Painters From The United States

"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."

"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."

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

"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 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. w:Jane Wyatt and Robert Young. w:Nick and Nora Charles, Ethel and Fred Mertz, Dagwood and Blondie."

"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."

"During the 60's, 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 '60's I never thought in terms of "love" again."

"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."

"It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, "In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.""

"I can never get over when you're on the beach how beautiful the sand looks and the water washes it away and straightens it up and the trees and the grass all look great. I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own."

"Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job."

"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]"

"(You wouldn't believe the number of people who hang the electric chair painting in the homes, especially if the colour of the canvas matches the curtains.)"

"(You wouldn't believe how many people will hang a picture of an electric chair in their room – especially if the color of the picture matches the curtains.)"

"(You wouldn't believe how many people will hang up a picture of an electric chair? especially if it matches the color of their curtains.)"

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

"You'd be surprised how many people want to hang an electric chair on their living-room wall. Specially if the background color matches the drapes."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We went to see Dr No [first James Bond film, 1962] at Fort-Second Street. It's a fantastic movie, so cool. We walked outside and somebody threw a cherry bomb right in front of us, in this big crowd. And there was blood. I saw blood on people and all over. I felt like I was bleeding all over. I saw in the paper last week that there are more people throwing them - it's just part of the scene - and hurting people. My show in Paris is to be called Death in America. I'll show the Electric-chair pictures and the Dogs in Birmingham and car wrecks and some suicide pictures."

"If an artist can't do anymore, then he should just quit; and an artist ought to be able to change his style without feeling bad. I heard that Lichtenstein said he might not be painting comic strips a year of two from now [1963]. I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that's what's going to happen; that's going to be the whole new scene."

"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."

"Scripts bore me. It's much more exciting not to know what's going to happen. I don't think that plot is important. If you see a movie of two people talking, you can watch it over and over again without being bored. You get involved – you miss things – you come back to it ... But you can't see the same movie over again if it has a plot because you already know the ending ... Everyone is rich. Everyone is interesting. Years ago, people used to sit looking out of their windows at the street. Or on a park bench. They would stay for hours without being bored although nothing much was going on. This is my favorite theme in movie making – just watching something happening for two hours or so ... I still think it's nice to care about people. And Hollywood movies are uncaring. We're pop people. We took a tour of Universal Studios in Los Angeles and, inside and outside the place, it was very difficult to tell what was real. They're not-real people trying to say something. And we're real people not trying to say anything. I just like everybody and I believe in everything."

"Pelé is one of the few who contradicted my theory [...] Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries."

":: In fifteen minutes, everyone will be famous."

":: In the future, fifteen people will be famous."

":: In the future everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame"

":: In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes."