milton Berle, Sandra Bernhard, Humphrey Bogart, Sonny Bono, Tom Bosley, Marlon Brando, Jeff Bridges, Tom Brokaw, Charles Bronson, Mel Brooks, Luis Bunuel, Carol Burnet, Geroge Burns, William Burroughs, Richard Burton, David Byrne, James Cagney, Maria Callas, Al Capone, Liz Carpenter, Jimmy Carter, Charlie Chaplin, Cher, Sandro Chia, Joan Collins, Sean Connery, Gary cooper, Francis Ford-Coppola, Kevin Costner, Jacques Cousteau, Bing Crosby, Tom Cruise, Nate Cummings, Bill Cunningham, Mario Cuomo, Tony Curtis, Rodney Dangerfield, Better Davis, James Dean, Oscar de la Renta, Dino de Laurentis, John DeLorean, Brian de Palma, Robert Deniro, Gerard DePardieu, Bo Derek, Danny De Vito, Susan Day, Lady Diana, Angie Dickingson, Matt Dillon, Christian Dior, Walt Disney, Divine, Placido Domingo, Phil Donahue, Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfus, Faye Dunaway, Dominick Dunne, Shelley Duvall, Clint Eastwood, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth (Princess of Yugoslavia), Queen Elizabeth (mother), Elizabeth II, Perry Ellis, Emilio Estevez, Linda Evans, Morgan Fairchild, Farah (Empress of Iran), Mia Farrow, Farah Fawcett, Federico Fellini, Sarah Ferguson, Bryan Ferry, W.C. Fields, Firyal (Prince of Jordan), Carrie Fischer, Geraldine Fizgerald, Larry Flynt, Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, Joan Fontaine, Henry Winkler (a.k.a. the Fonz), Betty Ford, Gerald Ford, Henry Ford, Ford (the pornstar), Milos Forman, Jodie Foster, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Teri Garr, David Geffen, Jean Genet, Richard Gere, Paul Getty, Mel Gibson, Whoopi Goldberg, Martha Graham, Cary Grant, Wayne Grestzky, Jennifer Grey, Merv Griffin, Mark Hamill, George Hamilton, Jean Harlow, Richard Harris, Debby Harry, Rita Hayworth, Patty Hearst, Gene Hackman, Victor Hugo, Alfred Hitchcock, Dustin Hoffman, Bob Hope, Dennis Hopper, Thelma Huston, Timothy Hutton, Julio Iglesias, Ashraf Palehvi (Empress of Iran), Mohammed Riza Pahlevi (Shah of Iran), Jackie O., Jessie Jackson, Steve Jobs, and Pope John Paul II.

I will meet singers, music producers and rock stars like Ashford and Simpson, Banarama, Toni Basil, Beach Boys, Bee Gees, B-52s, Miguel Bose, Boy George, James Brown, Jimmy Buffett, Eric Clapton, The Clash, The Clits, Leonard Cohen, Alice Cooper, John Denver, Duran Duran, Bob Dylan, the Eagles, Fab Five Freddy, Carl Fischer, Roberta Flack, the Four Seasons, Peter Frampton, Sigmund Freud, Clark Gable, Marvin Gaye, Dizzy Gillespie, John Gotti, Grace (Princess of Monaco), Bill Graham, Hall & Oates, Billy Idol, Jermaine Jackson, Kate Jackson, Michael Jackson, Reggie Jackson, The Jackson Five, Mick Jagger, DJ Jellybean, and Elton John. I will admire the supermodels Apolonia, Amina, Jerry Hall, Iman, and Bianca Jagger; and I will also meet artists like Laurie Anderson, Carl Andre, Archipenko, Arman, Artschawager, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Balthus, Jean Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, Paul Cadmus, John Cage, John Chamberlain, Francesco Clemente, Chuck Close, Salvador Dali, William de Kooning, Walter de Maria, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Eric Fischl, Helen Frankenthaler, Julio Galan, Michale Goldstein, Keith Haring, David Hockney; and mingle with Gallerists and art collectors like Mary Boone, Leo Castelli, Ron Feldman, Larry Gagosian, Peggy Guggenheim, and Critic Clement Greenberg.

Eventually after traveling so much across the World Wide Web, I will meet the editor of the Andy Warhol Diaries herself, Pat Hackett. The web may be the ultimate space for the dandy, who has always been a metadandy—a walking archive of information whose duty is to somehow leave a trace for later access, whether as romantic watercolors, or pop art. Warhol would surely have his own weblog if he were alive today. But at least his diary will become part of the twentyfirst century discourse, lending its deconstructive possibilities to new generations of virtual communities, not by Andy’s hand but by the very system he set in motion long before he died. His system can now be critiqued within the parameters that emerging technologies currently offer.

[1] Pat Hacket, “Introduction,” The Andy Warhol Diaries (New York: Warner Books, 1989), xvii.
[2] Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” As My Heart Laid Bare (New York: Haskell, 1975), 29. In this page Baudelaire explains that Mr. G does not crave attention.
[3] Victor Bockris, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol (New York: Bantam, 1989), 3
[4] Hacket, xiv.
[5] Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 2001), 268. Of course
anonymity does not really exist online, but it is a myth that made web experience popular in the early days.
Also, it should be noted that Lev Manovich cites the data-dandy, in the theories of Geert Lovink. , 270.
[6] Eduardo Navas, Diary of a Star, 12 April 2004, (24 March 2004). <http://navasse.net/star/index.html>
Diary of a Star, a weblog project that appropriates the Andy Warhol Diaries in order to critique the current trend of
online publishing, and its possible relationship to theories of modernity and postmodernity. http://www.navasse.net/star
[7] Baudelaire, 30.
[8] Bockris, 91.
[9] Baudelaire, 33.
[10] Ibid., 36.
[11] Baudelaire, 55.
[12] Hacket, xx.
[13] Bockris, 97.
[14] Jean-Francois Lyotard, “What is Postmodernism,” The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
(Minneapolis, Minnesota: Minnesota Press, 1984), 81.
[15] Craig Owens, “The Allegorical Impulse,” Art after Modernism, edited by Brian Wallis (New York:
Godine), 233-234.
[16] Baudilaire, 43.
[17] Bockris, Life and Death, 105.
[18] Baudelaire, 40-44.
[19] Hal Foster, “The Artist as Ethnographer,” The Return of the Real (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1996), 179.
[20] Baudelaire, 72.
[21] Andy Warhol, “I Love (Puberty)”The Philosophy of Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again (Bungay,
Suffolk: Picador, 1975), 32.
[22] Margery King, “Chronology,” The Andy Warhol Museum (New York: Art Publishers, 1994), 178.
[23] Bockris, 1-5.
[24] Ibid., 4.
[25] Baudelaire, 33.
[26] Andy Warhol, Warhol 01 The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne (New York: Phaidon, 2002). The
whole catalogue was used to develop the list of his art work.
[27] Bockris, Life and Death, 69.
[28] Hacket, xii.
[29] Bockris, the Biography, 404.
[30] Owens, 232-33.
[31] Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra,” also in Art After Modernism, 253.
[32] Baudelaire, 23.
[33] Ibid., 24.
[34] Ibid., 26.
[35] Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Clement Greenberg The Collected Essays (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986), 12.
[36] Frei, 112-113.
[37] Baudelaire, 36.
[38] Bockris, Warhol Biography, 402.
[39] Warhol, 61.
[40] Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol Art from Art (Freising, Munich: Sellier Druck, 1994). The whole catalog
was used to develop the list of appropriations.

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