pop-artist with the uptown friends was basically saying that everyone's star will glow for 15 minutes for all to see, then die out. Fame is fleeting.
Warhol's fame was anything but fleeting. His paintings still sell for tens of millions of dollars, and his sunglassed image still appears in stories, despite his having passed away in 1987. He made avant-garde movies in downtown Manhattan at his place called "The Factory" and was very unceremoniously shot in the stomach by one of the actresses and dumped out of a cab for medical treatment in front of Columbus Hospital on 19th Street in the 1960s late one night.
His magazine, "Interview," elaborately headquartered in a converted IRT subway sub-station on 33rd Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues, was a nexus for the city's literary and creative types and remained published even after he passed away.
He was a highly visible New York City personality. If you think you see Anna Wintour, the editor of 'Vouge', appear often somewhere with her trademark hairstyle and sunglasses, you haven't seen anything to compare with how often Warhol appeared in the newspapers and magazines. His fame was way beyond 15 minutes.
Even his death was highly visible, as he suffered from surgical complications from gallbladder surgery, and died from a heart attack in the hospital under what became very contentious arguments as to who was responsible for things seemingly going awry.
His quote has proved to be the most concise wording there is to describe the media/information explosion we are in that started building after World War II. But why 15 minutes? A segment of time, sure, but it's a very distinct number. A quarter-of-an-hour.
I never gave it any thought until I was watching a PBS 'American Masters' piece on Woody Guthrie, the nation's balladeer in the 30s, 40s and 50s. After becoming popular enough, Woody was asked to do a radio show in NYC in 1940. He only did it for several weeks because he had a falling out with the producers over song content. He quit, and went back to Texas.
But Woody wrote, and he wrote a lot apparently. The documentary highlights a segment from his writings that serve to explain why he quit. "...15 minutes was a little packed, so I ducked off."
Radio shows and segments of the type Guthrie and others appeared on were 15 minutes long. And radio was the nation's glue in the 40s. Fifteen minutes of fame were achieved when you were broadcasted on the radio. Certainly Warhol, born in 1928, listened to a radio growing up.
Even though I missed that era, I can remember 15 minute segments of early television. The 11 o'clock news was 15 minutes. Even 7 o'clock news was 15 minutes long. I don't remember what programming came after. News segments became expanded when all the NYC newspapers went on strike for 114 days, starting in December 1962. But when newspapers came back, they never rolled anything back to 15 minutes. The dam was broken.
Given the resources that exist to put things in front of us, 15 minutes has long been broken, somewhat like Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile and Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier.
Only last week I sat in a waiting room and completely at random and without looking, I pulled a magazine out of the vertical rack behind me. People magazine. Lots of head shots on the cover. Would I find Jennifer Aniston's photo among them?
What do you think?
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