'Do you think Pop Art's queer?' Gene Swenson and Andy Warhol

Abstract

This article presents a significant archival discovery: The unknown taperecording of Gene Swenson's defining 1963 interview with Andy Warhol, published originally in ARTnews as part of a series titled 'What is Pop Art? Answers from 8 Painters'. On the recording, Swenson begins the interview by asking Warhol, "What do you say about homosexuals?" -A question Warhol goes on to answer with great care and complexity. However, this question, along with every subsequent mention of homosexuality, was expunged from the published interview. Expounding the original content of this heavily redacted conversation, Sichel argues for an augmented understanding of Pop's queerness, expanded to account for the development of Swenson's queer practice alongside Warhol's. Turning to Swenson offers a skewed slant on Pop, permitting an alternative view that extends to the frayed edges of the movement where feelings butt up against the obdurate limits of possibility. It is a view of Pop that looks not just at the cow papered walls of MoMA, but also outside the windows to take in the view of Swenson picketing alone on the sidewalk below, armed with only a single, oversized, and unanswered question mark.