Fame

by Andy Warhol

'Good b.o means good "box office." You can smell it from a mile away'

The legendary sixties New York pop artist Andy Warhol's hilarious and insightful vignettes and aphorisms on the topics of love, fame and beauty.

Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Classics, Essays, Short Stories, Memoir, Modern Classics

56 pages, Paperback

First published February 22, 2018

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

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A person that has fascinated me for so long, basically this short book is split into three sections, givings his insight on Love, Beauty, and Fame. It's filled with pieces selected by the editors of his autobiography 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol'. It didn't appear as a standalone volume during his lifetime.

Some of his notable quotes,

"Being famous isn't really that important. If I weren't famous, I wouldn't have been shot for being Andy Warhol"

"The wrong people always look right to me. And when you've got a lot of people and they all look good, it's hard to make distinctions, the easiest thing is to pick the really bad person"

"Working for a lot of money can throw your self-image off. When I used to do shoe drawings for magazines I would count up my shoes to figure out how much I was going to get. I lived by shoe numbers"

"Nutty people are always writing to me. I always think I am on some nutty mailing list"

"When someone writes a really mean article, I always just let it go by because who are you to say it isn't the truth?"

"Some company recently was interested in buying my 'aura'. They didn't want my product. They kept saying 'we want your aura'. I never figured out what they wanted. But they were willing to pay
a lot for it"

"There are three things that always look beautiful to me: my same good pair of old shoes that don't hurt, my bedroom, and U.S. Customs on the way back home"

"A good plain look is my favourite look. If I didn't want to look bad, I would want to look plain.
That would be my next choice"

"If a person isn't generally considered beautiful, they can still be a success if they have a few jokes in their pockets. And a lot of pockets"

"Beauty doesn't have anything to do with sex. Beauty has to do with beauty and sex has to do with sex"

"Sometimes people having nervous breakdown problems can look very beautiful because they have that fragile something to the way they walk or move. They put out a mood that makes them more beautiful"

"I really don't care that much for beauties, what I really like are talkers. To me, a good talker is beautiful because talk is what I love"

"People look most kissable when they're not wearing makeup. Marilyn's lips weren't kissable, but they were very photographable"

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

"Everybody has different idea of love. One girl I know said", 'I knew he loved me when he didn't come in my mouth.'

"I believe in long engagements. The longer, the better"

"Love and sex can go together and sex and unlove can go together and love and unsex can go together. But personal love and personal sex is bad"

"I never wanted to make simply sex movies. If I had wanted to make a real sex movie I would have filmed a flower giving birth to another flower. And the best love story is just two love-birds in a cage"

[Emma Angeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warhol is for sure the kinda person you’d want to get drunk with and listen to his theories on life. I liked his ones on love, beauty and fame. he’s right tho, sometimes the anticipation of love and sex are waaaay better than the real thing. Also fame is a terrifying concept, like how do you not disassociate when the product is ‘you’?

[Nat K · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Is it any wonder I reject you first?
Fame, fame, fame, fame
Is it any wonder you are too cool to fool?
Fame (fame)
Fame, bully for you, chilly for me
Got to get a rain check on pain (pain)
Faaaame..."
- Bowie/Lennon/Alomar

Could a bite sized novella by an aritiste such as Andy Warhol be called anything but Fame?

This teeny tiny snippet gives us an insight into the mind of Andy W. on the topics of Love, Beauty , and, you guessed it, Fame.

A philosophy of, if you like on these three topics. 55.5 pages of his musings and ponderings.

Disclosure up front. I'm a huge Warhol fan. I have a few giant tomes about him, which are dear to my heart, being 21st Birthday presents (as I sure as hell couldn't afford to buy "art" books at 21). I treasure them. I love his art. I enjoy Pop Art. It's bright. It's clever. It never goes out of fashion.

Born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in 1928, morphing into Andy Warhol, he was a huge influence and partaker of the New York art scene. Who better to coin the "15 minutes of fame" phrase? (Supposedly misattributed to him...but it sounds like something he would say anyway).

Love
"There should be courses on beauty and love and sex. With love as the biggest course."

"And the best love story is just two love-birds in a cage."

"I get very nervous when I think someone is falling in love with me."

"People with pretty smiles fascinate me. You have to wonder what makes them smile so pretty."

"I don't know anybody who doesn't have a fantasy. Everybody must have a fantasy."

Beauty
"Every person has beauty at some point in their lifetime."

"Some people think it's easy for beauties, but actually it can work out a lot of different ways. If you're beautiful you might have a pea-brain."

"Every person has beauty at some point in their lifetime."

"Beauty really has to do with the way a person carries it off."

"I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images...Maybe she's six hundred pounds, who knows. If she doesn't care, I don't."

Fame
"But being famous isn't all that important. If I weren't famous, I wouldn't have been shot for being Andy Warhol. Maybe I would have been shot for being in the Army.Or maybe I would be a fat schoolteacher. How do you ever know?"

"Then after I had my picture in Time, I couldn't take my dog to the park for a week because people were pointing at me."

"I never fall apart because I never fall together."

Art, paintings, style, humour, grace, drag queens, sex, jewellery, models, complexions, cooking, media, movies, life, nature, colour, anxiety, neuroses. Anything & everything. Inane topics to the sublime.

His observations range from at times being quite childlike, yet others incredibly wise.

This has a wonderfully gossipy feel to it. Like having few too many vinos with the girls. Where you basically talk a lot. Mainly about inconsequential stuff, with the conversation getting intense, which seems terribly important, and deep and meaningful at the time. Andy is your girlfriend. This is Being John Malkovich, with Andy Warhol as your portal.

Fffffffun. Capital eff. Thank you Andy.
Thank you Penguin Modern.

I picked up this mini book recently in Canberra, attending a Jeffrey Smart exhibition at the National Gallery. What is it about bookshops in Art Galleries?

I really enjoyed reading this on this sunny, cloudy, rainy, hot, cold, sun showery Sunday.

[Rashid Saif · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate Warhol. He is the reason things like The Kardashians and Real Housewives of Alberta exist. Because of him, we have had wave after wave of pseudo-artists who produce tripe. However, there is some insight to be found in this book, which is little more than a school girl's diary. He points out many of the things which have imbued and unconsciously informed our modern culture. The strong urge for sensationalism, glorification of the mundane and grotesque, the degradation of art from ideal to commodity; all of which he considered wonderful.

One sentence from this book ought to tell you enough about Warhol's philosophy:

"The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's."

[Dannii Elle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating 2.5/5 stars.

This small volume collects together three of Warhol’s gossipy and scandalous essays. I appreciated the witty tone and the salacious focus of all three, despite some elements of this appealing to me far less than the style used to expose them. The title essay, Fame, was by far my favourite of the three.

[Ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Everybody has different idea of love. One girl I know said", 'I knew he loved me when he didn't come in my mouth.'
This is basically a collection of quotes from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. Fucking iconic?
‘’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.’’
“I believe in low light and trick mirrors.
I believe in plastic surgery.”

[Teresa Krasteva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing major. Just random thoughts put into words.
Not good thoughts either.

[katya jw · Rating 3 out of 5]

sometimes warhol uses really nice phrases and sometimes he’s just highly judgemental ??

[Sára · Rating 1 out of 5]

I woke up in a good mood, read this book, and have suddenly turned into a cynic who refuses to wear her glasses because it makes her "more similar" to others.

[cc flores · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just because someone’s famous doesn’t mean their thoughts are worth printing. Strange strange man.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

65th book of 2020.

Say what you will about Warhol. I think everything that can be said about Warhol has been said. People think he makes shit art. People say he's the reason we have reality T.V.

I'm not a huge fan of Warhol's art. Though, I'm interested in him as a 'figure'. Half the time, if the person has a facade, or a persona, I'm 100 times more interested in them. Bowie. Warhol. Prince. Kerouac. Pynchon. The myth behind people makes them more interesting, their art notwithstanding.

For that reason, I was interested to read about Warhol's perception on Love, Beauty and Fame - especially concerning he was shot, in his words for being Andy Warhol.

Firstly, the most interesting quotes, from Love:

People's fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn't have fantasies you wouldn't have problems because you'd just take whatever was there. But then you wouldn't have romance, because romance is finding your fantasy in people who don't have it. A friend of mine always says, 'Women love me for the man I'm not.'

But I'd rather laugh in bed than do it. Get under the covers and crack jokes, I guess, is the best way. 'How am I doing?' 'Fine, that was very funny.' 'Wow, you were really funny tonight.'
If I went to a lady of the night, I'd probably pay her to tell me jokes.

So today, if you see a person who looks like your teenage fantasy walking down the street, it's probably not your fantasy, but someone who had the same fantasy as you and decided instead of getting it or being it, to look like it, and so he went to the store and bought the look you both like. So forget it.

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

If I had wanted to make simply a sex movie I would have filmed a flower giving birth to another flower. And the best love story is just two love-birds in a cage.

Truman Capote told me once that certain kinds of sex are total, complete manifestations of nostalgia, and I think that's true.

On Beauty

I really don't care that much about 'Beauties'. What I really like are Talkers. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love.

And therefore I think she's a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do.

And, on Fame

But being famous isn't all that important. If I weren't famous, I wouldn't have been shot for being Andy Warhol.

When someone writes a really mean article, I always just let it go by because who are you to say it isn't the truth?

[luciana · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A great way to glance at Warhol’s outlook on life and opinions. Quick and easy read.

[Markus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cunt

[Good Books Good Friends · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une petite conversation à bâtons rompus avec Andy Warhol, on peut faire pire. :-)

[Kirsty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Andy Warhol's Fame is the forty-seventh book on the Penguin Moderns list.  I read a little book by Warhol about cats several months ago, and didn't much like it.  Whilst Fame is very different in what it set out to do, I was not much looking forward to reading it.  In this book, 'the legendary pop artist Andy Warhol's hilarious, gossipy vignettes and aphorisms on the topics of love, fame and beauty' can be found.  The pieces collected here were selected by the editors of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975).

Fame consists of three sections - 'Love (Senility)', 'Beauty', and 'Fame'.  Each section is made up of fragments of various pieces which Warhol wrote.  From the beginning, I must admit that I did not enjoy his prose style; I found it a little too matter-of-fact and bitty.  The prose also felt rather repetitive, more so due to the distinct subject groupings used here.  Some of the fragments have very little to say, and there is barely any flesh on many of his utterances; rather, there is only a kind of skeleton structure to the book.  It feels as though scores of random ideas and sentences have been jotted down in a notebook, and were not revised in any way before being published.

I found Fame rather jarring to read.  Much of the content verged on odd, and the entirety was very dated.  There is no sense that it has transferred well to the twenty-first century.  I found this collection shallow and superficial, and Warhol sometimes crosses lines.  For instance, Warhol writes: 'Sometimes people having nervous breakdown problems can look very beautiful because they have that fragile something to the way they move or walk.  They put out a mood that makes them more beautiful.'  Fame was not particularly interesting in any way to me, and it is one of a handful of Penguin Moderns which I have finished solely because it is short.

[Lea Dokter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A good reason to be famous, though, is so you can read all the big magazines and know everybody in all the stories. Page after page it's just all people you've met. I love that kind of reading experience and that's the best reason to be famous" (p. 43)
Short, insightful, and funny, though sometimes self-contradicting, Warhol's musings on love, beauty, and fame make for an interesting read. I feel like Warhol's eccentric character really shines in this text.

[indigo · Rating 2 out of 5]

read a segment of this book to tahn and they said that andy warhol “writes like a gay millennial on twitter”. do with that information what you will

[Liam O'Leary · Rating 2 out of 5]

American Psycho, anyone? Existential, bored, sexualized, and judgemental.

I don't know why nobody has a problem or confusion on why an openly gay man is writing about his standards of beauty in woman, and generally being both dismissive and critical. Why would his view matter? Why does he write as if he has an objective view on what beauty could mean for a woman, as a man who openly does not appreciate a woman's beauty? I am unclear on why that's not a major point of disconnect for readers wondering whether to take the points as genuine feeling. If they aren't genuine, and Warhol is trying to theorize beauty without feeling it, then they are ramblings only potentially interesting to a reader whose stayed away from better philosophical essays or sociology texts on gender expression, generally written by people more willing to be articulate and considerate. His confidence, his position, and his lack of eloquence make this no more than a pub ramble that I think has been forgiven more than it should for being misogynstic and cynical to the point of disinterest, only due to the fact the Warhol made famous paintings and was definitely not hitting on any women by writing this, because he was known to be gay.

Reading Andy Warhol has only made me have a better understanding of Bret Easton Ellis. This feels like Patrick Bateman. The arrogance here was too much. I'm starting to wonder whether Bret ever used Warhol's persona for his protagonists.

Will be avoiding Warhol forever as a writer from now on!

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Andy Warhol is turgid, it could be said that he is the man who invented the non-entity culture such as reality tv etc. The ability to be famous for nothing is the sad state of life today.

Unoriginal, no skill, no talent, an ideal candidate for reality tv. Andy if you were alive now you would be embraced for being talentless.

[Lucien · Rating 5 out of 5]

'i'm going to faint i'm going to faint. i know i'm going to faint. have i fainted yet? i'm going to faint.'

[Armindha Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una lectura entretenida y por ratos bastante chistosa, Andy Warhol no era ningún erudito de la literatura y honestamente no creo que tenía ese interés, este libro fácilmente es una entrada de un blog, pero bueno supongo que en los 70's directamente escribías un librito y de paso ganabas unos cuantos dólares, la recomendaría porqué el tipo tenia un perspectiva de la vida muy peculiar, muy en desacuerdo con la gran mayoría, pero muy de acuerdo con algunas ideas.

[victoria marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

so very lovely!! writings in sections of Love, Beauty, & Fame. Warhol is very complex as an human but beyond important & loved this book so much.

[Andy Adames · Rating 3 out of 5]

La verdad me imaginaba al pana mas personaje y menos pensador, la verdad, le tengo un poco de asco porque por su culpa existen las kardashian, pero le supo.

[Claudia Pagans · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5⭐️

[Emma Swennen · Rating 3 out of 5]

ik ben het niet altijd eens met hem, maar het is mooi en makkelijk geschreven

[Iris Bratton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A snapshot of Andy Warhol and his musings on love, fame and beauty.

Again, it was one of those instances where I read about a public figure that I didn't know much about. This is a short collection about Warhol's feelings when it comes to fame, love and the social norms associated with it. It's a very interesting perspective and I believe is still relevant in the art and film industry to this day.

I have to say, I found this to be surprisingly funny. Warhol talks about the irony and hypocrisy of beauty, fame and love. He also shares his own personal experiences which make for some humorous stories. Do I necessarily agree with all of his observations? No. But it definitely didn't deter me from my enjoyment of reading about them. It felt like I was sitting in a cafe while my friend Andy shared with me his miserly opinions. I may not really believe all he says, but it makes for some interesting small talk.

Just like Andy Warhol himself, this book is interesting and funny with some hard-hitting truths. I highly recommend!

[Anna Hintsyak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt great slipping into Andy Warhol's head and read his incredibly funny, bizzare and slightly ambiguous opinions on beauty, fame and love. It made me laugh out loud quite a few times.

[Rafa · Rating 1 out of 5]

if you sit down to write about love, beauty, fame, i expect you to take it seriously. this guy was more preoccupied with appearing funny than actually communicating something from within. im giving it one star not because it deserves one star, but because if at his age that’s all you have to say about these grand themes, then what the hell have you been doing? did you not feel something, think something, were you not ever moved in an important way? i wanted an effort, a trying. a striving for the stars even if it crashed. writing isn’t good if there isn’t a vulnerability hidden somewhere, and comedy without vulnerability too is just empty. (there’s no truth so there’s no power.) this book was empty, devoid of any juice that makes you go ‘oh’. you can tell a lot by someone’s writing; how they write, what they say. judging by that, this guy is one out of thousands - self-conscious to the point of unremarkableness. that’s harsh and im not proud of it, but im frustrated with all these people writing things that dont ever lead somewhere

[Holly Nicholson · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want to be depressed about how life has no meaning and every interaction we have gets exponentially meaningless as we age then you will definitely love this one! Overall Warhol has some convoluted ways of declaring what are ultimately very bland thoughts, all whilst reinforcing how great and cool he is.

[Tino · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny and pleasant book to read, not to heavy or confusing so it was great to read on holiday this year!
05/07/19