From A to B and Back Again

I know there has been a lot of hype lately around the man behind the Campbell’s soup can. I happen to be a great fan of the man in question myself and without being biased, I can honestly say that his book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, is a fantastic one to get lost in. Moving from Pop Art to Pop Philosophy, Warhol takes subjects from everyday life, subjects that have also been explored in academic philosophy, however he approaches them in a much more down to earth fashion… at least as down to earth as he can possibly get. Aristotle might turn over in his grave, but a lot of water has run under the bridge since the last time he put his pen to paper. Warhol’s point blank fashion of putting things makes even the most abstract of subjects more tangible. Throughout 241 pages you are invited to forget the way you see things and dwell in the mind of a great artist who reminds us, implicitly of course, that perhaps we over think things too much at times and doing so can be a great obstacle.

Andy Warhol on Beauty:
“Weight isn’t important the way the magazines make you think it is. I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she’s four or five hundred pounds but she doesn’t see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she’s a beauty. 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. Maybe she’s six hundred pounds, who knows. If she doesn’t care, I don’t.”