Shitsburgh

In the near future I am planning to take a trip to Pittsburgh. By near future I mean this weekend if I don’t go to New York. The main purpose of the trip to Shitsburgh is to go to the Andy Warhol museum. I love Warhol. I can talk about him for days. Shocking, I know. There is something about him that is so fascinating, everything. His early career as a commercial artist in the 50’s to the Factory, to the not-so-surprising assassination attempt, to the 70’s and 80’s sell out of doing commissioned portraits. Somehow the idea of selling out was an artistic statement in itself. I can do a really good Warhol impression and my friend Joseph who worked with me in college at Café at Main could do an excellent Basquiat. We would amuse ourselves and the rest of the staff by conversing as our alter egos during restaurant down time.

There are two dominating artists in the 20th century. The first half owned by Picasso and the second half, Warhol. This is impart to how prolific they were and their social and cultural relevance. I had pushed for a class entirely on Warhol at SCAD and even wrote a letter to the administration with this suggestion for which I received no reply. Instead I had to settle for an “Art After 1945” class. There were several problems with this class mostly having to do with the professor. I don’t remember her name but she was British, and I am generally not crazy about the Brits. I once said I think even they are fooled by their own accents into thinking that they are more intellectual than their American counterparts. Our “professor” gave this spiel in the first class about how hung over she was and her flight problems and some other bullshit my parents were not paying money for me to hear. Well, I had scheduling conflicts so I had to switch to the other class time later that week where she gave the same “hung over from the night before” story. This annoyed me tremendously. She was very young and also a lousy professor. She had nothing to contribute and did not ask us for contributions aside from interpretations of the text. Fucking bullshit I tell you.

Secondly, I really had a problem with her age. This is the only art history class where it was possible to have a professor who lived through this exciting and quickly changing period of our cultural history. SCAD chose not to take advantage of this and subsequently I will forever be a little bitter. Then there is the British thing again. I strongly feel this class needs to be taught by an American since it was American artists who lead every single art movement of the second half of the 20th century. British people should not be teaching American history and art after 1945 is American history.

So, to Pittsburgh I will go. I will continue to teach myself every thing there is to know about modern art and the Andy Warhol museum will be my land of Caanan, my Mecca if you will.

Fallingwater is on the way too and that should be neat.

Disclaimer: the above is the opinion of the author which I believe to be entirely accurate.