Gore Vidal? Andy Warhol? Peter Conrad? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: A U.S. intellectual once offered the following remarkably harsh assessment of a famous pop-artist:
He is the only genius with an IQ of 60.
Reportedly, the verbal sharpshooter was Gore Vidal, and the visual artist was Andy Warhol. The precise number specified for the IQ varied in different versions of this quip. I have never seen a solid citation. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match found by QI appeared in “The Transatlantic Review” of Salisbury, England in 1975. The team of Victor Bockris and Andrew Wylie interviewed Gore Vidal who delivered the provocative comment. Boldface has been added to excerpts by QI:1
What do you think of the intelligence of Andy Warhol?
I have said of him, and it has been much quoted, that he is the only genius with an IQ of 85. And I don’t mean that in a necessarily pejorative way; the emphasis is more on the genius than the lowness of his IQ. He is sort of a cultural litmus paper. He was the first person to realise that modern art, the visual arts, was shit. And he proved it in a rather marvelous way; he just sent it all up, and he got away with it. Which makes it a double victory.
The phrasing used by Gore Vidal suggested that he had made this remark previously, but QI has not yet found any earlier matches. The citation above provided strong evidence because the quotation was spoken directly by Gore Vidal.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1974 gossip columnist Joyce Haber interviewed Gore Vidal in the “Los Angeles Times” of California. Vidal spoke about the genius of Andy Warhol, but he was complimentary, and he did not assign a numerical IQ:2
“It’s Andy Warhol’s genius to have said that people will always look at something rather than nothing. And that’s the secret of television. Nothing has to be going on. It’s better than looking at four walls.”
In the same interview, Vidal disparaged Mick and Bianca Jagger:
“The combined IQ of Bianca and Mick is about 110.”
During the 1975 interview published in “The Transatlantic Review” Vidal commented on Warhol’s IQ as mentioned previously. Oddly, Vidal also praised Mick Jagger which clashed with his 1974 remark:3
How did you feel about Mick Jagger?
He came to stay with me last summer with Bianca and the baby. We talked about politics; we talked about growing up; London University; we dished mutual friends. And I found him very quiet and relaxed and extremely intelligent. He’s the sort of person that I think would have done well at anything he did.
In 1981 “The Observer” of London published a book review by Peter Conrad in which he presented a version of the quip attributed to Vidal:4
Gore Vidal once called Andy Warhol the only genius with an IQ of 60. The cretinous quotient may have been a symbolic choice, for during the 1960s Warhol did for a while possess the prescience and the subversiveness of genius.
To his crassness there was an impudent wit, which questioned sacred assumptions about the integrity and value of art and also of human life.
In 1984 Frank S. Pepper published the compilation “Handbook of 20th Century Quotations” which included the following entry:5
He is the only genius with an IQ of 60.
Gore Vidal, ANDY WARHOL
Andy Warhol died in 1987. In 1988 the “San Francisco Examiner” published a piece about Warhol by book editor Steven M. L. Aronson. The article included remarks from antique shop owner Vito Giallo who was a friend of Warhol’s:6
“He was very canny once you got past the ‘Oh, this is fabulous’ routine,” Giallo assures me, “but he always had to appear as though he were an imbecile because that would give him the edge.” I nod as I remember how somebody — was it Gore Vidal? — once said that Andy was the only genius he had ever met with an IQ of 2.
A single digit is an unlikely value for an IQ measurement.
In 1996 an article published in “The Times” of London mentioned the quip:7
… Gore Vidal’s elegant skewering of Andy Warhol — “the only genius with an IQ of 60″.
In 2018 a piece in “The Plain Dealer” of Cleveland, Ohio presented another version of the quip:8
“He’s the only genius with an IQ of 6.”
— Gore Vidal on Andy Warhol
In conclusion, Gore Vidal deserves credit for the quotation which appeared in the 1975 citation which referred to an IQ of 85. QI has not yet found direct evidence for an earlier instance of the quip. Nor has QI found direct evidence supporting the version which referred to an IQ of 60.
Image Notes: Illustration depicting soup cans branded with Andy Warhol’s name; a self-referential parody
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1975 Autumn (Published October 1975), The Transatlantic Review, Number 52, Interview of Gore Vidal conducted by Bockris-Wylie, Start Page 85, Quote Page 88, Printed at The Compton Press Ltd., Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1974 January 13, Los Angeles Times, Section: Calendar, The Wit and Wisdom of Gore Vidal by Joyce Haber (Interview of Gore Vidal), Quote Page 13, Column 1 and 3, Los Angeles, California. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1975 Autumn (Published October 1975), The Transatlantic Review, Number 52, Interview of Gore Vidal conducted by Bockris-Wylie, Start Page 85, Quote Page 88, Printed at The Compton Press Ltd., Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1981 February 8, The Observer, Mortuary recollections by Peter Conrad (Book review of “POPism: The Warhol ’60s”), Quote Page 33, Column 8, London, England. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1984 Copyright, Handbook of 20th Century Quotations Compiled by Frank S. Pepper, Topic: Genius, Quote Page 148, Column 2, Sphere Study Aids: Sphere Books Ltd., London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1988 January 10, San Francisco Examiner, Section: This World, Andy Warhol’s Possession Obsession by Steven M. L. Aronson, Start Page 7, Quote Page 8, Column 5, San Francisco, California. (GenealogyBank) ↩︎
- 1996 December 12, The Times, Fine barrage from an artillery of words by Ian McIntyre, Quote Page 37, Column 5, London, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2018 March 30, The Plain Dealer, Section: Friday, The only thing better than a good insult is a book full of them by Michael Heaton (Book review of ““The Most Low-Down, Lousiest, Loathsome Things Ever Said”), Quote Page T2, Column 2, Cleveland, Ohio. (GenealogyBank) ↩︎