I came across this Andy Warhol statement the other day and have been niggling at it ever since. ‘An artist is a person who produces something we don’t need to have.’
The thing is, all I know about Warhol has been picked up incidentally, because I’ve seen dramas where he was either a main or secondary character. This means my version of him has been created from a series of fictions, plus my scanty knowledge of his most famous pictures, and I can’t work him out. Maybe I don’t need to.
Perhaps all I need to do is decide how I feel about his pictures. Except he said we don’t need to have them – any of them. Maybe that was a joke. How else do you explain a man who made a great deal of money from his art, and influenced a huge number of people in more than one branch of artistry, saying we don’t need to have it?
If we don’t need to have art, in any form, why do we seek it out? According to Aristotle, I read the same seven stories, over and over. I can’t quarrel with that.
I’m frequently aware that I’m reading yet another re-working of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella or some other archetypal narrative. Sometimes the stories are barely disguised. Still, I read them, even re-read them. I truly believe that I need them. What would I do if they didn’t exist? Perhaps I’d invent a story. If I didn’t, I’m sure someone else would.
Most of us like things we don’t need to have. Once we’ve accumulated all the goods we need, we don’t usually stop acquiring. I’ve met several minimalists, and what I’ve wondered about hasn’t been their abstinence, rather it’s their ability to discard.
Had you asked me to guess where that quote came from, my first suggestion would have been Groucho Marx. Except Groucho would surely have capped it off with a neat piece of lateral observation. Maybe that’s what I need for this, some kind of conclusion, and really who better to find the kind of sense I best understand, than Groucho?
Well Art is Art, isn’t it? Still on the other hand east is east and west is west, and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now tell me what you know.

We don’t need, like food or water or shelter…but we choose because we want most of all to add something to our lives. xxx
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Yes, to have the freedom to choose something that can enhance our lives – and most of us so rarely think about it.
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I can understand how that quote stuck. I agree and I disagree. Yes, we can survive without art and artists. We can “live” without a lot of things, like education, books, and electricity. But humans are by nature creative and imaginative, and to suggest that those qualities aren’t essential to who we are is cynical, or at least, tongue in cheek. There, my two cents. 😀
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I can’t help concluding that getting each of us to put our two cents in was Warhol’s intention.
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Ha ha. Controversial with a purpose. Clever fellow.
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Well I’m sure Warhol could say that, sure. He’s already got people fighting over HIS stuff. 🙂 But I agree that such a line needs a touch of Marx absurdity, because you know Groucho would be aaaaaaaall over that, punctuated by Harpo’s horn. I’d try to make my own misquote, but Bo’s the Marx Brothers expert–he’s got those films memorized. 🙂
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I do feel it’s a line that deserves to be topped, and I can’t think of anyone more likely, or appropriate to do it, than Groucho.
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Agreed. No one could lacerate you verbally while leaving you breathless with laughter like Groucho.
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