"It’s rare that you see images of Civil Rights leaders, or people subject to opposition, presented in a way of leisure and relaxation. If you are a revolutionary, you have to regenerate your energy. There is nothing wrong with that.”
"Take his series of crying girls. I think Roy was always very angry with Isabel. So occasionally, in his paintings, I think that he revealed something of himself."
“I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.”
“What’s the exact nature of the connection between Warhol’s making a portrait of Lenin in the 1970s and his memories of banners bearing Lenin’s image during Communist demonstrations in Pittsburgh in the 1930–1940s?”
"His large silkscreen paintings of popular culture [show] a creative individual steeped in contemporary glamour, his work expressive of the shock and awe of fame, or those in close proximity to its glare and grit.”
“At school pickup I watched the passing shoppers through the car windscreen as if it was a river or a movie and realized that right here was an endless supply of models, a huge catalog of various possible statues.”
“I’m just so freaked out because of the kids—they’re so innocent and pure and what the f–k is going to be there for them? Sorry, there’s no animals, they’re all extinct.”
"We will work on a piece until every color is correct, every line is crisp, until we deem it a success. Each painting is a complete 50/50 collaboration.”
Environment and Evolution is an amalgamation of the collective consciousness during this time. The convergence of the past and present of art, science, and human history.
"It's art about art about art ... It shows the whole century in art and all the exchanges between figurative and abstract, which is a good thing to see when you enter this museum."
“Most portraits deal with the artist’s interpretation on what the person is and I wanted to deal with appearance. It takes all my energy to get the appearance right. And what the inner life of the person is something I’m absolutely not interested in.”
"If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”
Warhol's Cowboys and Indians juxtaposes images of pop culture’s mythic West with Warhol’s interpretations of 19th century history, all in his signature style.
“The vernacular of his art was so appealing, with a quality of entertainment. But it was also a tremendous, beautiful response to the activism of the time… the really unusual thing about Keith is that he felt he could be of service.”
“These works suggest that the artist has seen too many glossy magazine spreads featuring the overdecorated homes of art collectors and is now taking revenge.”
“He is surely the only artist working with both Dior and Cookie Monster,” Ted Loos wrote inThe New York Times. “His KAWS x Sesame Street collection debuted at Uniqlo in the fall.”
In his scrapbooks, he often silkscreened or glued pictures of lips. In Warhol’s numerous portraits of iconic women, he often depicts their lips with bright colors so that they pop off the page.
