Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. - Andy Warhol
Published: Aug 10, 2022
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Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. - Andy Warhol

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." This celebrated quote has become Andy Warhol's most well-known statement. And the future that that sentence refers to is here. In the age of information and media, it's all about speed. Everything is at your fingertips in seconds. It may come and go quickly. A person may become more famous by taking advantage of short-term appearances.

It led to the concept of "15 minutes of fame"—the idea that celebrities, from media scandals to memes, will almost always be fleeting.

15 minutes of fame

15 minutes of fame is short-lived media publicity or celebrity of an individual or phenomenon. The expression was inspired by a quotation misattributed to Andy Warhol: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Attributed to two other people, the first printed use was in the program for a 1968 exhibition of Warhol's work at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. The phenomenon is often used in reference to figures in the entertainment industry or other areas of popular culture, such as reality television and YouTube.

An older version of the same concept in English is the expression "nine days' wonder." This phrase dates at least as far back as the Elizabethan era, referencing William Kempe.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (/ˈwɔːrhɒl/;[1] born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings of Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. Warhol has been described as the "bellwether of the art market". Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. His works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. In 2013, a 1963 serigraph titled Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) sold for $105 million. In 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) sold for $195 million, which is the most expensive work of art sold at auction by an American artist.

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