ANDY WARHOL IS NOT YOUR FRIEND I have never got to grips with thinking about the ethics of reproduction, especially now we're online and can press the button to make a copy, download the digital file and play. Andy Warhol is not your friend. I repeat, Andy Warhol is not your friend. He knows too many people, has too many friends. He will put you to work in a factory and secretly film you asleep. I have never got to grips with thinking about who gets the credit and why. Take anywhere and freeze it in time, make numbered copies and sign these peculiar versions of life. Andy Warhol is not your friend. He repeats himself at your expense, owns too many wigs. You're not on the guest list, don't have a credit although it was all your idea. Put it down to survival skills. "A smooth expanse of flawless beauty." © Rupert M Loydell 2009 ANDY WARHOL COULD BE YOUR COUSIN He repeats the image the same but not quite again and again and again not at my expense or yours but he sure took those assistants for a ride when they could have taken some credit. Andy Warhol could be your cousin if only you got the nightshift to press the factory buttons. Be part of one big, happy extended family of Andy's paint-crazed little helpers. Don Judd might have been a relation too except he bluntly said after an opening that the best thing about Andy's silk-screens is the panache of his colour no matter how inaccurate. Andy Warhol could be your cousin or even Marilyn's. Every relationship as artificial as a flavouring: Cherry Marilyn, Mint Marilyn, Lemon Marilyn hiding behind the lipstick, eye shadow and blonde rinse. "Only what can be seen is there." © Peter Gillies 2009