“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” Andy Warhol once pronounced.

The much-repeated quote, dating from 1968, may in fact be apocryphal. Yet even Warhol, were he alive today, might be amazed that now, thanks to the internet, everyone can be famous for 15 seconds.



The changing dynamics of fame were evident here last week when the collections of the Hollywood stars Audrey Hepburn and Vivien Leigh came up for public auction. The sales, one at Christie’s and the other at Sotheby’s, were held days after the Saatchi Gallery hosted a two-day “immersive experience” to celebrate 10 years of the hit reality-TV show “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

“With today’s celebrities, their lives are lived in the public forum,” said Julie Lobalzo Wright, a teaching fellow at the University of Warwick in England who specializes in film and multimedia stardom. “But there’s a harking back to the aura of the Hollywood star.”

“There’s a longing for that sense of mystique, of not knowing everything,” she continued, adding that a sense of mystery surrounding older stars made fans want to own something the celebrities might have used, “that makes them real.”