Andy Warhol quotes - page 4
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
The name [Pop] sounds so awful. Dada must have something to do with Pop. it's so funny, the names are really synonyms. Does anyone know what they're supposed to mean or have to do with, those names? Johns and Rauschenberg, Neo-Dada for all those years, and everyone calling them derivative and unable to transform the things they use, are now called progenitors of Pop. It's funny the way things change. I think John Cage has been very influential, and Merce Cunningham too, I think.... History books are being rewritten all the time.
Andy Warhol
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 every time that you turned on the radio they said something like '4 millions are going to die'. That started it. But when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have any effect.
Andy Warhol
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
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. [quote in 1963].
Andy Warhol
