TheWit andWisdom of ANDY WARHOL Paul Hamilton covers himself in tin-foil screaming, “whip me bitch!”

¶ America has always been utterly bereft of artists—people who can actually paint and draw and sculpt—but abundant with art collectors. The postWWIIAmerican administration didn’t like all their dollars disappearing overseas to patronize European artists and galleries, so it was decided that a new and wholly American artform be created to reverse the trend. Thus the CIA-backed school of Abstract Expressionism was born, a style of painting that required no skill in composition, drawing, perspective or even the ability to mix colours. Jackson Pollock dripped paint from buckets over horizontal

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THE IDLER

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SUMMER 2008