“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.”
-Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol is as puzzling as Zen koan (very short, cryptic questions used by Zen masters to reveal ultimate truth of Buddhism/universe). Were his creations/quotes purely superficial as he stated, or did he hide profound meanings behind them by deceiving us? What do “meanings” mean anyway? Although Pop Art and Zen look to be at the opposite ends of aesthetic spectrum, the truth they attempted to reveal was surprisingly similar. Pop Art did it by multiplying/propagating surfaces, which Zen tried to strip off one by one. No matter what approach you take, you will end up arriving at the same place if you are in pursuit of ultimate truth: it’s nothingness. The kind of emptiness that can be the source of infinite abundance and beauty.
“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
“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.
-Andy Warhol
“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.”
-Andy Warhol
“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.”
-Andy Warhol
“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.”
-Andy Warhol
“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.”
-Andy Warhol
Were those pictures world’s first Instagram? Andy Warhol vacuuming the carpet for an installation piece. 1972.
“I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me.”
-Andy Warhol
“I’ve never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty.”
-Andy Warhol
“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. “
-Andy Warhol