Paul Groot – About a Beer Campaign, Glenn O’Brien, Andy Warhol, and Rob Scholte

The Dutch magazine Mediamatic published, in their Fall 1988 issue, an essay by Glenn O’Brien on the work of the painter Rob Scholte (https://robscholtemuseum.nl/glenn-Obrien-dommelsch-is-really-gonna-make-it/). However, things were not as they appeared. Paul Groot, an editor at Mediamatic, had constructed the essay from appropriated texts by O’Brien in other publications, including Artforum. Groot altered the names to make “his” text reference Scholte, whereas the originals were actually about Andy Warhol.
Yes, it was the eighties, so innocent and so easygoing. If you were Andy Warhol, you were still the living dead, if you were Rob Scholte you felt like you were better than Andy Warhol, and if you were the art critic Glenn O’Brien from New York you were at the top of the world, because you could write about these artists!
I read some articles by Glenn and really he was the greatest! I didn’t invent that notion, he himself was so convinced about his own exclusivity, so I thought it could be a good opportunity to make a profile of another artist that thought himself the new Andy Warhol and have it written by Glenn himself!
Guess who? It was Rob Scholte, he lived in Amsterdam and thought himself the new king of art. He was so great! We knew how good he was, but Glenn O’Brien didn’t know, so the World outside didn’t know. If he could write on Scholte, the excellent qualities of Scholte could make him a World star. So I wrote this eulogy in what I thought then was the style of O’Brien. It was the early days of post modernism, so I took the lines and words of O’Brien, mixed them with some of my own ironical phrases, and woops, voila, this was an article by Glenn who suggest that a campaign for Dommelsch beer was the biggest triumph of Rob Scholte.
It was all a lie. The campaign had nothing to do with Scholte. I myself was involved in this Dommelsch beer campaign. Who is the critic? Send your guess to paul@mediamatic.nl.

Willem Velthoven - Letter to Glenn O'Brien, february 8, 1989

Willem Velthoven – Letter to Glenn O’Brien, february 8, 1989

Paul Groot & Willem Velthoven - Letter to Glenn O'Brien, march 1, 1989

Paul Groot & Willem Velthoven – Letter to Glenn O’Brien, march 1, 1989

https://robscholtemuseum.nl/keiko-sei-anger-and-appropriation/

Atopia Project #5.66, Lifting: Theft in Art, 2008, page 39

http://atopiaprojects.org/5.66/images/LIFTING.pdf

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Atopia Project #5.66, Lifting Theft in Art, 2008