INTERVIEW BY GLENN O’BRIEN
INTERVIEW | JUNE 1977

GLENN O’BRIEN: What was your first work of art?
ANDY WARHOL: I used to cut out paper dolls.

O’BRIEN: How old were you?
WARHOL: Seven.

O’BRIEN: Did you get good grades in art in school?
WARHOL: Yeah, I did. The teachers liked me. In grade school, they make you copy pictures from books. I think the first one was Robert Louis Stevenson.

O’BRIEN: Did they say you had natural talent?
WARHOL: Something like that. Unnatural talent.

O’BRIEN: What was your ambition? To be an illustrator or a fine artist?
WARHOL: I didn’t have any ambition.

O’BRIEN: Who was the first artist to influence you?
WARHOL: It must have been Walt Disney. I cut out Walt Disney dolls. It was actually Snow White that influenced me.

O’BRIEN: Did you go to the movies a lot?
WARHOL: Yeah, on Saturday mornings. If I took the neighbor’s baby I got to go to the movies free.

O’BRIEN: Do you think there are any great undiscovered artists?
WARHOL: Uh, yeah, there are. But it’s more important to make money now.

O’BRIEN: What advice would you give to a young person who wants to become an artist?
WARHOL: I’d just tell them not to be one. They should get into photography or television or something like that.

O’BRIEN: Do you think the art world is dead?
WARHOL: Oh, yeah. Being a wall painter or a housepainter is better. You make more money as a housepainter. Ten dollars an hour.

O’BRIEN: Who do you think is the world’s greatest living artist?
WARHOL: I still think Walt Disney is.

O’BRIEN: He’s dead.
WARHOL: I know, but they still have him in plastic, don’t they?

O’BRIEN: He’s frozen.
WARHOL: But I really like them all. Rauschenberg and Twombly and Paul Klee. Dead ones, too. And I like American primitive painters. I just like everyone, every group. Grant Wood, Ray Johnson.

O’BRIEN: Have you made millions on art?
WARHOL: It depends on the expenses.

O’BRIEN: Has your work gone up in price compared to what you made on it originally?
WARHOL: No, I try to keep it down. I turn out so much. But I stopped for a while.

O’BRIEN: To raise the prices?
WARHOL: No, I just can’t think of anything to do. I get so tired of painting. I’ve been trying to give it up all the time, if we could just make a living out of movies or the newspaper business or something. It’s so boring, painting the same picture over and over.

O’BRIEN: Where do you get your ideas for painting these days?
WARHOL: I do mostly portraits. So it’s just people’s faces, not really any ideas.

O’BRIEN: But lately you’ve done flowers and skulls.
WARHOL: We’ve been to Italy so much, and everybody’s always asking me if I’m a communist because I’ve done Mao. So now I’m doing hammers and sickles for communism, and skulls for fascism.

O’BRIEN: Did Mao ever see your portrait of him?
WARHOL: I don’t know. One of the big ones was shown in Washington at the Corcoran Gallery, and the director there told us that a delegation of Chinese was taking a tour of the place. They found out there was a big Mao hanging there, so they went in through the back door of the museum so they wouldn’t see Mao. I guess they were worried about liking it. It’s all so different for them. We invited the Chinese ambassador to the Factory, but he never came back.

O’BRIEN: Do you think Picasso was a business artist?
WARHOL: Yeah, I guess so. He knew what he was doing.

O’BRIEN: But who do you think invented the idea?
WARHOL: I think Americans after the war. It was the galleries. Somewhere along the line, someone did it with Picasso, where it started to be more of a product.

O’BRIEN: Do you think artists of the future will form companies or go public and sell stock?
WARHOL: No, but I’m opening a restaurant called the Andymat.

O’BRIEN: Do you think there are any art movements now?
WARHOL: No.

O’BRIEN: Do you ever think about politics?
WARHOL: No.

O’BRIEN: Did you ever vote?
WARHOL: I went to vote once, but I got too scared. I couldn’t decide whom to vote for.

O’BRIEN: Are you a Republican or a Democrat?
WARHOL: Neither.

O’BRIEN: What’s your favorite painting of all your work?
WARHOL: I guess the soup can.

O’BRIEN: What’s your favorite color?
WARHOL: Black.

O’BRIEN: Where did you get the idea of using photo silk screens?
WARHOL: I started when I was printing money. I had to draw it, and it came out looking too much like a drawing, so I thought, Wouldn’t it be a great idea to have it printed? Somebody said you could just put it on silk screens. So when I went down to the silk screener, I just found out that you could reproduce photographs. The man that made the screens was a really nice guy named Mr. Golden. I think the first photograph I did was a ballplayer. It was a way of showing action or something.

O’BRIEN: So once you found that process, where did you get your ideas for images?
WARHOL: Oh, just reading the magazines and picking up the ideas from there.

O’BRIEN: Did you really do the Campbell’s Soup cans because you had it for lunch every day?
WARHOL: Oh yeah, I had Campbell’s Soup every day for lunch for about 20 years. And a sandwich.

O’BRIEN: How did you get the idea to make Brillo boxes?
WARHOL: I did all the soup cans in a row on the canvas, and then I got a box made to do them on a box, and then it looked funny because it didn’t look real. I have one of the boxes here. I did the cans on the box, but it came out looking funny. I had the boxes already made up. They were brown and looked just like boxes, so I thought it would be so great to just do an ordinary box.

O’BRIEN: Did you ever hear from Campbell’s or Brillo or any of the manufacturers whose products you painted?
WARHOL: Brillo liked it, but Campbell’s Soup, they were really upset and they were going to do something about it, and then it went by so quickly I guess there really wasn’t anything they could do. But actually, when I lived in Pittsburgh, the Heinz factory was there, and I used to go visit the Heinz factory a lot. They used to give pickle pins. I should have done Heinz soup. I did the Heinz ketchup box instead.

O’BRIEN: Did you ever get drunk?
WARHOL: Yeah.

O’BRIEN: What happens when you get drunk?
WARHOL: Nothing. I tell everyone they can be on the cover of Interview.

O’BRIEN: Do you think your work will go up in value when you’re gone?
WARHOL: No. It’ll stay at the same level.

O’BRIEN: Do you think that because of women’s liberation there will be more women artists?
WARHOL: I always thought that most artists were women-you know, the ones that did the Navajo Indian rugs, American quilts, all that great hand-painting on ’40s clothes.

O’BRIEN: Do you think that people should live in outer space?
WARHOL: Oh yeah, I think that would be really great.

O’BRIEN: Would you like to live in outer space?
WARHOL: No, I really hate heights. I always like to live on the first floor.

O’BRIEN: Do you think the future will be futuristic?
WARHOL: No. I always wished it would be, but I don’t think so.

O’BRIEN: Do you like to work?
WARHOL: Nowadays I really like to work a lot. It makes time go by fast. Traveling makes time go fast, too. So maybe traveling in space will give people time. You know if you’re traveling for five years or something like that, you’re going somewhere. But five years are being used up, and you don’t have to do anything. You just sit on the plane. That might make time go really fast.

O’BRIEN: What do you like to do when you’re not working?
WARHOL: I like to work when I’m not working-do something that may not be considered work, but to me it’s work. Getting exercise by going to the grocery store.

O’BRIEN: Do you believe in the American Dream?
WARHOL: I don’t, but I think we can make some money out of it.

O’BRIEN: Are rich people different from poor people?
WARHOL: Yes and no.

O’BRIEN: Are they happier?
WARHOL: If they have a dog.

O’BRIEN: Can you take it with you?
WARHOL: Everywhere.

O’BRIEN: Do you think the world can be saved?
WARHOL: No.

O’BRIEN: Do you ever think about God?
WARHOL: No.

O’BRIEN: Do you believe in the devil?
WARHOL: No.

O’BRIEN: Do you believe in the end of the world?
WARHOL: No. I believe in As the World Turns.

O’BRIEN: Do you have any secrets you’ll tell after everyone’s dead?
WARHOL: If I die, I’m not letting on.