Warhol's life as art maneuver, or for that matter Boty's, can sound a bit like Duchamp's move with his urinal, taking non art and declaring it art. But there is one crucial difference. Warhol wasn't just declaring his persona to be a work of art by fiat. He was actually trying to turn it into one in the traditional modernist sense that he wanted it to be intriguing, strange, and unlike any other persona that was out there.
— Blake Gopnik, Warhol
In a rare moment of public self awareness, Warhol had once told the playwright Ronald Tavel that he couldn't allow himself camera movements of any kind because his contribution to film history was the static camera.
— Blake Gopnik, Warhol
What do you think this image is communicating?
New York Times "PIcture Prompts" article subheading
She said I'd found something.
— Paul Ramunni on deciding to stay in CT and open the New England Accordion Connection and Museum Company (probably paraphrased)
As you are now
So once was I
— Epitaph on grave of Zeruiah H Slebbins, who died March 7, 1787 aged 25 years
I hope it's born with eyes.
— E*
Artistic.
— Lily on the sand
Subway introduced its new deal, the $6 6-inch sandwich, a significant decrease in value from the previous $5 Footlong promotion.
— @starworldlab
When you paint every day, all year long, then the subject is essentially the act of working.
— Jim Dine via @hyperallergic
To be incoherent means to be free from what you were doing before, to be free from yourself.
— Gaetano Pesce, Pin-Up via @pinupmagazine
In pop's earliest days Roy Lichtenstein, often billed as the movements most sober member, was busy defending its funny side, "A lot of people get upset if they find something which they think is supposed to be humorous in art. They think it's supposed to be a joke on them instead of with them"
— Blake Gopnik, Warhol
Throughout his career Warhol almost always threw bones like this to insiders who always loved to play spot the precedent.
— Blake Gopnik, Warhol
De Antonio who was there to witness Warhol's effort, recognized the courage it took. "As soon as you say "commercial art" it's simply judged "oh what a nice drawing" and it passes, or "does it sell shoes?" And then it passes. But to put "art" up for real, then you're being judged. Your ego is on the line in a very hard way." Warhol's challenge, and he knew it, was to step up and make works that truly mattered and that were recognized by others as mattering.
— Blake Gopnik, Warhol
To Farley, creativity has always been a volume business.
— Brett Martin, "Why Did This Guy Put a Song About Me on Spotify?," The New York Times Magazine
Even two decades later, the noted film critic Jonas Mekas was still arguing for the idea that “there is no art, that everything is craft.”
— Blake Gopnik, Warhol
But, you know, for a woman. She has the baby. And then she has that connection, right? For a guy it's so abstract.
— Dougie, "Green Queen," The Curse
If you really want to separate your work from everyone else's, every time you come to a Y in the road, don't think about which way to go; automatically take the toughest route.
— Richard Serra via @irwinadam
It has been moving so quickly that the only record is airplane tickets and articles in magazines from the various trips and exhibitions, someday I suppose these will constitute my biography. Now I regret that I didn't continue to write constantly.
— Keith Haring, June 7, 1986 journal entry via Brad Gooch, Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring
He was also starting to worry about the mortality of his materials, and so, of his legacy.
— Brad Gooch, Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring
The world will, however, go on without me being there to see it, it just won't be "my" world then. That is what interests me most about the situation that I am in now. I am making things in the world that won't go away when I do. If this "success" had not happened, then maybe the world would not know these things after I go away. But now ! know, as I am making these things, that they are "real" things, maybe more "real" than me, because they will stay here when I go.
— Keith Haring, 24th birthday journal entry via Brad Gooch, Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring