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| Andy Warhol |
Regardless of the truth (or otherwise) of any of the above, Warhol by popular consensus has come to be the 'owner' of the quote - even though he seemed to deny responsibility in a 1980 interview. But unpack a little more from the annals of yesteryear and you'll find that it was an expression in use in France at least a century earlier.
The phrase "quart-d'heure de popularité" (fifteen minutes of popularity) appeared in 1821, in 'Histoire de l'Assemblée Constituante ' by Charles Lacretelle. And then there was Alphonse Daudet, who in 1879 in an article about the recently deceased journalist Jean Hippolyte Auguste Delaunay de Villemessant, used the variant "quart-d'heure de célébrité" (fifteen minutes of fame). I quote: "de braves garçons [...] ont eu, pour une heureuse trouvaille de quinze lignes, leur quart-d'heure de célébrité"; "some young fellows have had [...] thanks to fifteen cleverly-written lines, their fifteen minutes of fame".
Et voila! Popularity, celebrity, fame are all pretty much the same thing, the words interchangeable even in translation. And the rather dismissive implication all through is that they are also fleeting accolades, here and gone just like their objects. That quarter-hour though. Fifteen minutes sounds better.
Slightly ironic then that Warhol should have managed to be famous, celebrated and popular for decades, as have been many of the figures he chose to depict in his iconic pop art paintings, the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Jacky Kennedy, Mao Tse Tung, Elvis Pressley, Mick Jagger and Elizabeth Taylor.
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| Liz Taylor by Andy Warhol |
The Hippocratic aphorism "Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή" that we know most commonly in its inverted and translated Latin form as "Ars longa, vita brevis" was supposed to mean art takes time but life is short, i.e. it takes a long time to acquire artistic skill and a lifetime is hardly enough. Maybe since the Pop Art Sixties it has started to be interpreted somewhat differently in the sense that life is short but art endures.
It's almost as though Warhol has pulled a trick on us in using the Pop Art medium (trashy, immediate, mass-produced, disposable) to confer on his celebrities a kind of lasting fame through the act of painting them.
Here's the first draft of a new poem (a work in progress) for today's theme.
15 Minutes
Who was it first declared
"Fame is a whore"?
It could have been
one of the dramatic Elizabethans
or a cynical wit of a Metaphysical
or Oscar Wilde even.
We just don't know.
The recording angel
was a bit hit and miss that day,
mind probably elsewhere.
On what to have for tea for instance,
supposing recording angels need to eat.
Or maybe stealing a sneaky
quarter of an hour
away from what (s)he considered
the frankly thankless task
of keeping score regarding
catchy things people say
for posterity,
simply to snort a few crystal lines
in the lavatory.
Whatever the excuse
for this unfortunate lacuna,
clearly some perceptive soul
had got it spot on
only to suffer the devastating irony
of their name and hence claim to fame
getting missed along the way.
Thanks for reading, S ;-)
4 comments:
Interesting blog. Clever poem.
Didn't someone try to assassinate Warhol back in the 1970s? And did that person become famous for 15 minutes? Interesting research into the origins of the saying. I like your satirical poem.
I'd heard the phrase 15 minutes of fame but had no idea where it originated, so this was most informative. I enjoyed your brief commentary on the irony of Warhol's legacy and the inventive poem.
I'd always thought that it was Warhol who had said that so it was a revelation that it had such previous claims. thank you for this.
Really like the poem.
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