Fifteen minutes of fame means a short burst of celebrity that arrives suddenly and fades just as quickly: the viral clip, the reality contestant, the stranger who becomes a meme by lunchtime. The idea is credited to Andy Warhol, whose famous prophecy promised everyone a turn at worldwide celebrity lasting a quarter of an hour.
The attribution is shakier than the slogan. The line first appeared in a brochure for Warhol’s 1968 exhibition in Sweden, but the critic Blake Gopnik suggests the curator Pontus Hultén may have written it, the photographer Nat Finkelstein said the thought came from him in conversation with Warhol, and the painter Larry Rivers has been named too. Warhol himself admitted in 1980 that he had never said it. By then it hardly mattered: the phrase had become one of the most famous things Warhol never said, which is a very Warhol way to be quoted.