A Life Lesson from Andy Warhol for Artists and Everyone Else
By: Taylor Moran
Tags: Lifestyle, Warhol, Andy Warhol, Art

© Tony Moussoulides

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)

These days, there is a lot of debate about what an artist is and what an artist is not. It’s an odd thing; we don’t sit around arguing about whether an architect is really an architect, or if they deserve to be called one. If you are an architect, you design. You build. The action is enough. You can build shoddy houses on shaky foundations. There is good architecture and bad architecture. But even the question of what is good or bad is contentious. If someone is truly doing what they’re meant to be doing, they’ll simply keep doing it.

In relation to art alone, it’s an encouraging thought that the act of creating itself is worth it. Warhol poses the idea that the internal world reigns supreme — forget what’s going on out there and get back to doing your thing. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like this could be applied to, well…just about everything. There are several (perhaps unintended) lessons lingering in that one statement:

Keep Your Foot on the Gas

Success isn’t everything, but it’s worth noting that some of the most well-known visionaries weren’t even recognized until after their death (Edgar Allan Poe, Galileo, Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Robert Johnson, and Bach to name a few). Just because you may not feel like you‘re hitting the mark, it doesn’t mean that what you’re doing doesn’t matter. We may strive for success our whole lives and never reach it, but this doesn’t mean the effort is fruitless. Van Gogh sold 1 painting in his lifetime, but he created over 900. What’s more astonishing, that he eventually became a famous artist or that he persisted to that degree?

Maybe you aren’t Van Gogh, but what the hell — why not take a shot anyway? It may be nice if others think well of what you’re doing, but isn’t it better to be doing something solely because you feel compelled to? No matter what it is, don’t lose heart. Keep going.

Stay True

Warhol asserts that whether something is good or bad doesn’t matter as much as the act of creating does. That alone is revolutionary; it allows us the freedom to be what we are rather than what we think we should be. The word “good” can be disastrous. If you love fixing up cars and want to be a mechanic but someone around you doesn’t think it’s a good idea, or that you aren’t good enough at it, it can stop you forever. The pressure of that can make you want to mold yourself to someone else’s standard of “good” — but we are the only ones who define that word for ourselves.

If creating is enough (and I don’t mean “create” just in terms of being an artist — it can also mean “doing,” taking steps in a direction of your choosing) then we don’t have to try to be something we’re not in order to attain recognition because recognition isn’t paramount. Many punk musicians in the 1970’s, for instance, didn’t initially know how to use their instruments. They didn’t care so much about being great at playing, but expressing themselves in a way that was honest. They wanted to play, so they did. And they learned how to be better musicians along the way.

Trust Yourself

Stay glued to that inner world and become its friend. If you don’t listen to yourself, you can’t know yourself. You can’t be attuned to the things you want or recognize them as legitimate ideas worth going after. No matter what it is you’re doing, there will be people there to judge you. They will probably have negative things to say too (when Louisa May Alcott first tried to publish Little Women, she got this response: “Stick to teaching”). If you have a strong sense of yourself, you won’t give a damn. Here, Warhol is saying: Let other people waste their time arguing about whether something has value. If I believe it has value, then it has value and it’s worth the pursuit.Whether you’re a florist or a financier, a painter or a physician, it’s important to trust your instincts and not spend so much time considering the opinions of others because they’ll only block your way.

Stay Ahead by Staying in the Now

In Warhol’s universe the critics were stuck in the past, trying to find fault in things that he’d already accomplished. He probably found it amusing that they were so concerned with questioning whether or not his work was art when he was already ten steps ahead of them, working on something else. If you keep taking action (no matter how small that action may be), you’re fully engaged in the present. And that’s a great place to be. So if there’s something, anything, that you makes you feel alive, do it now and do a lot of it. Why not?