Andy Warhol appeared in a dream of mine and gave me a word wisdom about life and art when I asked him to explain the meaning of one of his art pieces.
I dream a lot, a whole lot. My dreams are typically extremely vivid and detailed. They have textures, background noises, real people, real places, and are almost always in the first-person perspective. I used to have a journal where I wrote down over 100 of my dreams, each one a page or two long. Unfortunately, I lost that journal. I still occasionally write down my dreams.
This dream was particularly interesting because Andy Warhol was in it. I’ve always admired him as an artist but I don’t really connect with his art. I find most pop art to be mostly repetitious and unoriginal. Nowadays pop art seems to be over-saturated and too commercialized, like abstract art. How many more artists are going to make paintings of Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne?
Generally, I think my dreams are too personal to share online or not interesting enough. This one was very interesting to me and I thought some other people might find it interesting as well.
The Dream
The dream began with me at a fancy gallery with large works of art by Andy Warhol on the walls. It was the opening day of an exhibition for some of his work. There were tons of people there making it really crowded. The atmosphere was like a formal party full of wealthy people in extremely nice clothes. I walked up to one of his pieces that was a bit abstract. Its meaning was confusing and elusive to me. It had a bunch of intersecting lines on it, similar to a net or chicken wire.
Andy was standing nearby talking to someone. I approached him and asked about the painting and the lines. I told him I didn’t understand the purpose of them and asked what they meant. The whole gallery suddenly went silent. It was as if everyone heard my question and wondered the same thing. But they were too afraid to ask. They all stared in my direction, eagerly waiting to hear his answer. Andy then looked at me and in a very calm and direct manner said to me:
“Don’t ask to see what you can already see for yourself”
Immediately after I heard this, I awoke from my dream.
His response has been stuck in my head and I think about it a lot. I think about how this applies to me beyond looking at art. I wonder why my subconscious wanted me to hear that and why did it come from Andy Warhol of all people?
Wow, that was quite a dream Matthew. Good words from Andy
I thought so too and they really were. Who knew you can get wisdom through a dream?