The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Happy World Book Day! :D

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote about what I read. I’m not that much a bookworm but I love books. I also love strolling around bookstores and I take book shopping as a guiltless therapy. However, today I’m going to tell a bit about one of my 5-stars-personally-rated books which I didn’t buy in bookstore.

‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol‘ by Andy Warhol.

I’m a fan of Andy Warhol and his pop art. I knew he wasn’t only painting but also directing, BUT I didn’t know that he wrote great stuff. I found this book at Museum of Contemporary Art museum shop in Sydney. It was the only copy left on display. Honestly, I had never seen it before I bought it, even after that. I just think that universe wanted me to have it, so it happened.

‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol’ was firstly published in 1975 and firstly published by Penguin Books in 2007. It consists of 15 chapters: Love (Puberty), Love (Prime), Love (Senility), Beauty, Fame, Work, Time, Death, Economics, Atmosphere, Success, Art, Titles, The Tingle, and Underwear Power. The first 10 chapters are Warhol’s random thoughts written in short paragraphs making them just like blog posts compiled into such enjoyable book. Last 5 chapters are more like short stories but the 14th chapters 27 pages of phone conversation with B and almost only B blabbering. Still, it’s Warhol!

Yes, it’s Warhol and this book gave me his eccentric point of view of seeing life. I used to think that artists are all crazy and they wouldn’t make any sense. In fact, after reading this book I realized that I had quite a lot of stuff in common with Warhol. Every time I found an interesting stuff, I made a little dog ear on that page. I ended up making a lot of dog ears. Even worse, sometimes both side of the page are evenly awesome they got me confused: which side the dog ear should go to. :p

Well, here are some of my favorite lines (I re-type them manually, sorry if there’s any mistype):

“I’m always trying to figure out whether if a woman is funny, she can still be beautiful. There are some very attractive comediennes, but if you had to choose between calling them beautiful and calling them funny, you’d call them funny. Sometimes I think that extreme beauty must be absolutely humorless. But then I think of Marilyn Monroe and she had the best funny lines. She might have been a lot of fun if she’d found the right comedy niche. We might be laughing at skits on “The Marilyn Monroe Show” today.” (On Beauty)

“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 the 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.” (On Fame)

“When I’m working on a business project, I expect bad things to happen all the time. I always expect bad things to happen all the time. I always expect deals to fall through in the biggest, worst way possible. I guess I shouldn’t worry, though. If something’s going to happen for you, it will, you can’t make it happen. And it never does happen until you’re past the point where you care whether it happens or not. An actress friend told me that after she didn’t want money any more and after she didn’t want jewels any more, that’s when she got money and jewels. I guess it’s for our own good that it always happens that way, because after you stop wanting things is when having them won’t make you go crazy. After you stop wanting them is when you can handle having them. Or before. But never during. If you get things when you really want them, you go crazy. Everything becomes distorted when something you really want is sitting in your lap.” (On Work)

“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 can 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 the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. …” (On Work)

“Some people say Paris is more esthetic than New York. Well, in New York you don’t have time to have an esthetic because it takes half the day to go downtown and half the day to go uptown.” (On Time)

“…I guess I’m not an air person, but I’m on an air schedule, so I have to live an air life. I’m embarrassed that I don’t like to fly because I love to be modern, but I compensate by loving airports and airplanes so much.” (On Atmosphere)

“The best atmosphere I can think of is film, because it’s three-dimensional physically and two-dimensional emotionally.” (On Atmosphere)

“Everybody has problem, but the thing is to not make a problem about your Problem. For example, if you have no money and you worry about it all the time, you’ll get an ulcer and have real problem and you still won’t have any money because people sense when you’re desperate and nobody wants anything to do with a desperate person. …” (On Titles)