In 2007, Matt Wrbican, archivist and Warhol authority,1 revealed that Andy Warhol had never in fact uttered the famous quote, ‘If you want to know all about Andy Warhol just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.’2 (fig. 1) Rather, these were the words of the interviewer Gretchen Berg, from a carefully edited conversation with Warhol in the East Village Other, published on 1 November 1966, in which her questions were not only removed, but were transposed into allegedly authentic statements by Warhol. This paper examines questions that are raised when face-to-face interviews and conversations with artists are edited for sound clips or transcribed for books and catalogues, raising both art-historical and ethical issues.

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