ANDY WARHOL, his quotes on his painting & print art & life incl. ‘The Factory'; + biography facts of the American artist
Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987), his quotes on Pop Art and and biography facts and his philosophy on American Modern Life. Warhol was a famous cult celebrity in American music-scene of 1960-70s because of his studio ‘The Factory’. He created Pop Art in graphic art, paintings + photos. Warhol was certainly a leading artist in the Pop art movement, with a. o. Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann, by making pictures of iconic American products such as Campbell’s Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles. He became famous for his portrait prints of Mao, Elvis Presley, Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. At the bottom more biography facts for Andy Warhol, with useful artist links. – the editor.
|
Warhol: ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’, 1964 |
Andy Warhol, his artist quotes on Pop Art – from his philosophy on American life; + biography
– 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, source of artist quotes and philosophy on art & life: ‘What is Pop Art? Answers from 8 Painters, Part 1′, G. R. Swenson, in ‘Art News’ 62, November 1963 (famous American movie- and print-maker: portraits of Mao, Monroe Taylor / studio: Factory; biography facts below)
– Apparently, most people love watching the same basic thing (actions shows on TV, fh), as long as the details are different. But I’m just the opposite: if I’m going to sit and watch the same thing I saw the night before, I don’t want it to be essentially the same – I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel. (1960s)
* Andy Warhol, artist quotes and philosophy on Pop Art: ‘Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987)’, selected by Neil Printz; in “Andy Warhol, retrospective”, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467. (famous American movie- and print-maker: portraits of Mao, Monroe Taylor / organizer of music center & tudio: Factory; biography facts at the bottom of the page)
– The farther west we drove (to California, the fall of 1963, fh) 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 unlabelled. We were seeing the future and we knew it for sure… …the mystery was gone, but the amazement was just starting. (1960s)
* Andy Warhol, source of artist quotes on Pop art & life: ‘POPism’; as quoted in “Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987)”, selected by Neil Printz, in ‘Andy Warhol, retrospective’, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467.
– The Pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second – comics, picnic tables, men’s trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles – all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all. (1960s)
* Andy Warhol, source of quotes and philosophy on art & life: ‘POPism’; as quoted in “Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987)”, selected by Neil Printz, in ‘Andy Warhol, retrospective’, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467.
– 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… …I see everything that way, the surface of things, a kind of mental Braille. I just pass my hands over the surface of things. (1973, fh)
* Andy Warhol, source of his quotes & philosophy on Pop Art & life: ‘Warhol in his own words, – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987)’, selected by Neil Printz, in “Andy Warhol, retrospective”, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467.
– What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and All the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
* Andy Warhol, source of artist quotes and Pop Art philosophy: “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back again)”, Andy Warhol; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1975, pp. 100 – 101. (famous American movie- and print-maker: portraits of Mao, Monroe Taylor / organizer of music center & tudio: Factory; biography facts at the bottom of the page)
– Somebody said that Bertolt Brecht (German socialist writer of political theatre, fh) 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 (America, fh) 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.
* Andy Warhol, source of quotes – his philosophy on art & life: “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back again)”, Andy Warhol; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1975, p. 26.
– Before I was shot (3 June, 1968, fh) I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television – you don’t feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.
* Andy Warhol, artist quote and philosophy on Pop Art & life: “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back again)”, Andy Warhol, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1975, p. 91.
– Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called ‘art’ or whatever it’s called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippies era people put down the idea of business – they’d say ‘Money is bad’, and ‘Working is bad’, but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
* Andy Warhol, source of Pop Art quotes and art philosophy: “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back again)”, Andy Warhol, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1975, p. 92.
– I suppose I have 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. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.
* Andy Warhol, source of artist quotes and philosophy on art & life: “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back again)”, Andy Warhol, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1975, p. 96.
– When I have to think about it, I know the picture is wrong. And sizing is a form of thinking and coloring is too. My instinct about painting says, ‘If you don’t think about it, it’s right’. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets. Some people, they paint abstract, so they sit there thinking about it because their thinking makes them feel they’re doing something. But my thinking never makes me feel I’m doing anything.
* Andy Warhol, source of artist quotes and philosophy on art & life: “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back again)”, Andy Warhol, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1975, p. 149.
– I still care about people but it would be so much easier not to care. I don’t want to get to close: I don’t like to touch things, that’s why my work is so distant from myself (Nicolas Love, April 1987, fh)
* Andy Warhol, source of quotes on his philosophy and Pop art life: “Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987)”, selected by Neil Printz, in ‘Andy Warhol, retrospective’, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467. (famous American movie- and print-maker: portraits of Mao, Monroe Taylor / organizer of music center & tudio: Factory; biography facts at the bottom of the page)
– I think of myself as an American artist: I like it here… …I feel I represent the U.S. in my art but I’m not a social critic. I just paint those things in my paintings because those things are the things I know best. I’m not trying to criticize the U.S. in any way, not trying to show up any ugliness at all. I’m just a pure artist, I guess. But I can’t say if I take myself seriously as an artist. I just hadn’t thought about it. I don’t know how they consider me in print, though.
* Andy Warhol, source of artist quote: ‘Andy, My true Story’ 3, Berg, in “Andy Warhol, retrospective”, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467.
– A lot of people thought it was me everyone at the Factory was hanging around, that I was some kind of big attraction that everyone came to see, but that’s absolutely backward: it was me who was hanging around everyone else. I just paid the rent, and the crowds came simply because the door was open. People weren’t particularly interested in seeing me; they were interested in seeing each other. They came to see who came.
* Andy Warhol, source of artist quotes and Pop Art philosophy: ‘POPism’; as quoted in “Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987), selected by Neil Printz, in “Andy Warhol, retrospective”, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467.
art and life quotes by the Pop-artist, taken from ‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol’, published in 1975 – ISBN 978-0156717205
– At the times in my life when I was feeling the most gregarious and looking for bosom friendships, I couldn’t find any takers so that exactly when I was alone was when I felt the most like not being alone. The moment I decided I’d rather be alone and not have anyone telling me their problems, everybody I’d never even seen before in my life started running after me to tell me things I’d just decided I didn’t think it was a good idea to hear about. As soon as I became a loner in my own mind, that’s when I got what you might call a “following.” As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I’ve found that to be absolutely axiomatic.
– During the 60s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don’t think they’ve ever remembered. I think that once you see emotions from a certain angle you can never think of them as real again. That’s what more or less has happened to me. I don’t really know if I was ever capable of love, but after the 60s I never thought in terms of “love” again.
– I don’t see anything wrong with being alone, it feels great to me. People make a big thing about personal love. It doesn’t have to be such a big thing. The same for living – people make a big thing about that too. But personal living and personal loving are the two things the Eastern-type wise men don’t think about.
– I love every “lib” movement there is, because after the “lib” the things that were always a mystique become understandable and boring, and then nobody has to feel left out if they’re not part of what is happening. For instance, single people looking for husbands and wives used to feel left out because the image marriage had in the old days was so wonderful. Jane Wyatt and Robert Young. Nick and Nora Charles. Ethel and Fred Mertz. Dagwood and Blondie.
– What I was actually trying to do in my early movies was show how people can meet other people and what they can do and what they can say to each other. That was the whole idea: two people getting acquainted. And then when you saw it and you saw the sheer simplicity of it, you learned what it was all about. Those movies showed you how some people act and react with other people. They were like actual sociological “For instance”s. They were like documentaries, and if you thought it could apply to you, it was an example, and if it didn’t apply to you, at least it was a documentary, it could apply to somebody you knew and it could clear up some questions you had about them.
– I’ve never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty.
– I really don’t care that much about “Beauties.” What I really like are Talkers. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love. The word itself shows why I like Talkers better than Beauties, why I tape more than I film. It’s not “talkies.” Talkers are doing something. Beauties are being something. Which isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that I don’t know what it is they’re being. It’s more fun to be with people who are doing things.
– 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.
– 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.
– I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she’s four or five hundred pounds but she doesn’t see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she’s a beauty. And therefore, I think she’s a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do.
– The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald’s. Peking and Moscow don’t have anything beautiful yet.
– I’m confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if your name’s in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it’s your news and they’re taking it and selling it as their product. But then they always say that they’re helping you, and that’s true too, but still, if people didn’t give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn’t have any news. So I guess you should pay each other. But I haven’t figured it out fully yet.
– After being alive, the next hardest work is having sex. Of course, for some people it isn’t work because they need the exercise and they’ve got the energy for the sex and the sex gives them even more energy. Some people get energy from sex and some people lose energy from sex. I have found that it’s too much work. But if you have the time for it, and if you need that exercise—then you should do it. But you could really save yourself a lot of trouble either way by first figuring out whether you’re an energy-getter or an energy-loser. As I said, I’m an energy-loser. But I can understand it when I see people running around trying to get some.
– I thought that young people had more problems than old people, and I hoped I could last until I was older so I wouldn’t have all those problems. Then I looked around and saw that everybody who looked young had young problems and that everybody who looked old had old problems. The “old” problems to me looked easier to take than the “young” problems. So I decided to go gray so nobody would know now old I was and I would look younger to them than how old they thought I was. I would gain a lot by going gray: (1) I would have old problems, which were easier to take than young problems, (2) everyone would be impressed by how young I looked, and (3) I would be relieved of the responsibility of acting young—I could occasionally lapse into eccentricity or senility and no one would think anything of it because of my gray hair. When you’ve got gray hair, every move you make seems “young” and “spry,” instead of just being normally active. It’s like you’re getting a new talent. So I dyed my hair gray when I was about twenty-three or twenty-four.
– 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 Truth or Consequences, or a scarier version of The Exorcist. You can get just as revolted as they can—you can have the same nightmares. All of this is really American.
– Sometimes you’re invited to a big ball and for months you think about how glamorous and exciting it’s going to be. Then you fly to Europe and you go to the ball and when you think back on it a couple of months later what you remember is maybe the car ride to the ball, you can’t remember the ball at all. Sometimes the little times you don’t think are anything while they’re happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life. I should have been dreaming for months about the car ride to the ball and getting dressed for the car ride, and buying my ticket to Europe so I could take the car ride. Then, who knows, maybe I could have remembered the ball.
– They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
– Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, “So what.” That’s one of my favorite things to say. “So what.” “My mother didn’t love me.” So what. “My husband won’t ball me.” So what. “I’m a success but I’m still alone.” So what. I don’t know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.
– I really do live for the future, because when I’m eating a box of candy, I can’t wait to taste the last piece. I don’t even taste any of the other pieces, I just want to finish and throw the box away and not have to have it on my mind any more. I would rather either have it now or know I’ll never have it so I don’t have to think about it. That’s why some days I wish I were very very old-looking so I wouldn’t have to think about getting old-looking.
– I don’t believe in it, because you’re not around to know that it’s happened. I can’t say anything about it because I’m not prepared for it.
– I really believe in empty spaces, although, as an artist, I make a lot of junk. Empty space is never-wasted space. Wasted space is any space that has art in it. An artist is somebody 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.
– When I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. I always want the space to reappear, to make a comeback, because it’s lost space when there’s something in it. If I see a chair in a beautiful space, no matter how beautiful the chair is, it can never be as beautiful to me as the plain space.
Free countries are great, because you can actually sit in somebody else’s space for a while and pretend you’re a part of it. You can sit in the Plaza Hotel and you don’t even have to live there. You can just sit and watch the people go by.
Andy Warhol; biography facts in American Pop art and music studio ‘The Factory’
Warhol had chorea, the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever and causes skin pigmentation blotchiness. He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became an outcast at school and bonded with his mother. At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences.
Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements. He began exhibiting his work during the 1950s. He held exhibitions in New York City and his first one-man art-gallery exhibition in California was in 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. Andy Warhol’s first New York solo pop art exhibition was hosted at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in 1962; the exhibitition included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills.
During the 1960s Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell’s Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded “The Factory,” his studio during these years, and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. He began producing prints. As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining – and controversial – aspect of his working methods throughout his career; in the 1960s, however, this was particularly true. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with producing silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at “The Factory.
The 1970s were a much quieter decade, as Warhol became more entrepreneurial. According to Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions– including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, and Brigitte Bardot. Warhol’s famous portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was created in 1973.
Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the “bull market” of ’80s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi. During this time Warhol created the Michael Jackson painting signifying his success attributed to his best-selling album Thriller. By this period, Warhol was being criticized for becoming merely a “business artist”. In 1979, reviewers disliked his exhibits of portraits of 1970s personalities and celebrities, calling them superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the significance of the subjects. Other critics however have come to view Warhol’s superficiality and commerciality as a brilliant mirror of the Zeitgeist of American culture in the 1970s.
Andy Warhol – art links for his biography facts of American life in Pop Art painting; The Factory
* biography facts about Andy Warhol and his famous project ‘The Factory’, on Wikipedia
*
