Interview

GO: If you grew up with TV and you were smart, you just got it. It didn't require explication by experts. Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns all came out of this sort of commercial background. Johns and Rauschenberg were window-dressers just like Andy was. Pop said, "Art is for everybody." And then the dealers said, "No, art is to sell for $100,000."
And so the mechanism of the market fought against what Pop was saying. Or pretending to, anyway. But I think now we're finally finding a way that art can be both that incredibly precious object and also something that everybody can have.

MJ: Yeah.

GO: I mean, it's like not every woman can buy a Chanel couture gown, but every woman can buy a Chanel lipstick.

MJ: I think that's totally true. You go to Japan and these artists have merchandise-they make chocolates! They do everything. They don't care!

GO: But they weren't trained that it's a very naughty thing, like we were in the States by a peculiar coalition of dealers and ivory-tower critics.

MJ: You can go to Graff and buy a diamond that's flawless. You aren't going to be able to buy the same diamond at Fortunoff, but it's still a diamond you can enjoy. If fashion can allow you to have the Chanel mystique through a lipstick, then why shouldn't art allow you to have that through a sweatshirt that says "Cremaster" on it?

GO: One of the things that people really didn't get was when Andy talked about business art. He was saying, "I think if I were starting all over, I would do business." When I went to L.A. for the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and then saw the Murakami show at MOCA, I thought, Wow, Andy would be so jealous. He'd be so jealous that Koons and Murakami have, like, 200 people working for them-Andy never had more than 50.

MJ: Yeah!

GO: They are the fulfillment of everything he was talking about. He saw that we live in a corporate world and that there's nothing wrong with an artist using corporate techniques to work. You don't have to starve at your easel alone in the garret.

MJ: Yeah!

GO: You've managed to come into a multinational corporation and bring a real artistic approach to it. That's a breakthrough.

MJ: Well, yeah. Again, I didn't mean to do it.

GO: That's all right. We forgive you.