Andy Warhol on Art

"In my art work, hand painting would take much too long and anyway that's not the age we're living in."

"In: POPism ; as quoted in Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements , selected by Neil Printz, as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467"

"I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me."

"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 . 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."

"I think of myself as an American artist: I like it here.. .I feel I represent the U.S. in my art but I'm not a social critic. I just paint those things in my paintings because those things are the things I know best. I'm not trying to criticize the U.S. in any way, not trying to show up any ugliness at all. I'm just a pure artist, I guess. But I can't say if I take myself seriously as an artist. I just hadn't thought about it. I don't know how they consider me in print, though."

"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."

"The Pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second – comics, picnic tables, men's trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles – all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all."

"I guess it was the big plane crash picture , the front page of a newspaper: '129 DIED'. I was also painting the Marilyns I realized that everything I was doing must have been Death. It was Christmas or Labor Day - a holiday - and very 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."

"I started those . 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."