The Andy Warhol Museum: Reflections of the Contemporary American Soul
This week I visited the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. It would be fairly easy to make a case that Warhol was one of the the most important artists of the 20th century. He’s certainly one of the most well-known and worthy of being mentioned in the company of Picasso, Dali and Duchamp. Like Picasso and Dali, he was prolific. Like Duchamp, he was ground-breaking.
And like each of these giants, he is not easily understood.
Nearly everyone can recite Warhol’s observation about “15 minutes of fame.” Here are a handful of quotes that reveal a little more about this master of illusions, whose real self seems to have been hidden in plain sight.
“A lot of people thought it was me everyone at the ‘Factory’ was hanging around, that I was some kind of big attraction that everyone came to see, but that’s absolutely backward: it was me who was hanging around everyone else. I just paid the rent, and the crowds came simply because the door was open. People weren’t particularly interested in seeing me; they were interested in seeing each other. They came to see who came.”
— Andy Warhol
