Business art. Art business. The Business Art Business.

October 29th

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. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television – you don’ feel anything.



Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television. When you’re really really involved with something, you’re usually thinking about something else. When something’s happening, you fantasize about other things. When I woke up somewhere – I didn’t it was at the hospital and that Bobby Kennedy had been shot the day after I was – I heard fantasy words about thousands of people being in St. Patrick’s Cathedral praying and carrying on., and then I heard the word “Kennedy” and that brought me back to the television world again, because then I realized, well, here I was, in pain.


So I was shot at my place of business: Andy Warhol Enterprises. At that point, in 1968, Andy Warhol Enterprises consisted of a few people who worked for me on a fairly regular basis, a lot of what you might call free-lancers who worked on specific projects, and a lot of “superstars” or “hyperstars” or whatever you can call all the people who are very talented, but whose talents are hard to define and almost impossible to market. <…> An interviewer asked me a lot of questions about how I ran my office and I tried to explain to him that I don’t really run it, it runs me. I used a lot of phrases like “bring home the bacon” so he didn’t really understand what I was talking about.


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Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called “art” or whatever it’s called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessmen or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business – they’d say, “Money is bad”, and “Working is bad,” but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Andy Warhol