Andy Warhol: Likeness (page 2)

“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.”

Andy Warhol

1975 - 1987, BBC interview (1981)

Pleasure , Music , Thinking , Painting

“The farther West we drove [to California, Fall of 1963, with Gerard Malanga, Wynn Chamberlain, and Taylor Mead for an opening of Warhol's 'Liz & Elvis paintings' at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles], the more Pop everything looked on the highways. Suddenly we all felt like insiders because even though Pop was everywhere – that was the thing about it, most people still took it for granted, whereas we were dazzled by it – to us, it was the new Art. Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again. The moment you label something, you take a step – I mean, you can never go back again to seeing it unlabeled. We were seeing the future and we knew it for sure.... the mystery was gone, but the amazement was just starting.”

Andy Warhol

quote in 1963
Quote in Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987), selected by Neil Printz; as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467
1963 - 1967

People , Art , Angels , Way

“In some circles where very heavy people think they have very heavy brains, words like "charming" and "clever" and "pretty" are all put-downs; all the lighter things in life, which are the most important things, are put down.”

Andy Warhol

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 4: Beauty

Life , People , Thinking

“I guess it was the big plane crash picture [why Warhol started his 'Death'-series], the front page of a newspaper: '129 DIED'. I was also painting the Marilyns [the Marylin Monroe portraits, Warhol started after her tragic death in 1962] I realized that everything I was doing must have been death. It was Christmas or Labor Day - a holiday - and very time that you turned on the radio they said something like '4 millions are going to die'. That started it. But when you see I gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have any effect.”

Andy Warhol

Source: 1963 - 1967, What Is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters, Part 1 (1963), pp. 116-19

Death , Time , Holiday , Christmas

“The reason I'm painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.”

Andy Warhol

'What is Pop Art? Answers from 8 Painters', Part 1, G. R. Swenson, in Art News 62, November 1963
1963 - 1967

Way , Feeling , Painting