Customer Reviews

I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews : 1962-1987

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First off, you will buy this book because you are a fan of Warhol and frankly you should buy it because it contains a lot of great stuff. I was super excited when I opened this book because I get a kick out of the thought that Warhol was often gently mocking (well, taunting certainly) us with his obtuse and oblique responses to his media questioners. The problem with not actually being able to see Warhol give these interviews is that it is impossible to know how much actually came from his own lips and how much was created to fit the agenda of the person writing or giving the interview. For instance, whenever Warhol was with one of his co-conspirators he often allowed that person to interject an answer to a question on his behalf. Also, many of these interviews were actually composed to fit a particular world view. For instance, Mr. Malanga's interview of Warhol reads like something that Mr. Malanga wrote, probably with Andy's approval, and then submitted for print. This is okay, but the really great stuff in an Andy Warhol interview is what actually issues from Andy accompanied by all of his funny mannerisms and quirks. This sometimes does come through in a number of interviews contained in this book, particularly ones given to novices and young men but too often the interviews read flat and almost textbook like. I don't want to turn you off to this book because I really believe that it is a worthwhile read. I just don't want you to expect too much so that you won't be disappointed.

Wouldn't it be nice to be so important as to warrant almost 400 pages of being interviewed ... which, for Warhol, are only a selection. I wonder how many people have been interviewed as much?

There's a wide variety of interviews here, from the monosyllabic to the raunchy to more or less conventional in form but intelligent in content(when discussing art with those who understand art well).

What's missing with Warhol when interviewing is that need to explain onself in great detail that seems typical of most of us when given the chance. Somehow, despite our different backgrounds, when interviewed, we all sound the same: the pattern of the self given the chance to own the stage. Warhol often seems comfortable with responses of one simple sentence or less, which requires more interviewer participation and increases the tempo of the interviews.

Warhol's sense of humor and desire for productivity (work, work, work) are apparent. No time to waste words.

To make these interviews seem somewhat more concrete, look on the Web for the BBC audios of Warhol, several 1-3 minute segments that allow you to hear him.

After reading these, I understand him perhaps a little more and he seems a great deal less remote and more likeable. I bought this along with "Andy Warhol 365 Takes" from the Warhol Museum staff: these two books complement each other well, this one focused more on the man and the other on his works. Despite his fame, he seems a greater artist than was at first apparent to me.

there are some very famous interviews here and nothing terribly interesting besides, when you consider how well AW handled questions evidenced in countless clips in which maybe one or two questions are asked in various documentaries out there (the Barbara Rose one stands out as having especially good give and take)

underwhmeling! better to stick to the Philosophy"" book or Popism or the diaries... this volume I consider skipable

Unless you're some sort of Warhol scholar, you really have to like Andy Warhol a heck of a lot to read all the way through the interviews collected in "I'll be Your Mirror." You practically have to be a Warcaholic to appreciate the Pop Master's technique of speaking volumes while ostensibly saying nothing...sometimes even when he really is saying nothing!

Warhol turned the interview into another display of his enigmatic aesthetic. What's interesting in this book isn't so much what Warhol says, but how he doesnt say it. His irony is so sharp that the interviewer is often seemingly unaware that he's even been cut--or delivered in so deadpan and naive a manner that either it's missed, misinterpreted it, or Warhol's interlocutor can't even be sure that he's been put-down or put-on.

I think a lot of people feel the same about Warhol's art...or, until relatively recently, a lot of people used to feel that way. Is this guy putting us on, or what?

Collected from a variety of sources, the interviews in "I'll Be Your Mirror" are uneven in quality, necessarily reprinted (and repeated) from other sources, and, because they are, in part, a Warholian performance, Warhol's answers are often redundant. In fact, there isnt a whole lot new here that a reader of Warhol's "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol" won't have already encountered. The fun, I suppose, comes in watching Warhol play his fey, fickle game of linquistic peek-a-boo, always giving away a little less than what he's ultimately getting: publicity.

Pretending, by turns, to be ignorant, inarticulate, indolent, and indecisve, Warhol often comes off sounding like both Beavis and Butthead with his ever-ready, all-purpose, one-size-fits-all grab bag of answers suitable for any occasion (or question) . One has to appreciate the skill involved in not-answering questions, in evading the obvious, the pretentious, the sycophantic, the frivolous and the invasive to derive any entertainment in listening to Warhol "Yes," "no," "I don't know," "gee," "really?" his way through a lifetime's gauntlet of interview after interview.

Of course, one must also remember that as "uncooperative" Warhol is in these interviews, they remain interviews; they aren't interrogations. Warhol agreed to be interviewed...sort of like a samurai accepts a challenge. From these encounters, Warhol emerges victorious, for the most part, you sense he hardly broke a sweat.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're an evasive and elusive a character as I am than you'll surely appreciate the disappearing act that Warhol pulls off in these interviews...not just the act itself, but how he manages to do it. Although you have to keep your eyes open, you can hardly blink, because when you do, he's gone.

If you'd like to learn this neat trick, whether you're a world-renowned artist or not, a socialite hobnobber or a grocery clerk, a celebrity trendsetter or a reclusive crank, you can hardly do better than study Warhol's performance in the book. For the rest of what makes Warhol important, you're better off going somewhere else.