Warhol’s Dream: Saul Anton

12 February 1972–I had slept badly. I decided to go out for breakfast, but when I got down to the street, there was no one there, and I thought, Andy, you must be still dreaming. It was like New York at eight in the morning on New Year’s Day. Completely deserted. Everything shut. It’s my favorite time to be out, actually. I decided to go to my favorite diner, the Star Palace, on 37th and Madison. And there, sitting alone at the window was, believe it or not, Robert Smithson, who I’ve met a few times…They all think he’s a genius. But I still can’t get through the stuff he writes in Artforum. I get a headache almost right away. Saul Anton, an Editor-at-Large at Cabinet magazine who has written for Salon and Artforum, among other publications, describes an imaginary encounter between Robert Smithson and Andy Warhol, drifting together for a day through an empty New York City, talking about entropy, glamour, science fiction, cinema and the art of their times. Published in conjunction with les Presses du reel, this highly informative and witty essay on both artists’ works in the form of a fiction could be considered a contemporary Platonic Symposium.