Interview

GO: But lately you've done flowers and skulls.

AW: We've been to Italy so much, and everybody's always asking me if I'm a communist because I've done Mao. So now I'm doing hammers and sickles for communism, and skulls for fascism.

GO: Did Mao ever see your portrait of him?

AW: I don't know. One of the big ones was shown in Washington at the Corcoran Gallery, and the director there told us that a delegation of Chinese was taking a tour of the place. They found out there was a big Mao hanging there, so they went in through the back door of the museum so they wouldn't see Mao. I guess they were worried about liking it. It's all so different for them. We invited the Chinese ambassador to the Factory, but he never came back.

GO: Who do you think is the best business artist in the world?

AW: Christo. He just finished this $2 million project for a foundation. But I'm sure the government's going to find something wrong with the foundation. It seems so easy. That's more like a business. It's like producing something, a big $2 million project. Someone will come along and do a movie like that, a $4 million art movie nobody has to really like.

GO: But Christo makes money.

AW: No, he works on a foundation thing. You don't get paid, you just take out expenses
and things.

GO: Do you think that's what's going to happen to art? It's going to be all foundations and subsidies?

AW: Yeah, that sounds like a nice, new way. It's the easiest thing. There are a lot of people working on it and it's up for only two weeks.

GO: Do you think Picasso was a business artist?

AW: Yeah, I guess so. He knew what he was doing.

GO: But who do you think invented the idea?

AW: I think Americans after the war. It was the galleries. Somewhere along the line, someone did it with Picasso, where it started to be more of a product.

GO: Do you think artists of the future will form companies or go public and sell stock?

AW: No, but I'm opening a restaurant called the Andymat.

GO: Do you think there are any art movements now?

AW: No.