Put me in a room with the biggest celebs in the game– Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Obama, the entire cast of Twilight–and I pretty much could care less. I’m not the type to get all groupied out. Never was, never will be. I just don’t believe in jocking people. However, the one and only time you ever might happen to see me lose it like an 80s tweenager at a Guns & Roses concert is if I jumped in a time machine and found myself face to face with Andy Warhol circa 1960- 1987.

The sheer volume of work he made alone is mind blowing, and don’t even get me started on dude’s seemingly never ending mountain of creative ideas. I also think his whole approach to art as business is inspiring. The idea of starving artist is so out the window with this guy’s approach. Here’s a few lessons I’ve learned from my little bit of studying Andy Warhol:

1. Have big, sky high dreams about being a successful artist.
2. Work like crazy. Even when your studio is full of hallucinating rock stars, keep working while they’re ODing in the bathroom.
3. Work more, more, more.. make tons of work.
4. Don’t worry about what people think about your work, just make what’s true for you.
5. Get art ideas from anything, anyone, & anywhere.
6. Being eccentric doesn’t seem to hurt your chances of success and may actually help (being odd isn’t exactly a strong point for me but noted).
7. People get uncomfortable when you need to grow artistically, and sometimes they don’t understand it. But someday they will, so keep working.
8. You can become very wealthy making art.
9. Make more work.
   

OK so here’s some selected Andy Warhol works. Thought I’d start with some (mostly) black & white stuff he did because I always forget that you can make great work with just 2 colors and a good idea.

I’d asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, ‘Well, what do you love most?’ That’s how I started painting money. -Andy Warhol

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

-Andy Warhol

What’s great about this country is 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.

-Andy Warhol

Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?

-Andy Warhol

I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me.

-Andy Warhol

If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, there I am. There’s nothing behind it.

-Andy Warhol

It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. Everybody has their own America, and then they have the pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.

-Andy Warhol

Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life…Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.

-Andy Warhol

Tags: Andy Warhol, Art, Cool Artist, Inspiration