Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (1928 -1987)

American painter

Verified

• In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.
  • Catalogue of an exhibition of his art in Stockholm, Sweden (1968)

• It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, "In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous."
  • Andy Warhol's Exposures (1979) commenting on the nightclub "Studio 54", and his world famous quote.

• I keep reading about this, um, Indian guy that turns out like three or four thousand pictures a minute...or maybe it's a day.
• Edward Smith: Would you like to see your pictures on as many walls as possible, then?
  Andy Warhol: Uh, no, I like them in closets.
• Edward Smith: Why is it more of a pleasure to do 30 or 40 pictures than to do just one?
  Andy Warhol: Then I can, uh, listen to my soundabout which looks just like the thing that I'm wearing now, and you can listen to opera and stuff like that.
  Edward Smith: Does that mean you don't have to think when you're painting?
  Andy Warhol: No, you can listen to really good music.
  Edward Smith: So, what, painting is an excuse to listen to really good music?
  Andy Warhol: Oh, yeah.
• Edward Smith: What do you think is the characteristic of a really nice person? Some people you obviously do like more than others.
  Andy Warhol: Ummm, well, if they talk a lot.
  Edward Smith: What, and don't make you talk?
  Andy Warhol: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person.
  Edward Smith: (laughs) Thank you, Andy.
  • Interview with Edward Lucie Smith on BBC Radio 3 (17 March 1981) [1]

Attributed

• "In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes." (slightly misquoted as "...will be famous for 15 minutes." or "Everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame"). This quote became common enough during his lifetime that later, for fun, he amended it to "In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous."

• An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he, for some reason, thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

• Beauty is a sign of intelligence

• People are only glamorous if you don't see them. Like the movies used to make people years ago. There is something about people on screen that makes them so special; when you see them in person, they are so different and the whole illusion is gone.

• Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

• Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.

• During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered.

• Isn't life just a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?

• Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

• Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible.

• I always wished I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with.

• I am a deeply superficial person.

• I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.

• I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

• I met someone on the street who said wasn't it great that we're going to have a movie star for president, that it was so Pop, and (laughs) when you think about it like that, it is great, it's so American.

• I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.

• I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say "figment".

• I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.

• I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, "Well, what do you love most?" That's how I started painting money.

• I'll endorse with my name any of the following; clothing AC-DC, cigarettes, small tapes, sound equipment, ROCK N' ROLL RECORDS, anything, film, and film equipment, Food, Helium, Whips, MONEY!!

• I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

• I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.

• I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.

• If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.

• It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.

• Land really is the best art.

• Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

• My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.

• The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

• They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

• When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.

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