Were Warhol and Basquiat lovers?

Well?

Nope

No. AW seemed to me a voyeur, but sexually impotent. If anyone received his attentions it was likely lil Joe.

Aspergers right and drugs?

But it's been said that Andy's asexual image was not reality.

I can’t imagine anyone wanting to sleep with Andy.

I read the barely-able-to-get-through-it Andy Warhol Diaries. In the end I'm glad I read it, but boy was it boring in some sections.

Based on that book, it does seem that Andy was non-sexual. I won't say asexual because he was very gay and very attracted to beautiful men, but it doesn't sound like he was comfortable with his body and didn't want people to see himself naked. I think it rendered him basically impotent. Psychologically impotent, not physically impotent.

People way less attractive and weirder than Andy get laid every day.

Andy liked to watch.

Warhol was sexually obsessive and "fell in love" with men who were emotionally unavailable or men who just thought he was gross.

Warhol was fixated on those fake "Dupont" twins and was hanging around with "Victor Hugo", Halstons' pervy boyfriend.

I never met or heard of anybody that actually fucked him.

R8. Yes but AW only likes beautiful people. I don’t think he would even consider someone he finds unattractive. I don’t think he’s into rent boys.

“Everybody has a different idea of love. One girl I know said, "I knew he loved me when he didn't come in my mouth. ”

AW certainly did have an eye.

[quote] I read the barely-able-to-get-through-it Andy Warhol Diaries.

I found the book totally fascinating and a great read back in the early 90s when I first read it. Granted, no internet at the time meant no access to the celebrity rumors we have these days so his reporting about the celeb world seemed so fresh and new for a guy under 20 I was at the time.

You can't convince me Andy and Jean Michel weren't fucking and sucking each other.

Andy was in a relationship with a handsome young man named Jed who was part of a set of fraternal twins who hung around the studio. Jed became a talented interior designer, doing Andy's house and eventually started his own firm. He eventually left Andy when he became involved with an architect, and Andy took it badly. Jed was on the TWA flight to Paris that crashed in the '90s. Whether the two ever actually had sex or not, who can say.

I believe Basquiat and Madonna were lovers.

r11 AW is dead.

R7 you are an absolute idiot if really thought the Warhol diaries were “boring” in places.

What about Joe from Flesh?

R19, I did. I thought it was boring in some places.

Did you think it was riveting, from start to finish? That every turn of word had you on the edge of your seat, clutching your pearls?

I thought it was boring in some places.

The Diaries is a fascinating book. Yes, it's long and probably not meant to be read steadily through. AW comes across as a deeper and more genuine person than the image that he projected in his public statements. (e.g. he was very generous, and his comments in the book on art are a lot more knowing than AW let on in his public persona). I've been meaning to re-read it for years now, maybe this will inspire me. It used to be available in a nice, silvery, *thick* paperback. The hardcover I read was square like an old LP and probably weighed 10 pounds. The book is also very funny - I esp. remember Warhol and his employees' remarks when Studio 54 was raided by the FBI and they found that secret room stuffed with cash. His dealings with the habitually wasted Truman Capote are also funny.

Ok, but did Andy and Jean fuck or what?

No, they didn't.

Yes, they did.

[quote]I believe Basquiat and Madonna were lovers.

They were. Courtney Love's "Big Pink" character from the movie "Basquiat" is based on Madonna.

It is doubtful that they were. Andy was gay, not asexual but apparently mostly a voyeur. Andy also would want a hustler or male model, to be a boyfriend or exclusive just to him, and then would get mad when that obviously did not happen.

Jed Johnson (on the left of photo with his twin Jay) and Andy lived together for 12 years and people considered them "a couple". However that doesn't mean they had a physical relationship. Jed eventually "left" Andy for Alan Wanzenberg, a well known designer in NY whose work is still frequently featured in Architectural Digest. Jay Johnson wrote a book about he and his brother in 2005.

Basquiat did date Madonna and he also slept regularly with Klaus Nomi, infecting the poor German singer repeatedly with gonorrhea. (Which also suggests that Basquiat either had AIDS or was one of the naturally immune, as Nomi was an early victim of the plague.)

He saw Warhol as a father figure, which meant Basquiat projected his own serious daddy issues onto Warhol. After their show of collaborative paintings failed to catch fire with the public and critics, Basquiat blamed Warhol and dropped him cold. Interestingly, Warhol's sudden death in 1987 so upset Basquiat that it contributed to the drug spiral which killed him in 1988.

If you've never read Phoebe Hoban's Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, I highly recommend it.

Warhola was just a blip in US Art's 'Dark Age".

He is not worth remembering.

r29 If you repeatedly get the clap from fucking the same person, you deserve it.

Apparently it wasn't the clap that bothered him so much as the fact that Basquiat wouldn't help him pay the medical bills to get treated. I'm sure when he was dying of AIDS, Basquiat was nowhere to be found, either. He had a habit of deserting people.

I’ve always wondered if Basquiat was positive when he died. He was a heroin addict, after all. And Warhol could have been positive, too, contributing to his rapid decline after surgery. I was so shocked when I heard of his death.

I don’t think they had sex, but they sure as hell used each other. Not a healthy relationship.

Basquiat was a bisexual heroin addict living in NYC in the late 70s and early 80s. There is no way he wasn't poz unless he was part of the tiny minority who is naturally immune to HIV.

Robert Rauschenberg had flings with Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns.

[quote] You can't convince me Andy and Jean Michel weren't fucking and sucking each other.

Then why the fuck did you bother asking at the OP?

In the diaries, Andy talks constantly about how turned off he was by Basquiat's BO.

I also don't think Andy was much interested in the beauty of black guys. He seemed fully into beautiful white boys.

The original edition of the hardback fell apart from so much use, and it's not here for me to reference. Talking of Andy's loathing his own body, and the very strong possibility that he loathed himself... he was at a book signing in, I think, Connecticut, and a young lady who'd been waiting in line for him to sign her book grabbed his wig and ran off with it. This happened around a year? Two years? Before he died.

Andy just put the hood of his parka up and continued to sign the books. He asked that no action be taken against the lady who stole his wig, and he got it back. I've always thought the shock and embarrassment of that triggered his loss of the will to live. It seemed [from the diaries that Pat Hackett chose to share with the great unwashed] like he slowly checked out after that.

The diaries contain massive information. Out of all that data, the incident with the wig I has never diminished for me; it was so unnecessary and cruel.

Ultra Violet has this weird story in her book about trying to come on to Andy one night (boy, was she barking up the wrong tree!) and when she ran her fingers through his fair she found out not only was it a wig (another unbelievable mistake) but that he had a metal snap affixed onto his skull to keep it in place.

^ a creature like that is hardly a reliable source of gossip.