Beauty

by Andy Warhol

‘People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don’t look.’

From Warhol’s romantic relationships to his thoughts on interior design, these candid, highly entertaining musings - on love, sex, beauty, work and space – give an intimate glimpse into the mind of one of the most iconic figures in twentieth-century culture.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art

128 pages, Paperback

Published April 17, 2025

About the author

Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

Reviews

[Julie Vanlook]

fun note about Andy, he was buried with a bottle of perfume (Beautiful by Estée Lauder)

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes you miss New York

[Liisa Pilt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tahan kunagi ka nii lahe olla, jään igatsema neid mõtteid

[Paula Zaplana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una forma de pensar un tanto rara. Un famoso que te quiere hacer pensar que no es tan guay como parece, nye… algunas reflexiones interesantes, pero no toca de peus a terra

[Sam Barker · Rating 1 out of 5]

Classic Warhol. Pioneer of art but as a man just so so shallow. He only ever said anything if he thought it would look cool in a book 50 years later, and that’s what this is

[Max “Big Lad” McLoughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this little book because I flicked to an essay on beauty and read: “I’ve never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty. Every person has beauty at some point in their lifetime.” That jived with my own private aesthetics.

It was a fun little book, despite the fact that I don’t really know anything about Andy Warhol the artist. A meandering set of musings on a bunch of different topics from a weird dude with a (for want of a better word) idiosyncratic view on life — that’s how I’d describe the reading experience.

Sort of interesting to read alongside Oscar Wilde (whom I’m also reading concurrently): there’s a kind of theatrical celebration of artificiality in both of their works.

[Albin Carlsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ovanligt för en så bra konstnär att faktiskt också ha så kloka saker att säga. Denna lilla boken är som en Aurelius Mediations fast för den moderne människan. Riktigt effortlessly rolig kille dessutom. Begripligt att han var så populär. Jag samlade en serie aforismer som jag tyckte var väl värda att ha sparade och nära till hands:


Truman Capote told me once that certain kinds of sex are total, complete manifestations of nostalgia, and I think that's true. Other kinds of sex have nostalgia in varying degrees, from a little to a lot, but I think it's safe to say that most sex involves some form of nostalgia for something.
Sex is nostalgia for when you used to want it,
Sex is nostalgia for sex.

With everything changing so fast, you don't have a chance of finding your fantasy image intact by the time you're ready for it. What about all the little boys who used to have fantasies about girls in beautiful lace bras and silk slips? They don't have a chance of finding what they'd always looked forward to, unless the girl had just made a trip to the local thrift shop, and that's worse than nothing.

Among other things, drag queens are living testimony to the way women used to want to be, the way some people still want them to be, and the way some women still actually want to be. Drags are ambulatory archives of ideal moviestar womanhood. They perform a documentary service, usually consecrating their lives to keeping the glittering alternative alive and available for (not-too-close) inspection.
[…]
When they took the movie stars and stuck them in the kitchen, they weren't stars any more - they were just like you and me. Drag queens are reminders that some stars still aren't just like you and me.

In Women in Revolt, Jackie Curtis ad-libbed one of the best lines of disillusionment with sex when he-as-she, portraying a virgin schoolteacher from Bayonne, New Jersey, was forced to give oral gratification – a blow-job- to Mr America. After gagging and somehow finishing up, poor Jackie can't figure out if she's had sex or not – 'This can't be what millions of girls commit suicide over when their boyfriends leave them.....' Jackie was acting out the hard puzzled thoughts so many people have when they realize that sex is hard work just like everything else.

When I did my self-portrait, I left all the pimples out because you always should. Pimples are a temporary condition and they don't have anything to do with what you really look like. Always omit the blemishes - they're not part of the good picture you want.

Even beauties can be unattractive. If you catch a beauty in the wrong light at the right time, forget it.
I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.
I believe in plastic surgery.

If people want to spend their whole lives creaming and tweezing and brushing and tilting and gluing, that's really okay too, because it gives them something to do.

Some of the very beautiful film stars of the past decades have aged beautifully and some have aged not-so- beautifully, and sometimes you see two stars together today who were once beautiful together in the same movie a long time ago, and now one of them looks and acts like an old woman and the other still looks and acts like a girl. But all of that doesn't matter very much, I think, because history will remember each person only for their beautiful moments on film - the rest is off-the-record.

Everybody's sense of beauty is different from every body else's. When I see people dressed in hideous clothes that look all wrong on them, I try to imagine the moment when they were buying them and thought, 'This is great. I like it. I'll take it.' You can't imagine what went off in their heads to make them buy those maroon polyester waffle-iron pants or that acrylic halter top that has 'Miami' written in glitter. You wonder what they rejected as not beautiful - an acrylic halter top that had 'Chicago'?

I’ve always thought that the President could do so much here to help change images. If the President would go into a public bathroom in the Capitol, and have the TV cameras film him cleaning the toilets and saying 'Why not? Somebody's got to do it!' then that would do so much for the morale of the people who do the wonderful job of keeping the toilets clean. I mean, it is a wonderful thing that they're doing.

I really do live for the future, because when I'm eating a box of candy, I can't wait to taste the last piece. I don't even taste any of the other pieces, I just want to finish and throw the box away and not have to have it on my mind any more.
I would rather either have it now or know I'll never have it so I don't have to think about it.
That's why some days I wish I were very very old-looking so I wouldn't have to think about getting old-looking.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. […] when Queen Elizabeth came here and President Eisenhower bought her a hot dog I'm sure he felt confident that she couldn't have had delivered to Buckingham Palace a better hot dog than that one he bought her for maybe twenty cents at the ballpark. Because there is no better hot dog than a ballpark hot dog. Not for a dollar, not for ten dollars, not for a hundred thousand dollars could she get a better hot dog. She could get one for twenty cents and so could anybody else.

I'm a city boy. In the big cities they've set it up so you can go to a park and be in a miniature countryside, but in the countryside they don't have any patches of big city, so I get very homesick.
Another reason I like the city better than the coun- try is that in the city everything is geared to working, and in the country everything is geared to relaxation. I like working better than relaxing. In the city, even the trees in the parks work hard because the number of people they have to make oxygen and chlorophyll for is staggering. If you lived in Canada you might have a million trees making oxygen for you alone, so each of those trees isn't working that hard. Whereas a tree in a treepot in Times Square has to make oxygen for a million people. In New York you really do have to hustle, and the trees know this, too - just look at them.

Usually people are very tired when they ride on a subway, so they can't sing and dance, but I think if they could sing and dance on a subway, they'd really enjoy it.
The kids who spray graffiti all over the subway cars at night have learned how to recycle city space very well. They go back into the subway yards in the middle of the night when the cars are empty and that's when they do their singing and their dancing on the subway. The subways are like palaces at night with all that space just for you.

[Jayda Van der ven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ik ben het niet eens met heel veel van de dingen die Andy Warhol hier zegt.

[Paola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gusta mucho y me parece muy Warhol, me gusta mucho como solo tiene opiniones y las puso en un libro, es lo más arte pop que puede seguir haciendo.

[Rosa]

he was so right

[Tristan de Haas · Rating 4 out of 5]

"An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.
Business Art is a much better thing to be making than Art Art, because Art Art doesn't support the space it takes up, whereas Businesses Art does. (If Business Art doesn't support its own space it goed out-of-businness.)"

Dit boek bestaat slechts uit een aantal hoofdstukken uit zijn autobiografie gekopieerd...

[Freya Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Andy’s musings on Love, Beauty, Time, Atmosphere ❤️ this book is a a little window into his viewpoints.

[josipa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is just a curation of Warhol's thoughts on love, beauty, work, time and atmosphere (which are also the chapter titles in the book).

He was such a kook, a very chaotic and superficial and shallow person (which he acknowledges himself a couple of times throughout the book - at least he was self-aware). However crazy and unrelatable at times, his opinions are still interesting and entertaining to read. Among a sea of diabolical ones, he did have a couple of really nice thoughts that were way ahead of his time, and some I could 100% agree with.

[Georgia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Archive #4

Swallowed this whole in a single sitting on my 1 hour journey back from my office job.
I didn’t know much about Andy Warhol going into this book apart from the fact that he did paintings of soup cans. After having read this book I now know a great many things about him. He had a general ambivalence towards sex and love. He thought about pimples a lot. He liked the city and disliked the countryside. When he grew up he fantasised about getting to eat lots of candy, and when he became famous that is exactly what he did. He liked talking on the telephone. He preferred to make business-art rather than art-art. When he went on dates he would bring his whole office with him.
And things like that and so on and so forth.
That is all there is to this book.
It was written like he was talking to me and so even though I wouldn’t say there was much literary merit to this book I found it endearing and I came out of the experience feeling quite amused.
In fact I just had to go back and change the tense of the new things I learnt about him from present to past. I forgot he is in fact dead. This book was very vibrant in that way.

[Antonio Martín · Rating 4 out of 5]

Como fan de Andy Warhol, este libro me encantó. Beauty es una recopilación de pensamientos que ofrece una mirada íntima al mundo interior de uno de los artistas más icónicos del siglo XX. Leer sus reflexiones me pareció fascinante, no solo por el contenido, sino porque revela cuán adelantado estaba Warhol a su época.

Aunque el libro fue publicado en 2007, muchos de estos fragmentos provienen de los años 70, una época en la que Warhol ya reflexionaba sobre temas como el amor, el tiempo, el dinero, el arte y la fama con una claridad que resuena incluso hoy. Me impactó especialmente su manera de hablar del amor: distante, pragmática y a la vez profundamente humana. También reflexiona sobre el tiempo, algo que parece obsesionarlo, casi como una moneda de cambio para la belleza, la productividad o la vida misma.

Uno de mis capítulos favoritos fue “Work”. Aunque Warhol es famoso por su arte y su imagen excéntrica, este apartado muestra su enfoque casi empresarial hacia la vida. Para él, hacer dinero era una forma de arte. Esta mentalidad me parece admirable y, personalmente, me identifico mucho con ella. Su capacidad para combinar creatividad con una ética de trabajo implacable es inspiradora.

Andy Warhol fue un artista, cineasta y figura clave del movimiento pop art. Nació en Pittsburgh, de padres inmigrantes eslovacos, y se trasladó a Nueva York, donde revolucionó el arte contemporáneo. Famoso por obras como las latas de sopa Campbell y los retratos de Marilyn Monroe, también incursionó en el cine, la música y la moda, y fundó su legendario estudio The Factory, que se convirtió en un epicentro de creatividad y contracultura.

Durante los años 70, cuando Warhol escribió muchos de los pensamientos recopilados en este libro, el mundo vivía un cambio cultural profundo: el fin del idealismo de los 60, la llegada de una época más cínica y comercial, el auge de la televisión, el culto a la celebridad y el inicio del consumismo moderno. Warhol no solo fue testigo de esto: lo anticipó y lo convirtió en arte.

En ese sentido, Beauty no es solo un libro sobre belleza. Es un espejo de Warhol, del mundo que lo rodeaba, y de lo que él ya veía venir: un tiempo donde la fama, la imagen y el dinero serían más poderosos que nunca.

[Michelle Lyons · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is basically what I expected a book by Andy Warhol to be like. It's simply Warhol talking in a very conversational manner, telling the reader his observations on life and art.

I understand this is actually a cut-down version of a book called "The Philosophy Of Andy Warhol" from 1975, though this isn't noted anywhere on the cover. (Only the copyright notice mentions it, and it calls this a "selection".)

There's a lot of quotes in this you may have very well read before. There are passages that are very charming and amusing, and others that really pissed me off. ("Business Art"!? NO, ANDY! BAD ANDY!)

In any case, I was pleased to find where that one quote on "New Art Riot" by the Manic Street Preachers came from: "A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the street is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

There is a fair bit of repetition, presumably as the material from this was most likely transcribed from interviews and he forgot he'd already mentioned something. He usually rephrases things and sometimes adds an extra little point to whatever he's talking about, but it is a small issue. To be honest Warhol never struck me as someone who would sit down and properly write a book, and he had form for this kind of thing (see his "novel" from the early 60s, which gets a mention in this).

One aspect about Warhol that does come across quite clearly is how oddly hapless and comedy-character-like he could be. All the stuff about being wrongly impressed by bad typists, the bit where he falls into a tree, being accidentally outsmarted by noted Coca-Cola drinker Liz Taylor, and the whole "sanding down my nose" anecdote.

Finally, the section where he covers "Women In Revolt" made me sad, as did his comments on gender in general, although blankly ignorant transphobia was another thing I was expecting.

...Actually, I expect it in a lot of things.

[Weneedtotalkaboutbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

💬 “I am a deeply superficial person.”

Beauty, part of Penguin’s Archive series, offers a curated selection of Warhol’s musings: witty, provocative, and often disarmingly candid. Reads like snapshots from several interviews. Though slight in volume, this collection distills the essence of Warhol’s public persona, so expect to love it or hate it.

Thematically, the book dances between love, desire, appearance, consumerism, and identity. Warhol’s reflections are rarely linear or deeply explored; rather, they arrive like aphorisms. It’s not deep, and that’s kind of the point. Warhol embraces the surface, plays with ideas of fame, love, and art in a way that’s both aloof and vulnerable.

Stylistically, the book reads like a string of overheard confessions: self-conscious, and unsurprisingly performative. Warhol understood image as substance, and Beauty is less about offering answers than about framing perception itself as art.

💬 “Art is anything you can get away with.”

Ultimately, like much of Warhol’s work, what you see in it depends on what you bring to it.

Read this if you like aphorisms, want a glimpse into the pop mind, or need a palette cleanser between heavier reads.

3/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[mara soare · Rating 2 out of 5]

i feel very conflicted writing this review but i have a few thoughts:
1. he doesn't really explain what he means, he just says stuff which can get really frustrating at times
2. i felt like some thoughts didn't have any finality (like the ''tub girls'' one)
3. not gonna lie some of the things were so evident: ''people who like each other start to look like each other because they eat the same food''.... duuuh!!?? and also what???
Anyways, I give this book a 2/5 because i quite enjoyed the late night read and the structure of thoughts that have no connection to each other being just written down on a page.

[Chuer · Rating 3 out of 5]

picked up this quick read in a quaint bookshop in Kuala Lumpur

Entertaining musings on sex and space. Not particularly thought-provoking but his writings on empty space and the role of the artists gave me a better understanding of modern art, Why a Blank Wall is Also Art, & his idea of Business Art.

"An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.
Business Art is a much better thing to be making than Art Art, because Art Art doesn't support the space it takes up, whereas Businesses Art does. (If Business Art doesn't support its own space it goes out-of-business.)"

[Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

do i agree with everything that warhol says? no

do i love reading his meandering musings on random crap? yes

it's clear warhols brain is just... chaotic and i relate to that a little too much.


Notes to self: see full notes in Obsidian. my enjoyment of this book was definitely linked to its brevity. unlikely to read the full works 'the philosophy of andy warhol', or at least not any time soon.

[Juliette Imbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining if you want an easy read of random thoughts - he asks some very funny & creative questions, but for some passages I just could not understand where his opinion was coming from

The tone is friendly but not really endearing, there’s a distance and occasional sense of superiority that I didn’t like

[Darla B · Rating 4 out of 5]

He has a lot to say about a lot. Haha. Took photos of many quotes cos they were just too good. And many, I resonated with— “I always run into strong women who are looking for weak men to dominate them.” Maybe I’m one of these women.

[savannah]

a collection of anecdotes that precisely sums up most of warhol's personal philosophies. it was a quick and insightful read, I pulled a lot of quotes that resonated and found the bits I disagreed with still fascinating

[Tomi Kaukinen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Warhol created some fascinating art. But, as a writer, he is utterly talentless. I am at times cringing at his banal observations but still give it 3 stars because it gave me this insight about him.

[Laima · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The most exciting thing is not doing it. If you fall in love with someone, never do it, it’s much more exciting.”

Reading the book felt like having a good conversation with Andy himself: brief, yet deeply intimate and thought provoking. Now curious when our paths will cross next.

[Henry Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the short burst of writing, but he does say some daft things. And some interesting things too. I think he would have liked the internet and mobile phones. I can see him writing blogs and having a YouTube channel.

[Rose :) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to read and quite enjoyable, it only took me ages because I got busy with other stuff, it’s sort of something light I’d just pick up and read for a bit if I had nothing else to do. It was interesting but I found a lot of his opinions I couldn’t relate to and were poorly explained.

[Asia · Rating 4 out of 5]

he was so real for this

[Aimee Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous glimpse into the mind that has so much to say!
The execution of his thoughts on the page read like near brutal slaps of reality and leave you questioning how a man who died in the 80s perfectly personifies the anxiety of the social media age.

At times the anecdotes/ vignettes are delivered with a dry humour that takes a second read to uncover an underlying vulnerability. For a persona so well masked he does well in this mere 100 pages of consciousness to allow the reader into the intimate and genuine space of Andy Warhol.

[Fiona]

went through the motions of the start of a warhol hole last year but immediately pivoted to basquiat (my beloved) so trying this once again and I really enjoyed it