The Andy Warhol Interview Session, 1985
In 1985, while serving as an art director, I was invited to the Commodore Amiga launch at Lincoln Center to witness a pivotal moment in the history of digital art: Andy Warhol’s engagement with the personal computer.
Months later, I visited Warhol at his studio, The Factory, to conduct a formal interview. Our conversation centered on his live creation of a digital self-portrait—likely the first instance of a major contemporary artist utilizing an emerging digital medium to expand his signature visual language. At a time when the personal computer was still a nascent tool for the creative community, Warhol approached the interface with the same blend of curiosity and deadpan detachment that defined his work in silkscreen and film.
During the session, Warhol’s response to the pixel and the cursor was remarkably intuitive; he recognized in these new tools a different species of mechanical reproduction. This exchange, which explored the friction between traditional art-making and the digital frontier, was first published in Amiga World and later preserved in the anthology I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews.
Today, this session stands as a rare record of an artist—long fascinated by the intersection of celebrity, technology, and commercial culture—meeting the medium that would eventually redefine all three.
Many people claim to have known or met Warhol. I count myself among them. I was twenty-five years old when I sat beside Andy Warhol at The Factory, guiding him through a software program as he created what may be the earliest digital self-portrait by a major artist.
A single print was made from that digital file and is the only surviving record; to my knowledge, the original digital file no longer exists. Over the years, I’ve been asked often about that interview and the image he created during our meeting.
In 1985, before our interview, Commodore International had given Warhol a newly released Amiga computer to experiment with using a graphics program called ProPaint. On July 23 of that year, at Lincoln Center in New York, he gave a live demonstration during the launch of Amiga World magazine, painting a video-captured image of Debbie Harry. I was in the audience that evening, serving as art director for the magazine. A few months later, the editor-in-chief, Guy Wright, and I met Warhol at The Factory to conduct an interview while he created a digital self-portrait, which became the cover image for a special issue of the magazine.
This was before the era of desktop publishing and integrated page-design software. After Warhol completed the image, I located one of the few labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts capable of taking a floppy disk and producing a high-quality print from the file. The digital file lived on a magnetic disk that was soon lost; the paper print is all that survived. That print became the magazine’s cover artwork. I kept it as a personal memento of what was, for me, a pivotal experience, and it remains in excellent condition today.
Warhol’s self-portrait shows him seated before the Amiga, holding a computer mouse, his image repeating infinitely on the computer screen like a hall of mirrors. The concept is loaded with meaning: time and infinity, looking back and forward, the artist both inside and outside the machine — the tool and the canvas merged. The visible pixels remind us of the early days of digital imagery, when each square of color could be counted with the eye.
At the time, the idea of using a computer for serious creative work was widely debated, echoing the 19th-century skepticism about photography as an art form. The interview and image were published in Amiga World in January 1986. For years afterward, curators, collectors, and critics dismissed Warhol’s computer-based work as commercial, created under contract with Commodore, and therefore not “true art.” That view is now shifting.
Warhol died in 1987, but renewed interest has emerged around his Amiga experiments. In 2021, Christie’s, in collaboration with the Warhol Foundation, sold five NFTs for $3.38 million, based on digital images Warhol made on the Amiga in 1985 that had been rediscovered. In 2024, Artnet and Art Now LA reported that materials compiled by a Commodore technician who attended both the Amiga launch and the interview session were being offered for $26 million. However, the unique self-portrait print is not among them. Other media outlets have since revisited the story, extending the conversation across channels.
I find it fascinating to watch how this narrative evolves — how history reframes what was once considered trivial. The questions raised in 1985 about creativity and technology echo today’s debates about artificial intelligence, authorship, and originality. Warhol’s experiment on the Amiga stands as an early marker in that dialogue, linking art and technology in ways we are only beginning to understand.
That print still exists. Warhol valued prints and spoke about their significance during our interview. What began as a commercial assignment for a magazine may also represent an important intersection of creative and technological history — a point where traditional art met the emerging digital frontier. Whether it becomes a lasting benchmark or simply a small footnote in art history remains to be seen.
Glenn Suokko, August 2024
Andy Warhol and Glenn Suokko, The Factory, New York, 1985.
Andy Warhol’s digital self-portrait, 1985, original print from the ProPaint digital file, 18¼ x 14¾ inches.
The cover of Amiga World magazine, 1986, design by Glenn Suokko.
