Andy Warhol citations

Page 3

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

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

“Most people in America think Art is a man's name.”

“The nicer I am, the more people think I'm lying.”

“Why do people spend their time being sad when they could be happy?”

“Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.”

“It's the movies that have 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.”

“I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.”

“The world fascinates me.”

“I’m really afraid to feel happy because it never lasts”

“i suppose i have a really loose interpretation of "work", because i think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. the machinery is always going. even when you sleep”

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

“When I look around today, the biggest anachronism I see is pregnancy. I just can't believe that people are still pregnant.”

“Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art.”

“I always run into strong women who are looking for weak men to dominate them.”

“Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.”

“I think pot should be legal. I don’t smoke it, but I like the smell of it.”

“Just because people throw it out and don't have any use for it, doesn't mean it's garbage.”

“I don't want to be smart, because being smart makes you depressed.”

“When you're interested in somebody, and you think they might be interested in you, you should point out all your beauty problems and defects right away, rather than take a chance they won't notice them... On the other hand, say you have a purely temporary beauty problem—a new pimple, lackluster hair, no-sleep eyes, five extra pounds around the middle. Still, whatever it is, you should point it out... If you don't point out these things they might think that your temporary beauty problem is a permanent beauty problem... If they really do like you for yourself, they'll be willing to use their imagination to think of what you must look like without your temporary beauty problem.”

“Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody.
Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about?
Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.”

“The President has so much good publicity potential that hasn't been exploited. He should just sit down one day and make a list of all the things that people are embarrassed to do that they shouldn't be embarrassed to do, and then do them all on television.”

“Sometimes you fantasize that people who are really up-there and rich and living it up have something you don't have, that their things must be better than your things because they have more money than you. But they drink the same Cokes and eat the same hot dogs and wear the same ILGWU clothes and see the same TV shows and the same movies. Rich people can't see a sillier version of w:Truth or Consequences, or a scarier version of w:The Exorcist. You can get just as revolted as they can—you can have the same nightmares. All of this is really American.”

“Somebody said that Bertolt Brecht [German socialist writer of political theater] wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It's happening here [in America] all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it's working without trying, why can't it work without being Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that way.”

“In: POPism (1980); as quoted 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”

“I've never met a person I couldn't call a beauty.”

“You'd be surprised who'll hang an electric chair in the living room. Especially if the background matches the drapes.”

“It's hard to be creative and it's also hard not to think what you do is creative or hard not to be called creative because everybody is always talking about that and individuality. Everybody's always creative. And it is so funny when you say things aren't, like the shoe I would draw for an advertisement was called a 'creation', but the drawing of it was not... There are millions of actors. They're all pretty good. And how many painters are there? Millions of painters and all pretty good. How can you say one style is better then another. You ought to be able to be an Abstract-expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling you're given up something.”

“I started those [the 'Elisabeth Taylor' pictures, Warhol made from a publicity photo of her 1960 film 'BUtterfield 8 a long time ago when she was so sick and everybody said she was going to die [but she recovered]. Now I'm doing them all over, putting bright colors on her lips and eyes. My next series will be pornographic pictures, they will look blank; when you turn on the black lights, then you will see them - big breast and... If a cop came in, then you could just flick out the lights or turn to the regular lights. How could you say that was pornography?... Segal did a sculpture of two people making love, but he cut it all up, I guess because he thought it was too pornographic to be art... The thing I like about it is that it makes you forget about style and that sort of things; style isn't really important.”