Andy Warhol was the most glamorous
figure of 20th century American art born
in Pennsylvania in 1928 to check parents
he lived most of his life in New York
much about his life was eccentric he
wore a silver wig he liked to go to the
dry cleaners and stand in the corner
enjoying the smells and sounds of the
chemicals and cleaning machines
he loved airports and used to go through
airport security multiple times just
because he said he found it fascinating
and kind of inspiring Andy Warhol’s
great achievement was to develop a
generous and helpful view of two major
forces in modern society commerce and
celebrity he spent most of his life as
an international celebrity but he was
also very keen on business there are
four big ideas behind Andy Warhol’s work
which can teach us a more inspired way
of looking at the world and prompt us to
build a better society we spend too much
of our life wanting something better and
extraordinary it’s normal to feel that
the exciting things are not where we are
Andy Warhol aims to remedy this by
getting us to look again at things in
everyday life he performed his magic
most famously on soup cans putting them
on the wall and looking at them helps us
to see their beauty to notice they’re
appealing labels as strong but elegant
forms perfectly fitted to their uses in
the same spirit of redirecting our
attention Andy Warhol made a video of
during the 1960s or whole groomed a
retinue of bohemian and countercultural
eccentrics to whom he gave the title
superstars including nice Joe Dallas and
Oh Edie Sedgwick Viva ultraviolet
Hollywood lawn jockey Curtis and candy
darling Warhol understood that
celebrities have an important power they
can distribute glamour and prestige
he thought that glamour needed to be
redistributed in such a way that society
could work better for example he
suggested that the President of the
United States could use his status to
shift perceptions as he wrote if the
president would go into a public
bathroom in the Capitol and have the TV
cameras film him cleaning the toilets
and saying but why not someone’s got to
do it then that would do so much for the
morale of people who do the wonderful
job of keeping the toilets clean he
didn’t call his place in New York a
studio the prestigious term used by
artists since the Renaissance to
describe their place of work instead he
called it the factory we tend to feel
that the idea of art and the idea of a
factory don’t really mix but Warhol’s
point was that business and art actually
do very much belong together
as he wrote being good in business is
the most fascinating kind of art during
the hippie era people put down the idea
of business
they’d say money is bad and working is
bad but making money is art and working
is art and good business is the best art
the lesson of the factory is that we can
organize ourselves to produce good
things more reliably and cheaply one
example of this for Warhol was coke he
pointed out the wherever in the world
you go coke is always the same and is
always quite nice art has generally not
been able to live up to this ideal of
being good and widely distributed
artists make a few things but only a few
people ever get to own them
Warhol tried to counteract this one day
after reading that Picasso had made four
thousand masterpieces in his lifetime
we’ll set out to make 4,000 prints in
one day as it turned out it took him one
month to make 500 the lesson we can draw
from Warhol is that mass production
needs to apply beyond making prints and
other kinds of high art we need the
organizing commoditizing and branding
powers of business to reliably produce
and distribute the good things in life
like high quality child care
psychotherapy career advice and
beautiful architecture just to start the
list most art doesn’t have much of an
impact on the world but Warhol was
extremely keen on large-scale impact he
mastered many genres from drawing
painting and printing to photography
audio recording sculpture and theatre he
started a magazine designed clothes
managed a band made 60 films and had
plans to start his own TV chat show
Warhol was able to extend his work into
different channels partly because of his
populism being a populist meant that he
was unafraid to reach people where they
started the chat show is a
quintessential populist medium because
it plays – what masses of people find
funny and interesting Warhol was a
populist out of generosity he wanted to
translate the things he cared about like
sensitivity a love of glamour and
spectacle and playfulness into objects
and experiences that could touch many
many people the only pity is that he
never quite finished what he did he
could have founded his planned TV chat
show then gone on in ever broader and
broader partnerships to start a fashion
label designer hotel maybe a financial
advisory service a supermarket chain or
an airport this is the task still open
to people who had drawn to art but also
want to change the world Andy Warhol
died in 1987 when he was only 58 after
complications following routine
gallbladder surgery in a New York
Hospital he is buried at a small
Cemetery near where he was born in
Bethel Park Pennsylvania his example is
still an invitation to us to change the
world in a
mass populist way through art my name is
Andy Warhol and I just finished eating a hamburger
figure of 20th century American art born
in Pennsylvania in 1928 to check parents
he lived most of his life in New York
much about his life was eccentric he
wore a silver wig he liked to go to the
dry cleaners and stand in the corner
enjoying the smells and sounds of the
chemicals and cleaning machines
he loved airports and used to go through
airport security multiple times just
because he said he found it fascinating
and kind of inspiring Andy Warhol’s
great achievement was to develop a
generous and helpful view of two major
forces in modern society commerce and
celebrity he spent most of his life as
an international celebrity but he was
also very keen on business there are
four big ideas behind Andy Warhol’s work
which can teach us a more inspired way
of looking at the world and prompt us to
build a better society we spend too much
of our life wanting something better and
extraordinary it’s normal to feel that
the exciting things are not where we are
Andy Warhol aims to remedy this by
getting us to look again at things in
everyday life he performed his magic
most famously on soup cans putting them
on the wall and looking at them helps us
to see their beauty to notice they’re
appealing labels as strong but elegant
forms perfectly fitted to their uses in
the same spirit of redirecting our
attention Andy Warhol made a video of
during the 1960s or whole groomed a
retinue of bohemian and countercultural
eccentrics to whom he gave the title
superstars including nice Joe Dallas and
Oh Edie Sedgwick Viva ultraviolet
Hollywood lawn jockey Curtis and candy
darling Warhol understood that
celebrities have an important power they
can distribute glamour and prestige
he thought that glamour needed to be
redistributed in such a way that society
could work better for example he
suggested that the President of the
United States could use his status to
shift perceptions as he wrote if the
president would go into a public
bathroom in the Capitol and have the TV
cameras film him cleaning the toilets
and saying but why not someone’s got to
do it then that would do so much for the
morale of people who do the wonderful
job of keeping the toilets clean he
didn’t call his place in New York a
studio the prestigious term used by
artists since the Renaissance to
describe their place of work instead he
called it the factory we tend to feel
that the idea of art and the idea of a
factory don’t really mix but Warhol’s
point was that business and art actually
do very much belong together
as he wrote being good in business is
the most fascinating kind of art during
the hippie era people put down the idea
of business
they’d say money is bad and working is
bad but making money is art and working
is art and good business is the best art
the lesson of the factory is that we can
organize ourselves to produce good
things more reliably and cheaply one
example of this for Warhol was coke he
pointed out the wherever in the world
you go coke is always the same and is
always quite nice art has generally not
been able to live up to this ideal of
being good and widely distributed
artists make a few things but only a few
people ever get to own them
Warhol tried to counteract this one day
after reading that Picasso had made four
thousand masterpieces in his lifetime
we’ll set out to make 4,000 prints in
one day as it turned out it took him one
month to make 500 the lesson we can draw
from Warhol is that mass production
needs to apply beyond making prints and
other kinds of high art we need the
organizing commoditizing and branding
powers of business to reliably produce
and distribute the good things in life
like high quality child care
psychotherapy career advice and
beautiful architecture just to start the
list most art doesn’t have much of an
impact on the world but Warhol was
extremely keen on large-scale impact he
mastered many genres from drawing
painting and printing to photography
audio recording sculpture and theatre he
started a magazine designed clothes
managed a band made 60 films and had
plans to start his own TV chat show
Warhol was able to extend his work into
different channels partly because of his
populism being a populist meant that he
was unafraid to reach people where they
started the chat show is a
quintessential populist medium because
it plays – what masses of people find
funny and interesting Warhol was a
populist out of generosity he wanted to
translate the things he cared about like
sensitivity a love of glamour and
spectacle and playfulness into objects
and experiences that could touch many
many people the only pity is that he
never quite finished what he did he
could have founded his planned TV chat
show then gone on in ever broader and
broader partnerships to start a fashion
label designer hotel maybe a financial
advisory service a supermarket chain or
an airport this is the task still open
to people who had drawn to art but also
want to change the world Andy Warhol
died in 1987 when he was only 58 after
complications following routine
gallbladder surgery in a New York
Hospital he is buried at a small
Cemetery near where he was born in
Bethel Park Pennsylvania his example is
still an invitation to us to change the
world in a
mass populist way through art my name is
Andy Warhol and I just finished eating a hamburger
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