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“ART IS WHAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH”

Andy Warhol (Aug 6, 1928 – Feb 22, 1987)

Campbell’s Soup Cans (32 Canvases)
Andy Warhol / 1962 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas/
/ 20″ x 16″
Museum of Modern Art

“Why do people think artists are special? It’s just another job.”
Philosophy of Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1975

“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.”

“If you want to know about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” –Andy Warhol
Andy, My true Story 3, Gretchen Berg, Los Angeles Free Press (17 March 1967)

 

Yoko, Andy, and John

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

 

“An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.”

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

“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.”

Warhol & Brillo Boxes At Stable Gallery

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

“I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.”

“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.”
Quote from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1975

“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.”
Quote from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1975

 

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”

“I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.”

“You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.”

“I’m not afraid to die; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground with Nico

Andy Warhol photographing Muhammed Ali

Warhol and Basquiat