My instinct about painting says, “If you don’t think about it, it’s right.”

Warhol frames painting as an activity best guided by instinct rather than deliberation. The remark aligns with his Pop-era stance that art can be produced through procedures, repetition, and quick decisions—minimizing the romantic ideal of the tortured, overthinking genius. “If you don’t think about it” suggests bypassing self-censorship and theory so the work retains immediacy, surface clarity, and a kind of deadpan directness. It also echoes Warhol’s cultivated persona of detachment: the less the artist “explains” or intellectualizes, the more the image can function like a commodity or a media object—open to projection and interpretation by viewers.