The Andy Warhol Diaries, Part II

I’ve been putting off watching the last episode because I don’t want it to end. I’m a third of the way through and taking another break to make it last.

Pat Hackett HATED, I mean she HATED Bianca! I just had to get that out. She HATED her!

I like when Halston told Andy that Liza was walking down the street with Jack Haley Jr, when her director/coke buddy/fuck buddy Martin Scorsese confronted her and said “how dare you be sleeping with Mikhail Baryshnikov!”

From the previous thread:

[quote]I wonder if Jon Gould really did try to kill Andy in Aspen when they were snowmobiling?

This was an odd little moment, huh? But it reminded me of a few closeted guys I knew back in Law School, this would've been around 2003-04, and gay sex had only recently been made legal where I was growing up. There was one guy in particular. Big, muscly guy, Good looking, very obviously gay, but pretended he was straight all the time, said the weirdest things about wanting to fist girls and stuff, that sounded so fake. We were sort of friends, as part of the larger group, but often when with me he would get very "wrestle-y" and it would always turn much more serious than play acting, like he was really trying to hurt me. I also remember once I was at the stop sign and he ran at the car and smashed his arms into the driver's window and ran off laughing.

I think guys like this, not being able to deal with their sexuality, have a lot of pent up aggression. I can imagine Gould just feeling at that moment he had to do what he did, not that he wanted to kill Andy or was even thinking like that, but his hormones just going out of control. If that makes sense? Subconsciously the aggression coming from not being able to be truly yourself and here's this person in front of you who is obviously reminded you of it all the time.

I've only seen the first two episodes so far, but it made me remember the Lou Reed/John Cale's Andy Warhol concept album: "Songs for Drella." I haven't thought about that album in years and years and years.

So much focus on whether Andy had sex or not.

That's because people are idiots.

The Warhol documentary on YT should be seen in conjunction with this. It delved into his art far more impressively and was explaining why he was so important and revolutionary.

Gotta say I loved the appearances of Pat Hackett in the series and totally trust that everything she wrote down is what Andy said. Meaning she didn't change the meaning of anything.

There's a guy in Denver who constantly boasts about his relationship with Warhol. He has pix to prove it, and it's undoubtedly true, to a certain extent. Yes, he had encounters with Warhol, in the same way many cute boys did back in those days. They would hang around The Factory, do odd jobs, maybe even meet some famous folks and occasionally be taken out for a meal. And, who knows, in a lineup Warhol might have remembered his name (or maybe not). He claims to have kissed Andy once, but says he was confused about his "bisexuality." The cute guy, who's not so cute anymore, says that they used a few of his photos in Warhol Diaries, but he wasn't given any credit nor compensation. I don't think he cares about the money, but it really bothers him that his long held and often retold stories are starting to fizzle... He was "one of many" back in the day who had a bit of the "celebrity shine" on him, which has now faded and gone away. I'm guessing there are similar "cute guys" like this to be found in other places...

R8 Care to link to that doc?

R11, it was linked in the previous thread which is where I found it. Ric Burns did a fine job but I also think Ryan Murphy's work answers some questions raised in Warhol's work better because it was so personality driven.

More interesting than the Anne Frank diaries.

Poor Kitty, having to listen to all that morbid teenage angst.

Anne Frank only wishes she had a Pat Hackett to call every day and drone over what she did in the last 24 hours.

Both Andy and Anne had ugly hairdos.

What’s the deal with Paige Powell? Was she the one Claire Forlani played in the Barquiat movie?

Forlani’s character was based on Suzanne Mallouk—who’s now a psychiatrist on the upper west side.

Thank you R17. I remember her in the film (which I saw so long ago).

Series made it seem like Powell was the main woman in his life?

R8 but which one. There are eleventy eleven Warhol docs. There is ANOTHER new Warhol doc out just now.

Oh sorry. thanks for link.

One of the more interesting notes in the diary was his response to the movie CARRIE. He said, "Someone finally did slow motion right." Agreed.

One of my favorite lines in the Diaries is when, after a long walk around the Village with Halson's sex fiend, cokehead boyfriend Victor Hugo, Warhol (who of course was recognizable by everyone) accuses Hugo of using him to attract the attention of hot guys (just like Elizabeth Taylor in "Suddenly Last Summer".).

I would pay good money to have AI Bill Irwin Andy voice to do this speech in Andy’s flat affectless manner.

Andy had an odd relationship with Paige. She sort of took the place of Bob Colacello after his departure from Interview-going to every party and premier and hustling for ads and portraits.

When Basquiat and Paige broke up Paige got closer to Andy. According to the Bob Colacello book Andy had discussed adopting a child with her.

Andy also had a final , brief relationship after Jon, although it wasn’t that serious-with Sam Bolton, who worked at Interview.

Andy was very lonely, I’d imagine, in the last few years of his life. In the 70s he had a close group of work associates who were also his friends and created a quasi family unit with him-Fred, Jed, Bob, Brigid, Pat and Vincent, with the later additions of Catherine Guinness and Chris Makos.

By 1985,, his relationship with most of them was strained or non-existent, and it would seem that these relationships broke down after Jed left and Jon entered the picture.

Why do we think they all hated Jon so much? It has to be more than just loyalty to Jed (though he was a beautiful Angel).

r25, where do you get the impression "they" all hated Jon so much? They who? That wasn't my takeaway from the doc at all.

Other opinions?

Jon was a blowhard and golddigger. Jed was not.

R26 name one person in the documentary who had anything nice to say about Jay except his hag and his twin brother.

I think people in Andy's circle hated Jon for a good reason...he used Andy, a sad, lonely older man, to get $$$ and climb the career ladder.

I don't the Goulds were insanely rich (or, at least Jon's branch)...they just had a prestigious old name.

Poor Andy. No, he wasn't conventionally attractive, but he did have a cute nerdy quality when he was younger, especially in his student days.

In the 50s, he definitely had a "Wally Cox" nerd thing going on and in the 60s, when the Factory got going and he became a Star, he did have a look that could be very appealing to people into arty, non-conventional beauty.

After the shooting and as he aged, he got that scary gaunt look with the scarecrow wigs...that's the look most people remember him as. when he was in his 40s and 50s.

No, he's not going to appeal to everyone, but not everyone is into boring, classically handsome/pretty types of men.

So, Jon had done some exclusive Radcliffe publishing program, him giving input to Interview and possibly being named editor was justifiable and actually could have had some positive impact despite what those other hangerons were so worried and fretted about.

Andy and Jed had a real relationship.

Andy WANTED to have a real relationship with Jon but it never really happened. Jon enjoyed the attention and the perks but wasn't interested in having any kind of real relationship.

Jon was a user. If this doc series is trying to portray him as anything else...no.

Way too much Basquiat. He wasn't that interesting a character.

Racist

I was shocked to find that Andy was only 58 when he died. He looked like he was 78.

Jon Gould obviously came from money. His parents lived on 900 acres in MA and vacationed in Aspen. His brother spends winters in Maui and owns a restaurant there.

Was Catherine Guinness a junkie? Half her family are or were. Messy ends for many, including her junky husband and many junky nieces and and nephews.

By the way, she's Daphne's sister, you know.

It is funny how people have anointed Andy and Jed as true love while Jon is a gold digger based on a documentary. As noted, the actual Warhol diaries paint a substantially different story. In the end, I think Andy used both of them as much as they used him.

Bob Colacello sold his Warhol portrait a decade ago and got 190K, less than the estimate, but then, who the fuck wants a Bob Colacello?

Overrated, psycho queen. We need better gay idols. She definitely could of shared a barstool with three friends/complete strangers.

Well, it obviously wasn't a lasting true love since they broke up and were rather bitter about it.

The smart people who were friends with Andy, got good art of someone other that themselves. I agree, who TF wants to see Bob's sagging Repub jowels?

They used AI tech. to replicate his voice. It was probably easy to do because his voice had no fluctuation.

Who the fuck would buy a painting of Bob Collacello?!?!? I mean, it's not a good investment and who would want THAT hanging on their living room wall???!?!??!!

R44 It's one of life's mysteries, that's for sure. The mere thought of someone buying a Bob Collacello portrait makes me laugh.

[quote] She definitely could of shared a barstool with three friends/complete strangers.

Is this on the right thread, r40?

Bob Colacello should consider himself lucky he got 190,000 dollars for his Warhol portrait. In the beginning of the video at R39, another portrait of a (lesser known?) male only went for 90,000.

I would be interested to know what the 3 painted Basquiat vases went for that the auctioneer found in a cardboard box in Jon Gould's mother's attic along with his (Jon's) poetry to Andy.

Somewhere, someone is furiously masturbating to their Bob Colacello Warhol portrait and I for one feel we shouldn’t judge them. Giggle a little, but not judge.

A small museum might be very happy to own the Colacello especially because of Bob's connection to Andy.

I read the Diaries when they were published; I don’t remember getting a user/social climber vibe about Jon Gould in them, but I definitely did from the documentary. And his hag … just NO!

Aby Rosen bought Colacello’s Warhol portrait. He’s a friend of Bob’s and also a Warhol portrait “junkie” who owns at least 50 of them, plus another assorted 40 or so various Warhol paintings.

This has to be the WORST doc I have ever seen on Netflix. Vapid, shallow crap.

I was surprised that Andy was very open to trying new things, like skiing and modeling. He seemed out of place, but he looked like he was enjoying himself.

R53 Seriously? Netflix has worse.

What was up with the attempted murder in Aspen. What was that all about. What did Andy say.

The portraits thing is very confusing.

So if he did your portrait, which you paid for, he would then make 3 extras and sell those on the market. But charged you for yours.

I don’t get that. I can understand charging big bucks for an exclusive portrait. But not if there is going to be 3 others which are then sold for a profit and own by god knows who.

It was the prestige of having him do it and the value it would come from it in the future.

R57, Leonardo, and no doubt other Renaissance painters, did something like this. He’d paint something in commission and then his workshop would crank out copies of it for other people.

R54 he looked petrified in the photos on the snowmobile. I was actually laughing at that. He really thought Jon was trying to kill him and the photos support that.

Did Andy give Bob Colacello a discount for his portrait, I wonder? Just kidding.

I suppose it depended on the size, but how much did a commissioned Warhol portrait cost? I remember reading that in the early 1970s it was $25K for the first portrait and $5K for any additional portraits. Fun Warhol portrait detail, I recently read The Beautiful Fall (about Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld) and when Yves found out Halston commissioned a portrait, he threatened to burn his.

Well the only time a complete nobody really could have gotten a portrait by Warhol without elaborate negotiations would have been from this advertisement in the Neiman Marcus 1986 Christmas Book and the package experience was $35,000.00. Who knows if he ever got around to actually filling the three orders since he was dead by the end of February 1987.

R59 Really the only Art Historical precedence for what Warhol was able to achieve with the Factory model was the career and life of Peter Paul Reubens, which is outlined in the article attached. Warhol at this point is most likely equal in stature to what he achieved and will eventually surpass him.

Warhol's portrait period reminds me of Hans Holbein at the court of Henry VIII. But with disco.

R62 Huh, I wonder if anybody purchased the Warhol Experience.

Andy usually did 4 portraits, in hopes that the subject would buy all 4. They mostly did. After all, he was into mulitples- even with boyfriends.

About 20 years ago my wonderful husband surprised me with a b&w childhood photo of me with our family dog, taken around 1956 (!) but treated on canvas by some photo company in NY with the Warhol look. There are 4 photos, 2 on top, 2 on bottom, each with different broadly painted colors a la Andy. I love it still.

I'm sick of the talking heads throwing around "queer" this, "queer" that.

R68 In all seriousness, those curators are probably sick of saying the word "queer" too, such is the nature of academia.

Op, reply 46. The joke goes, "How do you get four really gay guys to share a barstool? Flip it over." And yes, I am gay. And yes, I have a warped sense of humor, which has gotten me through just fine.

I had a small stack of old Interview magazines for decades, then sold them off on eBay for about $70 each.

I laughed at Andy Cohen buying that POS that Dolly rejected. Jews, always looking for a deal.

A ton of Andy Warhol spin off threads have been spun lately. And they all sink to the bottom. Nobody reads them because there is already this thread.

If you want your post read, post it in the already existing thread if you want anybody to see it.

Andy wouldn't have charged Bob C for a portrait. He gave them as gifts to those in his inner circle. It didn't really cost him much, just materials. I think Fred was the only one who was concerned that giving them away would hold down their value and make it more difficult for him to sell portraits.

Ryan O’Neal can keep Farrah Fawcett portrait, jury says...

My kid can do that.

R76 But they didn't, did they?

[quote]Many many gays find power by masquerading as classes that are perceived to have power.

All the gays are macho, can't you see the leather shine?

I'm still reading the diaries and haven't seen the show, so this is probably off topic, but I just got to the part where Andy went to the auction of Joan Crawford's estate, and Pat Healy (who wrote the diaries) had been bidding on a "huge pink necklace" but it went over her price limit, so Andy kept bidding and bought it for her.

I couldn't find out for sure but I'd like to think it was this one!

Saw the entire series and loves it but why was it so sad? Between the music and pacing and crying….was the book this depressing?

No the Diaries were fun and skewered celebrity in a way that wouldn't be done today -even though the definition of celebrity is so much more precarious now and deserving of a good bashing.

Why didn’t Pat ever fix her gangly teeth? Surely she has the means.

I did a double take when somebody claimed that there were only "hints" about Warhol being gay in the diaries when I clearly recall the line "The last time I had Truman Capote's cock in my mouth, I felt nothing."

Also, Rob Lowe claimed Warhol would have LOVED to live in 2022 because today everyone is a freak, but I think it's the opposite. I think he'd have hated the current culture, because when everyone is a freak, nobody's a freak.

(Why did they interview Rob fucking Lowe, anyway?)

The book is HILARIOUS, at least to page 100, which is where I am now.

There's no way you could have a documentary about the entire book, so I guess they took the more emotional parts and made that their focus. Jed isn't mentioned much at all yet, for instance.

Yes the book is a treasure. The glimpses you get of famous people are priceless.

I think Rob Lowe was right. Andy seemed fully engaged in whatever era he was living through, so he would have found the Internet, Kardashians, etc fascinating.

The series could have been edited down by half. After watching, my opinion of Andy has changed from neutral to negative. I realize it’s because he was like today’s Instahos and influencers than a legitimate artist. His arrested development and obsession with chasing beauty were pathetic.

The best part of the series was the snippets from ‘Bad’ with the mother on the street saying to her son ‘That’s what’s going to happen to you if you don’t shut up!’. That could have easily been in a John Waters’ film, and you can see the influences for the time.

Andy would adore YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, where any average nobody can become a star (for a little while) with the right combination of avarice and shamelessness.

Andy would be surrounded by buff tik tok beauties. He'd latch onto any new paradigm shift.

I still don’t know what to make of the guy. So much of who he was had to do with the era. It’s almost impossible to try so separate him from it.

I will say that before this doc, Andy left me cold. I always thought of him as lacking human qualities and was like a robot. I still see him that way, but softer after the doc. More human and more complex.

Coldness and detachment immediately repel me. I know that is normal to some people, but to me that’s still a huge red flag. It’s not normal, even though people try to make it normal. It’s almost always a result of trauma and there is always, always! more where that came from.

It was easier to see trends and see what was coming and what was going in those days. Now there are too many tracts. The culture is so splintered and siloed.

R90 Your post sounds like one of Andy's diary entries.

ALL Ryan Murphy shows are too fuckin' long.

Fucker doesn't understand the concept of editing.

And, I'm disappointed the doc series is apparently melancholy and focuses on "poor Andy's sad love life".

How boring.

We want to hear about Liza and Halston having coke binges while Steve Rubell sucks some Studio 54 bar back cock.

Murphy is just getting the check.

Seriously.

[quote]The best part of the series was the snippets from ‘Bad’ with the mother on the street saying to her son ‘That’s what’s going to happen to you if you don’t shut up!’. That could have easily been in a John Waters’ film, and you can see the influences for the time.

I laughed so much at this scene, definitely made me think of John Waters too.

[quote]while Steve Rubell sucks some Studio 54 bar back cock.

Watching this doco last week was the first time I'd heard of this guy. I wouldn't have minded a roll in the hay with him myself.

I was watching a video with a scientist talking about the origins of HIV and she was saying it takes about 10 years for it to take hold. This would mean that many of the people in this doco caught it in the early to mid 70s, surely? Does that sound right? Or does it change from person to person. I really need to do some more research here. I can't imagine what it must've been like to live during this time, makes me very sad.

R94 The now problematic And the Band Played On opens with the 1976 Bicentennial celebration in NYC and the arrival of the tall ships and fireworks talking about this international coming together celebration was most likely a moment in time of the origin of mass infection for many who would develop HIV. The writing is very good in-fact it made it so sinister and creepy that it stayed with me all these years.

r95 - why is it now problematic? I haven’t seen that movie in years.

Thanks R95. Incidentally I saw an interview just yesterday with a guy who has made a documentary to correct the damage done to Gaëtan Dugas in And the Band Played On. He still said AtBPO was an important work that helped in its own way, so if you boys recommend getting into it, I will. I'm looking for a really comprehensive discussion of the whole thing, from origins onwards.

Scientists now think that the HIV strain which started making headlines in the early 80s came to the US from Haiti around 1970 via a single individual. There were possibly other strains that came to the US earlier (hence outliers like teenager Robert Rayford, who died of what was probably HIV in 1969), but none of them really took hold in the population. HIV-1 takes, on average, 5 years to turn into symptomatic full-blown AIDS, and death before the advent of modern drugs happened 1-3 years after that. That's why the earliest AIDS deaths started in the late 70s but weren't identified as such until clusters of KS started showing up among gay men in NYC and SF in 1980-81.

Thanks for the info, R98! The trajectory of it all is very interesting and sobering to me. I believe it first crossed into humans back in 1908, which was a real surprise to learn. When I was watching the Diaries last week, I realised how little I know about this stuff so a lot of the context of the times wasn't as there for me as it should be. Definitely looking to correct this gap in my knowledge.

[quote] why is it now problematic?

Because in the book, Randy Shilts made up the "Patient Zero" theory, when flight attendant Gaétan Dugas actually had his blood work labeled 'Patient O,' the letter O.

"The same month Dugas died, a study in The American Journal of Medicine traced many early HIV infections to him. Dugas was not named in the study but instead listed as "patient O," which stood for "outside California," where one of the researchers was studying cases. This was ultimately misread as "patient 0," leading many people reading and discussing the studying to refer to it was "patient zero." And then in 1987, journalist Randy Shilts identified "patient zero" as Dugas while also depicting him as something of a sociopath who intentionally infected his sexual partners — a move which received intense media coverage in the mainstream press.

"Like so many folks, it was through Shilts's book that he first heard of Dugas.

"I'm embarrassed to admit now that when I first read the book, I totally bought into the 'patient zero' story and Shilts's hugely inaccurate version of Dugas," Lynd says. "With hindsight, I recognize that my reaction was in no small part due to my as-yet-unacknowledged internalized homophobia, as well as Shilts's persuasive — and subtly, unintentionally homophobic — writing, in which we can clearly see that he created 'good, respectable' gays vs. 'bad, prodigiously sexual' gays, for example Dugas."

[quote]Dugas was not named in the study but instead listed as "patient O," which stood for "outside California," where one of the researchers was studying cases. This was ultimately misread as "patient 0,"

This is such an important reminder to be cautious about what we "know" from history, and how easily things can be "known" due to human error, bias etc.

The Patient O stories are great but....

The documentary Killing Patient Zero is free on Tubi. It goes into the whole story.

It was really sad: One of the reasons Dugas got tagged with the Patient 0 nonsense was he was really helpful to researchers and provided them with the names of his sex partners (he had a good memory for names).

R99, if you are interested in how HIV spread to the outside world from Zaire (then the Belgian Congo), read the new Freddie Mercury biography. It's not only a great bio of Freddie, but the author twins it with chapters that discuss the spread of the virus which eventually killed Freddie. Highly recommended.

Yes, research has shown that Dugas came along in the middle of the epidemic, not at the beginning. He was probably infected in the mid-70s when the virus had already taken hold in the gay communities in San Francisco and New York City. He spread the disease, but unknowingly for most of the years he was sick, and no more than any other promiscuous jet-setter of that period.

Okay, let's take the Dugas discussion elsewhere, please.

I love Warhol, but feel that his disaster series seemed like a desperate bid for relevancy.

The disaster series had a JG Ballard feel to them.

I wonder if Warhol read Crash?

OP, who died and left you moderator?

I don’t buy that Andy was “in love” with Basquiat . I think he was his mentor/parental figure. They didn’t mention that Basquiat was living in a loft on Great Jones street owned by Andy. Andy was his landlord, as was Halston, who rented Andy’s Montauk house every summer.

Halston used to have his cocaine delivered by helicopter from Manhattan to Montauk. How fucking 70s is that?

I know it’s off topic but thank you for explaining the ATBPO controversy.

I think Andy festishized Basquiat. Was Halston also the one who had meals delivered from Le Cirque or something via helicopter? What were they supposed to do, cook?

The Warhol curator and her queer theory was on overload. Pedantic and the action screeched to a halt whenever she came on. The interviews with Warhol colleagues who were not quite out being challenged on queer identity and content. Both sides could have came off better. Cringey. Also, Jon Gould had the most unfortunate hairline and haircut.

Didn't see it mentioned, but there was a pretty good documentary about the entire patient zero thing made a few years ago.

R112 Yes, Halston was the one who had meals delivered via helicopter. Wouldn't it make more sense to just hire a cook?

r114 Killing Patient Zero has already been mentioned. It's free on Tubi.

Oh, for God's sake!

Here's a thread for Gaëtan Dugas.

Can we continue discussing Andy now?

I find this very strange, just like so many who didn’t/don’t want to see death, illness and especially AIDS in Andy’s work, there are people here who seem deeply uncomfortable with it too.

Yes, it seems relevant since AIDS was all around Andy and his friends and he was terrified of it. It was very much part of his life and times and so poorly understood at that time.

I think Christopher Makos came off pretty badly in the last episode. He seemed to be denying that Andy would even think about or contextualize AIDS in his work. I wonder why he got so defensive about that?

[quote] The disaster series had a JG Ballard feel to them.

Or Weegee.

Warhol painted the death & disaster series (Electric Chair, Car Crash, etc.) in 1962-64 and a series of skulls and shadows in the mid-70s, so I'm surprised that anybody familiar with his work would be resistant to the idea that his later work addressed AIDS and/or death.

Makos comes of an age and was mentored by Warhol the master of artists who do NOT explain their work and certainly do don't "confirm" a pedantic middlebrow meaning of their work that is presented to them for confirmation by a non art person. Warhol would campily offer 1 liner explanations of his work in interviews, of course, but they was to put people on, dismiss them (because Warhol is ironic and snarky) and to provoke interest and further his "Andy Warhol" personae.

Listen to Andy talking about that blowhard Julian Schnabel.

Almost everyone around Andy was a hideous snob and social climber. Even the Warhol "superstars" who were gutter people. They were all the opposite of self-effacing and the were all "on" all the time. Andy was the only one who wasn't at his core a snob.

r121 "Warhol painted"

Now I’m wondering if Jed came off so well because everyone else featured was such a raging asshole? (Not really - I still think he was an Angel).

I did like Andy’s assistant - Benjamin. Thought his insights were interesting and he seemed sweet.

R125 Funny, years ago when I toiled in the art world in New York, I remember having an exchange of letters - yes, actual paper letters – with Benjamin, who was doing PR for some artist or gallery at the time. It's always fun to see someone you know or have dealt with on TV, and if you've lived in NY or LA, it can happen fairly often. Anyway, he was pleasant as I recall.

French & Saunders Warhol/Factory spoof.

[quote]Yes, it seems relevant since AIDS was all around Andy and his friends and he was terrified of it. It was very much part of his life and times and so poorly understood at that time.

Yes, this is what struck me when watching the documentary too. I honestly didn't bring it up to derail the thread but as part of the conversation about Andy Warhol.

Haha thanks for that R127. I love French and Saunders! Is that Nigel Planer playing Andy? Good choice!

I don't think Andy lusted for Basquiat....Andy was an old school bigot. He enjoyed mentoring/using Basquiat and he certainly enjoyed gossiping about him but I don't think Andy lusted for non-white men.

I watched the first episdoe last night. It's ok. Not a fan of the overall tone of it all....too downer and melancholy all the time.

Andy had a sense of humor. It's obvious when you read the Diaries. It annoyed me that all the Andy voiceovers were delivered in a deadpan, serious monotone even if it was about something that Andy would have been amused by. They're using his "Andy" public persona to represent him all the time and that's not what this series should be about...the Diaries are the reveal behind the curtain of what Andy thought about everything.

They're leaving out the fact he was a funny, snarky, gay man gossipin' about his contemporaries the morning after partying with them!

He was one of US!

It's odd that his celebrity skewering has taken a back seat in this. That was the whole reason the diaries were a hit.

R130 Did you miss the fact that the Andy voice is done by a fucking computer?

R132 No. I didn't miss that fact. I'm complaining about the editorial decision to use that voice which was a computer generated voice that used actor Bill Irwin's REAL voice in its creation.

Yes, I pay attention to the credits.

The series has an agenda and it's rather a tiresome agenda of pushing "queer theory" and dwelling on and really emphasizing Andy's "sad love life" because that's the only interesting thing about him....when, it's one of the least interesting things about him.

Did Farrah Fawcett not have to pay Warhol for her portraits? It seems odd that Andy would give them to her without charging the standard $60k.

The Pittsburgh neighborhood in which Andy first lived in South Oakland -- 73 Orr Street, among others there -- was right next to the city's most populous black neighborhood, the Hill District. In this series Andy's mother Julia discussed an incident in which she says "her Andy" was assaulted by some black kids from the Hill. It took him a month to recover, she said. He wouldn't have been more than 6 years old. The family moved away shortly thereafter to a different part of South Oakland (or Soho as it's sometimes called), to 3252 Dawson Street, within walking distance of the city's cultural and educational center. If Warhol was frightened by black people, or if he was "an old school bigot", it was justified, R129.

R135 Being picked on by Black people doesn't really justify being racist.

A bunch of kids harrassing an obvious gay kid is pretty (and sadly) universal.

Andy was very obviously "different" and would have been picked on a lot by all kinds of people. Did he hate women because some mean gurls teased him once? Loathe Italians because some Italian boys called him a fag and pushed him to the ground in 6th grade?

That's a pretty weak argument/excuse for racism.

The incident most likely impacted his entire life, R136. He was terrified of school, which aggravated a neurological condition, Sydenham Chorea, or St. Vitus Dance, which also lead to vitiligo and serious concomitant social development issues. Warhol was hugely impacted. Your argument is weaker.

Or, more likely, he was your average racist white 20th century man like the majority of his peers.

St. Vitus Dance leads to vitiligo? In what medical science?

Picked on? Nearly murdered.

which was followed by*

[quote]Did you miss the fact that the Andy voice is done by a fucking computer?

There is plenty of footage of Warhol talking and the generated voice is closer to Warhol's then what Bowie was doing with the sing song voice.

Has anybody here read Blake Gopnik’s biography of Andy? If so, would you recommend it?

Wow, Catherine G looks just like Brigid.

R143 I’ve read it, along with a lot of other Warhol books. It’s good, but very long. Honestly, it took me a long time to get through and if you’re wanting more of an entertaining biography because you’re just learning about Andy I’m not sure that’s what I would recommend. It’s the most recent Warhol bio I’ve read and I did feel like it wasn’t simply a rehash of other stuff— it did ADD to my impression of who Warhol was and was interesting— but towards the end of the book it felt a bit like homework just because it was so extensive in what it covered. Holy Terror by Bob Colacello is a fun read, but obviously a bit biased since Bob is a part of the story. I’ve also read Warhol by Victor Bockris. I don’t remember what I thought of it because I read it so long ago, but looking at it on my bookshelf, it appears shorter than Gopnik’s. Of course the diaries are a fun read that you can pick up and put down easily. I love the Philosophy of Andy Warhol. Let us know what you decide!

When I retire I'm going to write a Yoko Ono biography. Unless this one is really good.

Sigh. My point is, they're basing the narrative voice on Andy's put on public persona, aka "weird, spacy, asexual, borderline retarded" Andy...which wasn't the real Andy at all but the character he created to face the world. It was part of his Brand.

And, again, it's very obvious a lot of people haven't read the Diaries.

R145 Thanks! I've read the Diaries (of course) and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, but I read both ages ago. I used to be very interested in his Factory-period, but not so much after that. I'll have to look up Bob Colacello's book (which I think I might have read, but I can't remember) and the Victor Bockris. I wasn't sure about the Gopnik one, only because of its length. I've been a lazy reader, but if it's good I'll deal with the tome.

Bob Colacello’s book is an interesting companion piece to the Diaries; Bob kept a diary too, and he often comments on the same thing Andy does, but from his own perspective. He tends to become very whiny by the time the book Exposures is being written.

The Bockris book is good for its summary of Andy’s life prior to 1970.

"Andy, look at me! Look at what you created!"

Rather than the Gopnik biography, which is longwinded, fatuous and clueless, read the book by Wayne Koestenbaum, which is not exactly a straightforward bio but gives you much more to think about.

[quote]I don't think Andy lusted for Basquiat....Andy was an old school bigot.

Yeah, that takes some getting used to in the Diaries, you get the impression that he had finally taught himself to say "Negro" instead of the other n-word, and he has some very Aryan ideas of beauty. When Mick Jagger dumped Bianca suddenly Andy was saying all sorts of sketchy stuff about her being Puerto Rican and cooking smelly food and having b.o. and a fat ass.

r147, Andy is constantly saying in the Diaries that he was "too excited" to talk to someone and so stayed quiet, or "didn't know what to say" and said the wrong thing on accident, so I don't think it's fair to say that anyone who thinks that was his real personality is just ignorant. In the last few pages I've read, he's said several times he made faux pas while at an event. He felt the need to explain himself a lot, at least to Pat. It makes it seem less like a put-on personality than an actual issue that he often tried to mask by pretending to be an asshole who didn't care about anything.

Guy Pearce was excellent casting for Andy, but Factory Girl was such bullshit. Edie Sedgwick came from a family rotten with mental health problems. She was probably molested by her father and/or her brothers, and she'd spent time in Silver Hill, a posh mental health facility, long before she went to New York and took up with Andy. They were only close for about a year.

Edie was a crazy junkie who died young, and that would have been true whether or not she ever met Andy Warhol and became a Superstar.

[quote] and he has some very Aryan ideas of beauty.

Andy’s idea of physical perfection was someone like Nico or Paul America, but he dumped them after a few years just the same. It was always out with the old and in with the new.

Seeing Jimmy Fallon in that clip really takes you out of the scene. Yuck.

Was there ever a confrontation like that in RL? Or was it just for the movie?

Factory Girl is so disturbing. It made me want to just through the screen and yell at these people. Andy comes off as a monster.

R32, I agree.

It really bothered me that Jon was so obsessed with physically distancing himself from Andy whenever both were seen in public, by “straight “ acting.

His homophobia was a way to invalidate Andy’s genuine need for affirmation and love which he desired so desperately to manifest from and with Jon.

Sadly, Andy had internalized the trauma of having been shot, and he conflated that incident’s resulting injuries with a sign that he could now be proof positive of his disfigurements were no long subjective, as had become real… a real burden of shame for him to deny himself the true love he had been offered from Jed.

Andy could not allow himself to be loved by emotionally available men.

That saddens me on the most tender of ways.

Poor Andy, but not poor Andy.

He was no fool. He denied himself love purposefully, because he could bare another wound and survive it a second time around.

Murphy did an EXCELLENT job with this one, I must say. ❤️

I’m trying to imagine watching this as a younger person whiteout much exposure to the Warhol saga.

It’s a drastically different portrayal of Warhol than say Factory Girl. It almost excuses the earlier portrayal and somewhat dismisses it “this is the real Andy, emotional and loving, not that silly public persona of indifference and callousness.”

I am starting to think that streaming in general is going soft.

Like the streaming companies don’t do raw, truth telling type stories anymore. Or even push the boundaries with fiction like Game of Thrones.

There seems to be an overall sanitization to streaming productions. It’s ironic because you had companies like HBO that were really pushing the boundaries before streaming but all the air has seemed to have left that type of production.

Streaming has too much of a sticky sweetness to it. I’d love to see something like Boardwalk Empire or The Wire come out of streaming.

I think people are just overwhelmed with "raw" and "gritty" in real life so what they want on TV is something nice and soothing.

Blake Gopnik's book Warhol is anything but "fatuous, longwinded, and clueless"., whereas Kostenbaum's stale Marxist lit-crit approach to Warhol is so tired so 1980s. He tries dressing this mutton as lamb by seasoning it with trendy Queer Theory. Feh. Gopnik serves a feast for The Warhol junkie. It's a honking big tome you can dip into at almost any point and be satisfied, His approach is rigorous and thorough. He's the only biographer who had full access to the Warhol archives in Pittsburgh. He knocks down many hackneyed myths about Warhol, and he's correct to call Warhol a genius. He also voices some reservations about his morality. I would also second the recommendation for Colecello's book, Holy Terror as a companion read to the Diaries. Very funny.

Christies online Warhol auction. My fave is Jon Gould in a bathing suit next to a fully clothed Warhol.

How true is the “Andy kept this diary because of the IRS” story ?

Andy had been on Nixon’s enemy list for his 1972 portrait of Nixon for the McGovern campaign-that is true, and what started the IRS auditing his taxes.

Wouldn’t the IRS have pulled back when Nixon resigned? I never heard of any other celebrity on the Enemies List getting annual audits.

Also, he went to the White House to multiple state dinners during the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, he was invited to the Carter and first Reagan inauguration, and he put Nancy Reagan on the cover of Interview.

I would have thought his tax issues ended when Ford came to power.

Maybe he started it due to the IRS and kept it because he liked it.

I'm only about 150 pages into the Diaries and I already know that Diana Vreeland was a psychopath.

R166 All you need to do is LOOK at her to know she was a sociopath, but a fabulous one.

Psychopath, sociopath, whatever. You get my point.

Halston, too. Andy was afraid of him and his mood swings and shrieking fits. Ditto Truman Capote. Warhol, the "weirdo", comes off as an oasis of sanity among many of his pals.

I was kind of surprised that Fred Hughes wasn't mentioned more in the doc.

How was Diana Vreeland a psychopath?

Btw I don’t know who Jon Gould was kidding, he looks like a mincing fairy in some of the pics in r163. Bob Colacello said in Holy Terror that he was pursuing some Paramount exec’s daughter and was trying to marry her-this was around the time he had already tested positive for HIV.

He looked like a spider.

Halston's cocaine addiction basically ruined him. It made him nuts.

R14 It really seems like a certain type of fashion designer needs a partner to pick up the pieces/keep the business in line, such as: Pierre Berge, Giancarlo Giammetti, Robert Duffy, Domenico De Sole, etc.

R164 When I was looking for the story of the Lewis’ art collection to explain another issue with IRS and Andy Warhol, I wasn’t planning on findings a direct link him explained, but here it is. The Lewises were owners of the Best appliance stores that were hugely profitable in the 1960s and 1970s. The husband, after a heart attack, was told to find a hobby, so he took up art collecting. He became interested in contemporary art and started to trade store merchandise for paintings. The IRS did not like this as it cut out taxes on very high priced items both ways, which was money the government wasn’t getting. Part of that IRS coming down on Andy Warhol and other successful artists of the time was related to this. Meanwhile the Lewises amassed one of the finest collections of 1960s and 1970s art. They also had a very interesting program in support of young architects to design their stores with some of the most intriguing and surreal commercial contemporary architecture.

Ah I remember when my father swapped a really nice old jukebox for a piece of artwork by Peter Max, but then Max backed out of the deal and my father got the jukebox back. I never considered the tax implications involved.

For those interested, here’s an article about the Best stores architecture.

Very appropriate for Andy’s grave to have a webcam….reminds me of his early film Empire—-only this camera is on 24/7. Creepy.

R177 have you seen the Zodiac artwork Peter Max did in the late 60s? It was for a New York newspaper. There were twelve centerfold foldouts.

This documentary confirmed to me that one of my high school boyfriends was and remains GAY 🌈💫

A Warhol Marilyn is coming up for $200 million. Will be interesting to see the final price. I believe his record is $117.

[quote]Btw I don’t know who Jon Gould was kidding

When I watched the documentary and heard his voice, I was like: "Yeah, you aren't kidding anyone!"

R177/Zemen no I haven’t. That’s a little before my time. My Dad didn’t meet Peter Max until the late 80s and I think the jukebox swap was probably 1990. As a hippy he had been a huge Max fan and it was disappointing for him to learn that Max was not a man of his word..

The BEST stores were amazing! Pity they are all still around, repurposed. They would be completely contemporary, still.

Those BEST store designs were amazing — so bold!

I was in that room somewhere, it was the premiere of "Back To School" and where I said hi to Warhol.

I enjoyed the documentary and loved "spending" time with Andy.

I never understood the "genius" of Basquiat and why he was considered the most important artist of the new generation. I hated the portrait he did of himself and Andy.

[quote]The joke goes, "How do you get four really gay guys to share a barstool? Flip it over."

I remember being at a dinner with a bunch of lawyers from my old firm while I was still closeted. One of them told that joke. We all laughed at the silly fags.

Does not bring back fond memories.

Basquiat was amazing for about a two-year period (mid '81 to mid '83) when he was still very young and the drugs fueled his creativity rather than drowning it. After that his addictions really took hold and his painting became repetitive and uninteresting.

"Basquiat" filmed a lot on my street, Elizabeth Street in NoLita.

But how many angry Negro heads does one need?

At some point in the diaries doesn't Andy say something about him and another guy jerking off and pissing on canvases?

YOU OLD PEOPLE WANTING TO EXTEND THE CONVERSATION ARE A BIT PATHETIC.

Hi Bill! Don't be rude!

And what do YOU contribute, Mr. Bill Taylor?

I’m the person who posted about Best Products/Warhol connection, and I just stumbled upon this video about the store, the fabulous architecture and the bankruptcy. There are a few shots of Warhol and the Lewises and the corporate headquarters hung with Warhols. But best of all it shows off the unique showrooms and tells of their fate.

R160 What on earth are you talking about with regards to streaming having too much "sticky sweetness" have you somehow missed the proliferation of true crime documentaries, in particular?

Essay

Why didn’t Warhol ever paint any of his “superstars”? Then he could’ve given them their portrait as a possible future investment. I know some them were crazed drug addicts who would’ve sold it for a bag of heroin, but still.

You answered your own question r200.

He knew they would have sold it for drugs. Did he paint anybody who worked for him besides Bob and Jed?

Thanks for posting that article R199.

R200, the “superstars” were a part of Warhol’s Factory years. That ended when he was shot.

Didn't Bianca Jagger sue over TAWD's? I remember seeing a clip of Jerry Hall on Letterman or some such laughing about it. It was hysterical because she was basically low key mocking BJ by saying, paraphrased, " Why would I care if Any said I have BO?" She laughed as she said it. Andy did make that comment about JH, but he also complicated her at BJ's expense by saying that while Bianca and MJ's daughter was beautiful, any children he may have with JH would be STUNNING, LOLOL.

I vaguely recall reading that Viva IIRC said she pulled several silk screen passes with Andy one day and asked him if she could keep one one of the prints. Andy offered it up for 2 thousand dollars. She said she was hurt and resentful about this. She hadn't even $200.

I'm not at all surprised at that, R205. I'm reading Gopnik's excellent bio of Warhol right now, and it's clear that despite the Aspie sprite persona he cultivated, Warhol was a stone-cold hustler and starfucker who always had one eye on his bank account. He wasn't giving away anything for free.

Considering that this was a Ryan Murphy production, I found it surprisingly good. It was great seeing the old footage and video clips, and commentary from the people who actually knew him (as well as anybody could) -- Benjamin Liu, Bob Colacello, Vincent Fremont, Chris Makos, Freddy Brathwaite, Pat Hackett (etc.), and it was fun seeing the surviving Jay twins. I could have done without the contrived drivel of Jessica Beck, the insipid pixie who runs the Warhol Museum, and the self-satisfied, go-nowhere musings of the enporched Glenn "you know?" Ligon. Was wild seeing mama Warhola in that wifebeater, and the completely cloned identical young Gould twins. And when did Luc Sante become Lucy?

R207 Sante just very recently came out as a transwoman. Like in the last few months.

I liked the series but like all Murphy productions, it was longer than it needed to be. Some of the episodes were especially draggy, like the one with them all going to visit Jon's family in Massachusetts.

I think they overdid the Gould material. And, the "poor ole lonely Andy" bit was overdone and depressing.

They ignored Andy's greed and the way he (and Fred Hughes and Company) pursued some really unsavory clients like the Pahlavis and the Marcos. There was good material there.

And, Andy's "romance" with Paulette Goddard was really funny.

And, they ignored the piss paintings, for the most part! And, really could have done more with "naughty" Andy and his hijinks with the druggy Studio 54 crowd and Victor Hugo.

Also, NO Brigid Berlin?!?!? Really? And, they could have talked a bit more about how Andy distanced himself from the 60s era Factory people. He does talk about them in the Diaries and it's usually either sad or snarky.

He was really vicious whenever he mentioned former Factory people, who were often psychologically damaged and vulnerable people. He’d even make fun of their demise. He had zero empathy for “losers.”

Fuck you Ryan.

R210 Quite a lot of the Factory people WERE losers and users.

And, then bitter Bettys because they didn't become real Superstars but had to settle for being "Warhol Superstars".

Did Andy "use" them? Sure, to a degree but they also used him. It was a two way street. And, quite a few of them became "names" that we still talk about.

The problem with collaborative art collective things is that not everyone is going to become a Star. Not how it works. Also why communism never works because people are always butt hurt if they're not slightly better/bigger/richer/more powerful than anyone else in the collective.

Andy had no tolerance for laziness or self-pity. Beneath his airy-fairy facade, he was a tough little hustler who starfucked his way to fame and fortune. He respected others who could come from nothing and make something of themselves, especially if they could help connect him with more fame, notoriety, or people with money.

Everyone throws around the term "star fucker" about Andy but...he didn't really use "stars" to become a name. At least not in the sense that he used relationships with them to achieve his initial fame. (Unless you count being smart enough to make art that utilized 'Stars' like the Taylor and Marilyn and Elvis paintings). He was just a really hard worker who worked the room in the 50s when he was an illustrator and he became a very successful one but...successful commerical illustrators don't really became international names. He didn't start the Factory until after he had established himself as a professional. And, then the artistic fame and success came with the whole Factory branding which was about making yourself and your ensemble of collaborators INTO stars.

Now, he loved to hobnob with the stars and certainly pursued them for portraits and covers and for Interview but....that's what ya gotta do.

Some of you might benefit from actually watching the series.

Why is no one talking about Rob Lowe's appearance in this? The documentary is basically outing him as bisexual, or at minimum a casting couch pretty boy, when he was first starting out. It's obvious that he was entertaining the gay mafia when he was young. It was no accident that they mentioned that he was parading around in a tank top around Barry Diller, Calvin Klein and the other gays.

And now in his old age, he's married to a makeup artist and decorates houses for fun. Yeah, he's closeted.

I've always thought that Rob Lowe is too beautiful to be straight.

I always thought Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise fucked when they did The Outsiders together.

I've always gotten the feeling Rob Lowe is/was hypersexual, so I could imagine him being predominantly straight but also fucking men occasionally, especially when younger. Or maybe he just played up to gay men with power for his own benefit, or ego?

Not that he wouldn't have done whatever he needed to do to get to wherever he wound up, but I really don't think that Rob Lowe is gay. I've heard too many insider anecdotes (all the predictably dull female-groupie stuff), not to mention the good trouble he got into back in the '80s/'90s with his "underage-fan," captured on video. Sorry, guys.

Marilyn was already dead by the time Andy exhibited his "Marilyns" in November 1962 (she died that August), but Elvis was still alive when Andy did his "Elvis" in 1963. Wonder how Elvis reacted to Andy's portraits or if he ever owned any?

[quote]not to mention the good trouble he got into back in the '80s/'90s with his "underage-fan," captured on video. Sorry, guys.

That famous night included a very hot naked other guy in a threeway. And it looks like Rob sucks his dick briefly while he is fucking the girl.

I've seen the tape. Rob does not suck dick.

Jed designed houses for Barbra Streisand and Richard Gere. He must have been very well-off when he died.

R224 wasn't there only $100,000 left in his accounts?

He may have made good money, but also spent good money.

^That's the best, isn't it. Why leave money? Spend it. (Well, actually some bold, he who dies owing the most money wins.)

R226 that's what I did! Plus no estate tax on debts for Libby to deal with!

[quote]Now, he loved to hobnob with the stars and certainly pursued them for portraits and covers and for Interview but....that's what ya gotta do.

It's more than that, though. In his Diaries he complains about seeing a movie with Richard Gere, who he said was a bad actor and not a handsome movie star like the old stars were, then weeks later meets Gere who obviously wanted to meet Andy, and Andy is so starstruck he can hardly contain himself. Suddenly Gere is handsome, intelligent, a big star that Andy wants to follow.

That kind of thing happens a lot with Andy. His opinion about people waxes and wanes based on their celebrity at that moment.

This series did the impossible...

They made Warhol dull.

Across his life Andy was an artist. That he was a star fucker is secondary. Andy's art was about the zeitgeist and often it was about people in the spotlight. He very cleverly positioned himself in the line of "court painter" and "portraitist" and then he delivered on that in spades. He made other kinds of art, too, you know. He was John Singer Sargent writ much larger.

I think Rob Lowe is a typical narcissist. For him, sex is another way to get the things he wants, so he's essentially pansexual. See Also: Alec Baldwin, George Clooney.

Where was Joey?

R232 Joey was part of the Factory (Ingrid Berlin, et al.) and the Diaries were written post Factory....the inclusion of Jed and those Factory bits were to give context to the late 70s

Jed is also present in the Diaries from the very first entry.

Joe D was mentioned a few times in the Diaries. When discussing his current situation, Andy even said, "well he's still got that big dick".

Now Joey and Jed - that's a combo I could get behind!

Honestly, I wish he’d written that diary the 60s and early 70s. Bianca Jagger is right when she says that nothing bores her more than having to talk about her time at “Studio 54.”

What the hell else on earth would anyone want to talk to Bianca Jagger about?

LOL...Bianca was one of the biggest disco whores around but she just wants to be remembered for all her "humanitarian work".

As Mrs. Mick Jagger, ex-model and socialite.

So, what is the story with the white horse? Did she really ride a white horse to Studio 54? Or did someone bring a horse and she just sat on it?

I guess she just sat on it.

^Question answered in no time! Thanks, mate!

PS, is that Victor Hugo behind the horse's head? Or just some other moustachioed fellow?

R243, everyone looked like that then.

That is Victor Hugo next to the horse, yes, even though everyone did have that look at the time.

Victor Hugo was such a gross nutjob. Everybody used to wonder WTF Halston saw in him. Yes, he had a big dick but so did a million other guys. Hugo was certifiable and nobody could stand him.

Just like Mapplethorpe, Halston was obsessed with black and Latino dick. Spoiled white boys looking for a bit of the other.

Yeah, the Victor Hugo appeal (other than the big dick) is a head scratcher.

By all accounts, he was an annoying shit stirrer.

And, frankly, not that appealing.

He just looks like an annoying shit stirring South American whore.

Didn't anyone notice that the mustachioed gent at R241 is pantless?

I always assumed that Victor's appeal lay in the fact that he knew a lot of sketchy characters and so was the drug dealer/pimp for all of the fancy 70s A-Gays.

Halston always had a liking for seaminess and drama. It was the flipside of his highly structured, closeted professional existence. Unfortunately, the seaminess overcame his discipline in the late 70s, leading to the ruination of his business and his own death 10 years later.

I couldn't believe it when I read in the Diaries that Andy had gotten together a present of some of his own drawings as a for someone's birthday, then on the way to the party Victor pitched a fit and demanded the drawings for himself, which Andy handed over.

Someone in that group needed to smack some humility and sense into Victor. He was absolutely infuriating.

* "Andy had gotten together a present of some of his own drawings for someone's birthday"

I've had my coffee this morning so there's no excuse for that mess of a sentence, sorry.

R239, would you stand in front of innocent civilians, face their firing squad and tell the armed men, "If you kill them you kill me?" Bianca did that. She also worked hard for humanitarian causes. Google it.

R252, we're talking about Studio 54. Everybody who went there was still unable to move their lips before late afternoon the following day. So, not to worry.

Andy used to leave places like Studio and go home to wholesome, cooked meals prepared by his live-in housekeepers and watch old movies on tv and chat on the phone with Brigid Berlin, his best friend. He was hip enough to know when to be square (paraphrasing Lou Reed) and keep himself grounded. He talked to his Pittsburgh brothers once a week, asked after family there, and went to church. There was performance Andy and the real Andy.

I've always thought Andy's relationship with his brothers (and nieces/nephews) was quite sweet. He could have easily ignored them and moved on with his life, but he didn't.

I loved the series. And I love Warhol. I really think he was a genius.

I have no opinion of his personal life, but I suspect maybe he could have gotten laid more. But I say that about almost everyone.

The more we learn about Warhol, the more it appears that he was his greatest artwork, virtually the invention of a personality that wasn't who he really was.

It comes out in the diaries (I mean the book), where he's very observant and smart about everything, whereas out in public he would pretend to be vacuous and soft. Or he'd be all in for the Studio 54 circuit and la dolce vita, yet he remained close to his family back in Pennsylvania.

He has to be one of the most fascinating people of the twentieth century.

I bought “Uncle Andy’s” for my nephews a long time ago. It’s a sweet book by his brother about his kids getting to go to the big city to visit their famous uncle. Warhol may have been the enigma of NYC, but was just a beloved and intriguing family member to his nieces and nephews, who ran rampant around his townhouse and had a ball. The Warholas were a loyal clan, they had been through a lot together as immigrants. His family may not have understood everything going on in his life, but they embraced him unconditionally.

Interesting that Andy would eat a meal at home, and sometimes schedule multiple parties a night (including dinner parties) to be seen and photographed. Didn't usually stay long either.

All part of working for him.

R262 According to the diaries, the food was often really bad at the big parties he attended, so I don't blame him for eating a real meal before going out. At one point he muses about "why don't rich people understand food?" or something along those lines.

It's also telling the way he would talk about "rich people" as if he wasn't one. Inborn Pittsburgh inadequacy dies hard.

Andy actually seems to not like his family much. He talks about hating it when his niece Eva showed up to get a signature during a visit to Denver, because he'd purposely been trying to avoid her and her father, his brother Paul. He also doesn't like James, the one who eventually wrote "Uncle Andy's." Said he hated James's mother so he was purposely mean to James.

He's mean enough that I laughed out loud when Andy started thinking that God himself was responsible for a small fire in the Factory right after Andy had been a little tetchy with his nephew Paulie, the former priest. Served him right.

He said something that everybody should always keep in mind about (the majority of the) the rich and famous. To paraphrase, "If people knew how dumb they were they'd never want to meet them."

Did Andy really piss and jerkoff on some of his paintings?

R266 I don’t think he did any of that personally, he had plenty of guys around happy to do that for him and one assumes the part he’d enjoy most was watching that. I feel like the omnipresent Victor Hugo was known to claim he was a big contributor to those works.

R267 OK, after posting I decided to look it up. There’s a specific diary entry at the start where he has a worker wait to pee in the morning until he comes to work, and about Victor Hugo recruiting bathhouse boys for piss and cum, but it also mentions him trying, but feeling it takes to much work. It sounds like when he did it he over thought what the design of it would look like and that defeated the randomness he wanted, so he didn’t see himself as a good donor.

R266 R267 The piss and cum paintings are part of the "Oxidation" series. Apparently Ronnie Cutrone, Victor Hugo, and a whole bunch of guys Victor H. picked up at the baths contributed. I read elsewhere that Walter Steding also pissed on the canvases. Andy didn't contribute any fluids.

R268 Jinx!

[quote]Ronnie Cutrone

Cat-killing psychopath. Andy stopped talking about him for quite some time after the cat murdering incident (except to say that Ronnie tried to file an insurance claim with Andy's employee's insurance over the injuries he got while murdering the cats) but it's 1981 now, as I'm reading the Diaries, and Ronnie's starting to get mentioned quite a bit again. Disappointing.

[quote]Cat-killing psychopath. Andy stopped talking about him for quite some time after the cat murdering incident

Ronnie Cutrone murdered cats, r271? I can't find anything about that. Was it like Otterness?

R257 there's a snippet of an interview early on in this with his older brother. His older brother speaks of walking Andy to school in order to best protect him from bullies and he spoke as though he was proud to do it. I liked that quite a bit.

Andy also had his own mother living with him for years. At one point she sadly had to go to a nursing home and I'd bet that he picked out a nice one.

r272, it's really horrible so I'm not going to tell the details here, what I said is bad enough, but it's August 8, 1978 and the insurance thing is Sept. 6, 1978.

Did you even try to look for it, though? It's right there in the Diaries.

[quote]Did you even try to look for it, though? It's right there in the Diaries.

Thanks, r274, I did google it, but only came up with "Reigning Cats". I guess I must have missed the mention in the Diaries.

R265, I love that. I've often thought that myself (and the few I have met don't do anything to disabuse me of this idea).

I found a .pdf version of the Diary online, so we don't have to run to our copies to look things up!

A friend was visiting Andy in the late 70s when he said, "Feel free to piss anywhere". It was while he was doing the piss paintings. Being piss shy, my friend declined.

I thought Jed seemed really nice until they showed that movie he directed. What kind of sick mind shows a baby being thrown out a window and splattering on the sidewalk?

[quote] What kind of sick mind

Typed on a website with multiple near-masturbatory threads fawning over men who murder their entire families.

I'm skimming through the diaries for the first time in years, and there are some laugh out loud moments. I forgot that Andy loved Grease 2:

[quote]"Went home and was picked up by Richard Weisman to go to the Grease II premiere. Jon was taking Cornelia Guest. The movie was everything I dreamed for. I loved the Pfeiffer girl and the Caulfield boy and Pat Birch’s direction was great. It was so good. John Travolta is so dumb for not doing Grease II. What is he doing now? Can you imagine being a star and not working? Do you sit in your palace and take (laughs) acting lessons, or what?"

Wow. Andy really tried to change himself for Jon Gould. He must have been on speed. He looks crazed in some of the photos. Bob C. said something like: If Jed thought Andy was cheap [which he was] he showed Jon he was generous. Jon wasn't into Andy and Christopher Makos had to really pimp him out. He told him he would be happy if he just hang in there. Makos probably told Andy to pull out the checkbook and go wild, which he did. I wonder if Jon's house was in Andy's name. When nothing happened between them Andy said it was probably because he and Jon were "both girls."

I know people recommended Bob Colacello's book but it's absolutely infuriating. He writes like a rightwing tabloid hack, which I guess he kind of was. He'll quote someone who said that they were friends with Jon and when visiting him, that Jon and Andy seemed comfortable at home, then say "Andy let Jon's friends come over? Was that more revenge against Jed?" and it's just... I mean, where did that come from?

Also, when Bob claimed no socialites ever called Andy anymore after he quit, I knew that wasn't true because I'd read the Diaries, but I also knew Andy was getting sideways comments from some of these socialites who were saying "don't come near me" because he was gay and they were terrified of AIDS. Gossip columns were asking if Andy was infected. It just felt gross to read that people were avoiding Andy because he was gay and so many colleagues had died of HIV, but see Bob try to make it sound like everyone was avoiding Andy because Bob wasn't around anymore.

Andy looked ill at the end. Emaciated. I had a hard time believing it wasn't AIDS. Why would he emulate that look if he didn't want the suspicions?

R284 He WAS ill at the end -- of chronic gallbladder issues! One of the symptoms of which is pain and discomfort after eating, so naturally he would look emaciated. He wasn't "emulating a look," moron.

[quote] Chronic gallbladder disease involves gallstones and mild inflammation. In such cases, the gallbladder may become scarred and stiff. Symptoms of chronic gallbladder disease include complaints of gas, nausea and abdominal discomfort after meals and chronic diarrhea.

Read the Diaries, cunt. He was intentionally starving himself in the late 80s.

r284, I'm reading the Diaries right now, he's been talking CONSTANTLY about losing weight to keep himself at 115 lbs. and he does things like order sweetbreads at a dinner, knowing he hates the food and won't eat it.

Then after saying he's going to stop eating, he says he's scared that he's underweight, then he starts talking about how horrible he feels because he ate some pizza at the office and now he's going to weigh 126 lbs. and how horrible that is.

Yes, he has gallbladder problems and he mentions that sometimes, but I feel like he had an eating disorder on top of that as well.

This all goes back way before the AIDS epidemic. I know you're trolling because there isn't a single person on here who says the "he looks sick, must have AIDS" thing as a genuine comment, but I figure some truth needed to be injected here now that you showed up to stink up the thread.

Were you around or paying attention in 1987? It was widely believed he died of AIDS despite what was being said, denials being common then for the sudden death of gay men who looked EMACIATED. Sorry to spoil your happy bubble -- I love Andy, too -- but this is how it was then. It's another aspect of his life and death that's worth discussing, in my opinion.

R288, there may have been rumors, but the cause of his death were his chronic gall bladder illness and medical negligence.

There is a huge difference between saying "I think it was AIDS because he was emulating the emaciated look" and saying "in 1987, people believed it was AIDS because false causes of death were released for so many gays who died, to try to preserve their reputations."

You said the former, now you're trying to claim you meant the latter. You didn't.

Warhol may have died from AIDS-related illnesses. The hospital was negligent, and deals were made, not least about disclosure. It happens frequently with the rich and powerful. I can think of several within the last few years. It is ridiculous to think that Warhol made himself look ill by starving himself. If he did, then WHY did he? That's the question I asked.

Can't we change thew subject?

Because he was anorexic, dumbass r291. Read the Diaries.

OP = Pat Hackett.

Why is anyone even debating this issue regarding whether or not he had an eating disorder? It is clearly all there in the diaries.

R295 but... but... AIDS!!!

Gurls! Gurls!

You're all stupid!

Andy probably did have some kind of eating disorder but he also struggled with major health issues because that cunt Valerie Solanis shot him in 1968. Not surprisingly, when you're shot in the gut, it fucks up a lot of internal organs and Andy struggled with food and digestion after the shooting.

Andy looked terrible before he died because....he was dying of gall bladder failure.

The "Andy Had AIDS" Troll needs to die in a grease fire.

[quote]Gurls! Gurls!

[quote]You're all cunts!

FIFY

[quote] What kind of sick mind shows a baby being thrown out a window and splattering on the sidewalk?

Incidentally, this movie was written by Pat Hackett, wasn't it?

I think everyone's forgetting that Warhol was thought (by his intimates) to be abstinent sexually out of shyness or something comparable. He would jack off if things became overtly sexual in the office and go into the bathroom to have what Halston liked to call "an organza."

I think this is in the Colacello bio. So if Warhol was not having sex, it wasn't likely that he had AIDS>

I think it is likely Warhol was not having anal sex. "Too much work", his Catholicism, his reticence, his age, etc, etc, - he was certainly sexual and had lovers, however - but almost every single gay man mentioned in the Diaries contracted HIV and developed AIDS and died or made it to the "drug-cocktail" era and escaped an early death. Few exceptions. Some are living with HIV to this day and include a few of Warhol's lovers.

Apparently he did have sex--at least before he got shot and became self-conscious, according to a 2018 New York Times article, "The few lovers still alive talk about his eager, if awkward, maneuvers in bed. He went so far as to take “sex lessons” from a straight couple, according to his former assistant Vito Giallo. Medical records show that Warhol was active enough to need treatment for S.T.D.s."

(NYT link might be paywalled for non-subscribers.)

R301 I do believe that he didn't do anal.

I can't remember if it's in the Diaries or one of the bios but at one point he was at his doctor's and they were doing an anal examination and Andy mournfully said, "No one's been down there for a long time...."

Yes, and we know he was treated for anal warts way back. Thanks, Blake!

Using the "girls girls" meme when the problem is a single troll is stupid. This wasn't a case of both trolls and the people replying to him being stupid, it was just the troll being stupid.

[quote]He talked to his Pittsburgh brothers once a week, asked after family there,

Now that I know that this bullshit came from the "he probably had AIDS troll," it makes more sense. I hadn't said anything because I thought there was some fangurl on here who had this incorrect image of a nice, family-loving Andy, and I didn't want to be mean to them, but it's obviously just a troll who made shit up.

Andy avoids his family all the time, refused to help his nephew artist James out of spite, and just recently in 1984 he was irritated beyond belief when James showed up with his dad, Andy's brother Paul, at the offices. He also refused to talk to his relatives in Denver (they weren't all in Philadelphia) even when he was out there for publicity. They would come to where he was doing a signing to be able to see him and he'd obviously ignore them.

I thought the same thing, R307. And the Philly Warholas supported Andy's ass for years before he became famous.

I agree, R306. I've always thought it's kinda tiresome when people do the "both sides" thing in situations where it's just one person is being a dick.

Why was there more interest in this documentary here over the Halston series?

R310, because Jed was portrayed as an angel who truly loved Warhol. If someone that beautiful could actually love someone as repulsive as Warhol, then there might be hope for all us caftan clad queens.

Because Andy Warhol is an icon and still very well-known to the general public. Halston, not so much.

R310 I enjoyed them both. It was a failure of the Halston series not to include Andy and a failure of the Andy doc not to include Halston.

R313, while I'm not a Halston stan, the trajectory of his life and eventual implosion of the same and his career is nothing less than dreadful.

I thought Jed was really handsome Jon Gould not so much ..he had a nice body but that’s it

Jon Gould was fuggo. Jed Johnson was a fucking work of art.

310 If you're referring to the Ryan Murphy series featuring Ewan McGregor as Halston, it's because the Warhol Diaries series featured actual footage (most of the time), and the Halston series was an abysmal reenactment. I adore Ewan McG, but that was just awful.

I'm re-reading the Diaries right now.

They're very funny, something the documentary series chose to ignore in favor of the "tragic doomed loves of Andy Warhol!" through line they went with.

Of course, a lot of the humor was Andy constantly making fun of Brigid Berlin but...who wouldn't want to make fun of Brigid Berlin?

Andy didn't like fat people.

My favorite story from the Diaries about Brigid is his recounting of the time she went to the Oyster Bar at Grand Central and ordered a three pound lobster for herself.

When it arrived she told the waitress it wasn’t a three pound lobster and they argued. Brigid got the waitress to agree to allow Brigid to go back to the kitchen with her and weigh the lobster. They did and it weighed less than a pound.

Or the time Brigid almost got run over while they were walking , getting bumped and pushed to the pavement by a truck. Andy was so thankful she was alive that he treated Brigid to ice cream and she ordered five scoops for herself.

He recounted this in an interview and she got pissed about the five scoop comment, telling Andy she only ate three until Andy listed all the flavors for her.

Or the time he offered to paint her portrait for Christmas and she told him she wanted a washer and dryer.

They need to record Bill Irwin reading the Diaries in his AI Andy voice and release an audiobook version.

Are the diaries on audible?

R318 I completely agree that the humor in the diaries is something the documentary completely chose to ignore. They really didn’t even try to acknowledge or capture it.

I have no idea who that woman is, R320, but she sounds HILARIOUS!

Brigid Berlin. She was a lot to handle, I think.

R423 There's a great 2000 documentary about her called "Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story."

I'm up to Jan. 1978 in my bedtime reading of the Diaries. Bianca and little Jade Jagger are staying at Halton's after Bianca & Mick's breakup.

In what may be the freakiest scene yet depicted, Jade comes up to Andy and asks him for M&Ms, but in druggie language.

"You've got to give me my supply for the night." Then she wanted him to give her more, but in the bathroom. Instead they went under Halton's stairs and, "I slipped the M&Ms to her and she took them like drugs."

R327, related to that is the true story that Bianca was invited to a dinner party. Her phone rang and Jade answered it. It was the host of the dinner party inquiring about Bianca. "My mother's just getting into a cab," she said. "But it takes my mother two hours to get into a cab."

[quote] I think everyone's forgetting that Warhol was thought (by his intimates) to be abstinent sexually out of shyness or something comparable.

He was a voyeur, that’s how he met Ondine. Ondine got mad at Warhol for not participating in the orgy he was observing and wanted to throw him out.

Speaking of the devil (well, Brigid Berlin): Of all the crazy timing, her estate is being auctioned at Doyle tomorrow! You can own a piece of her. There's an "Andy Warhol's New York" auction happening today.

The auction has the photo of Andy meeting the Pope!

R330 Thanks for sharing! I feel like I always miss interesting auctions that happen like this.

Almost entirely off topic, I'm sure, but years ago someone on here asked who "Crazy Matty" was, the guy who was stalking Andy -- well, I guess one of the guys stalking him -- and all we knew is that he'd been married to Genevieve Waite. Well, she was married to a guy named Matthew Reich, who was in Bad, and apparently once was a friend of Patti Smith. He's the guy spacing off in the back on the left at a Patti Smith show.

And now you have the answer to something you never asked!

R333, I can smell Patti from here.

My first thought too, R334!

I prefer Patty Smyth.

The bland, blank naif was a total construction. In private Warhol was cultured, funny, and smart.

His doctors almost had to cut him in two to save his life after Solanas shot him. He ended up with a weak abdominal wall and had to wear a support garment for the rest of his life to hold in the hernias. He had multiple operations to help plug up his leaky gut. He suffered from complex PTSD and was frightened of strangers. He didn't even fuck his live-in boyfriends much.

Ironically, Solanas' shot might have saved his life, as Andy seemed to give up anal sex around the time AIDS was first being introduced into the gay social circles of NYC (early 70s).

From the Gopnik bio, which opens with a description of what the surgeons had to do to save Andy's life in 1968:

[quote]Residents sliced into the veins in Warhol’s elbows, pushing in tubes for fluids and blood; they left scars that could have passed for stigmata in the arms of this lifelong churchgoer. Without wasting time on the usual five-minute hand wash, [primary surgeon] Rossi raced to find the source of the bleeding that was about to turn the body in front of him into a cadaver. He cut open Warhol’s left chest—the first tissues he sliced through were too drained to bleed—and found a nasty rip in the bottom lobe of the lung; a huge metal clamp took care of that for the moment. Even as Rossi worked the anesthetist declared a cardiac arrest. Rossi cut open the sac around Warhol’s heart, untouched by the bullet, and massaged the organ by hand. Death averted, once again.

[quote]Now Rossi cut into Warhol’s right side, slicing from near the entry wound almost to the breastbone as he hunted for damage. Stories have been told of three or four9 bullets piercing Warhol’s body, or of the lead from a single slug ricocheting inside his torso like some hellish pinball game, but Rossi found that a single slug had punched straight through the dying man. He saw where it had nicked the inferior vena cava, a garden-hose vein in the middle of the body that feeds blood from the legs back up to the heart, and that a clot had formed there that was keeping Warhol from instantly bleeding out. Making a new slice into the dying man’s chest, down to the bottom of the breastbone then deep through Warhol’s abs and straight toward his belly button, Rossi ratcheted the mess open with a steel retractor to get a clear look at the damage. “I’d never seen so much blood in my life,” recalled Maurizio Daliana, the chief surgical resident at the time.

[quote]Rossi found more destruction: two holes in the arc of the diaphragm muscle, pierced both right and left as the bullet crossed through Warhol’s body; an esophagus severed from the stomach, so that food and gastric acid were spilling out from below; a liver whose left lobe was mashed and bleeding and a spleen utterly destroyed and spilling more blood than any of the other organs. Solanas’s bullet had also cut a ragged hole in Warhol’s intestines, releasing feces and upping the chances of fatal infection. What was left of the spleen had to go while the liver’s injured lobe was also a hopeless case. Rossi used huge stitches to seal it off from the bulk of the organ so it could be sliced away without losing more blood, which was still flowing into Warhol as a transfusion and out again through the new holes in his body. By the end of the operation, he’d received twelve units of blood; a body without leaks normally holds ten.

[quote][Rossi] returned to the open body and took on the tricky repairs that remained. He tackled the oozing intestines, cutting out the damaged part and stitching together the clean ends. Then there was the severed esophagus to reattach, the most finicky procedure that evening. Rossi had to use the finest silk sutures and make sure the connection to the stomach was perfect. . . . Any misalignment or excess scarring might have left Warhol in misery, unable to swallow properly. He did in fact go on to have trouble eating, remembered one doctor friend. Exhausted from a long and tense operation, Rossi inserted all the standard tubes for drainage and closed up the body whose innards he had gotten to know.12 For convenience and safety—and maybe because he wasn’t at all sure his patient would live to care—Rossi used huge stitches that gave Warhol’s torso a network of Frankenstein scars. He showed them off for years to come.

It's a fucking miracle he survived.

I'm the insufferable one who keeps mentioning that I was reading the Diaries, and I just finished them, and it was kind of grim. I wish I had some kind of pithy remark to make to sum it up, but all I know is that I didn't really understand a lot about Andy before I read the Diaries, and I still don't understand him. But now I'm ready to watch the documentary, finally.

The entry where he has to go home and bleach his eyebrows, to get ready to do an Atari tv commercial, is really funny. He was very witty when he felt talkative.

[quote]I did a double take when somebody claimed that there were only "hints" about Warhol being gay in the diaries when I clearly recall the line "The last time I had Truman Capote's cock in my mouth, I felt nothing."

That's not in the book. Nothing even remotely like it is in the book. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Andy Warhol’s “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” portrait of Marilyn Monroe is going up for auction in New York Monday for an anticipated $200 million.

If it actually sells for that, Christie’s “Lot 36A” — the signed and dated (1964) acrylic and silkscreen ink-on-linen piece — will become the most expensive 20th-century artwork ever to sell at auction. Picasso’s “Women of Algiers” currently holds that honor. It sold for $179.4 million in 2015.

Christie’s has been projecting an image of the artwork, from the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation Zurich, onto the facade of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan since April 29 and will continue to do so until May 13.

The auction record for a Warhol to date is the $104.5 million paid for “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” in 2013.

Joan Robledo-Palop, a collector and CEO of Zeit Contemporary Art in the city, called the excitement over the sale “unprecedented.”

Alex Rotter, head of 20th- and 21st-century art at Christie’s, has called the portrait “the most significant 20th century painting to come to auction in a generation.”

Christie's' publicity campaign for the sale of this picture is completely over the top, "Dynasty"-level lurid trashiness. It's worth looking up the site. The online ad for this auction tomorrow night is just overtly drooling over how much $$$ the auction house hopes to make over the sale of this silkscreened image. I sort of hope that loathsome murderer MBS buys this one too, and houses it in some hidden part of his shithole sand "kingdom."

[quote]The auction record for a Warhol to date is the $104.5 million paid for “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” in 2013.

Can someone please explain to me why that is his highest selling work to date. It's not a work that most people would want in their homes, and it's not a good representation of his work in general. It's surprising to me that one of his iconic Campbell's soup can paintings isn't his highest selling to date.

R344, the sixties were Warhol’s greatest period as an artist, and his “death and disaster” works, such as Silver Car Crash, are very impressive and disturbing “live.” They’re an important part of his work.

People do not spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a painting "because it would look good up above the sofa." How fucking naive can a person be?

Some of Warhol's 70s and 80s works, like the Shadows or Torso series, are really interesting. I'm surprised that they don't get more attention.

Someone totted up the sale prices of the various individual soup can paintings, from the complete, original series of paintings, that have been sold in recent years. The total price, applied to the whole series, indicated that the series had a value of over $300 million dollars.

The LA art dealer who bought the soup cans originally got them for a few thousand. He sold them to MOMA in the 90s for 15 million, and now they are worth many times that. A good circle of investment.

Just watched it. The whole thing to me was a stereotype of the life of gay immigrants child from small town western PA (aka, Ohio) who moves to NYC to make it big. The immigrant drive pushes him to succeed at all costs - using whoever he needs to use to get there. Finding a twink at 40 to fill the hole that success could not. Twink leaves when he gets older - and no longer is willing to be the happy compliant, “just happy to be paid for” boy toy (and has successfully used the sugar daddy to launch his own career which is based on knowing the right people).

Lonely 50+ year old successful gay guy just wants another boy toy. Tries to buy a straight acting guy who is only interested in his success and connections. Realizes that buying companionship doesn’t bring comfort or security. Is left lonely - but rich. And always able to attract young, beautiful boys because of his fame and money.

A stereotype of the mid century American immigrant success story - as a gay man. Money doesn’t bring happiness. Or love. Lesson: choose love and develop deep, non-work relationships over money/“success”. At the end, it’s all that matters.

Jed Johnson left because Andy was apparently incapable of showing love or affection in any tangible way besides giving presents. He was moody and controlling, and he cheated on Jed frequently during the Studio 54 years. Johnson hated the whole Studio/cruising scene, and Andy's love of it helped drive a big wedge between them.

Had Andy been more committed to the relationship emotionally, he and Jed might have lasted until Andy's death. They were together for 10 years, which makes me think Jed wasn't just in it for the connections.

The Studio 54 party years were why Jed left, true. He hated that Andy was spending so much time there and with so many shady-ass people like Victor Hugo and others whom Jed loathed and recognized for the drug-addled users they were. Jed had had enough.

[quote]People do not spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a painting "because it would look good up above the sofa."

I never said that. But most billionaires want an identifiable work of art if they are spending $100 million. Why spend that kind of money on something so ugly and morbid. When a billionaire is giving a tour of his estate and asks his guests if they want to see his Warhol, they would expect an iconic portrait, soup can, or some other piece instantly recognizable as a classic Warhol.

The electric chair paintings are among the very best of Warhol's best work. There, I've explained it for you in clear terms. -R347

R83 That wasn't in the Diaries, but your comment intrigued me, so I looked it up and (after some digging) found it referenced in a Dutch book. From what I can make out from the Google books snippet (and given that I barely speak a word of Dutch), it appears to have been Norman Mailer quoting Warhol (or, given that it was Mailer, a quote he made up and attributed to Warhol).

R356 R83 The quote to google on that link is "The last time I put Truman's cock in my mouth I felt nothing."

Agreed, R348: those Shadows paintings are among the best things he did in the last 30 years of his life. They are really mysterious looking and imposing, and when assembled all in one big gallery, the impression is mysterious, they give the sense of passing time. The same thing happens with his later, commissioned portraits: they were sort of written off as "blah" and uninteresting, but now, when they exhibit a variety of them in one place, the effect is pretty stunning, even though the identities of the sitters isn't immediately obvious or familiar.

The book was one of the most fascinating reads of my life. I was obsessed with it in 1989. I even bought a notebook and compiled an index--which is something it really really needed. Luckily, before I could finish, a co-worker gave me an insert from Vanity Fair...and index to the Andy Warhol Diaries.

I didn't find the. man so interesting, but his diaries were amazing.

Even if Marilyn goes for $250M, Eight Elvis' will surpass it. Question is, when.

Who owns the Elvis painting?

For those who are interested, the Shadow paintings are on view at DIA: Beacon, after having toured for a few years. It’s a great art experience to go visit the whole collection, which is located in an old Nabisco box factory adjacent to the Hudson River. You can make arrangements to arrive early before opening and get to see the Michael Heizer sculptures of giant geometric voids in the floor up close without the barrier.

The Death and Disaster paintings are very haunting...in person.

Art doesn't translate very well in print/on screen.

R361 It’s in a private collection, the Wikipedia page has conjecture about two possible owners. It has not been seen publicly since the 1960s.

The Warhol Museum/Carnegie owns a more impressive 11 Elvises. It was found in his studio after his death rolled up in storage. It was one of the first things that went on display at the Carnegie when the museum was first announced.

The story of the Silver Elvis (one of the Double Elvises) is hilarious. When Bob Dylan did his screen test in 1965, he finished filming, got up, grabbed a Double Elvis and left, allegedly holding onto the painting on the top of his station wagon as they drove back to Woodstock. Dylan hated Warhol, supposedly, so over the years Andy would hear rumors that Dylan had destroyed the painting, shot it, put a hose through the crotch to make it look like Elvis was peeing, all sorts of things.

Andy mentions a couple of times in the Diaries that Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had the Silver Elvis and he had no idea how that happened. Eventually he says that he heard that Grossman traded some furniture for the painting, which turned out to be true. Grossman's widow gave it to MOMA, which is where it remains.

Someone had heard that there was a photo from one of the Factory workers of the Dylan station wagon driving off with the painting, and commissioned researcher Fred Bals to find it.

^Really fascinating little story about New York and the Factory. Thanks for posting this.

R365, I'd argue that Eight Elvises is more impressive because of the way the images collide, almost as if it were merging into motion. The Eleven Elvises are simply eleven images placed side by side.

I hope that if the Eight Elvises goes on sale, the owner will actually display the publicly.

Is Christie's live streaming the Marilyn auction tonight?

^^ $317,806,490.00

HHhmm. WSJ says the painting went for $195 million. Christie's website says it went for the figure quoted above. Somebody's gotta be wrong...

There’s a buyer’s premium that’s added to the gavel price.

This is a great excerpt from a new book on Dennis Hopper and Brooke Haywood about Andy coming to LA the first time for his big gallery show.

Re the price discrepancy up above, NYTimes indicates that the larger figure was the total price realized for the entire lot of Ammann Estate paintings (there were 48 of them, including pictures by a lot of top-notch artists, e.g. Cy Twombly). So Christie's was displaying the whole amount made from the auction, not just the price of the single Warhol, which the page displayed right next to the dollar figure. -R371

So Warhol almost doubled Basquiat's record. I'm sure that would have pleased Andy to no end:

The Warhol sale unseated the previous record holder and another modern master, Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose 1982 painting “Untitled” of a skull-like face sold for a record $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2017.

Now I understand why the Warhol foundation agreed to this series. They want to pump up his value. Goal accomplished. Art is such a scam market. $195MM is ridiculous - like the emperor has no clothes, as long a pair everyone acts like it’s worth it, it is.

I kinda doubt that a Ryan Murphy produced docuseries on Netflix was responsbile in ANY way for the price that the latest Warhol sale got.

Once that Double Elvis painting went for $59 million, or whatever it was, it was clear that Warhol's prices were going to blast into outer space. It's hilarious to see those photos in R366 above, of Barbara Rubin and Bob Dylan driving off in a station wagon, holding onto one of those Elvis paintings with their hands, while it's splayed out on the roof of the car. A painting that would one day be worth ~60 million bucks...

R376 I don't get the title of the article. Isn't every side of Warhol "the queer side." Bizarre.

I can't wait for Eight Elvises to come up. I think it would not only break the record but shatter it. I think it will go up next year which would be Warhol's 95th bday but also the 60th anniversary of the piece. Because of the size of the piece and also that there is only one, I'd say 300 million.

Liza, Edie, Liz and more!

i met andy, viva, ultra violet, jane forth, etc in houston where they traveled to show their movies , financed by the rich de Menil family....they were stars and wonderful. viva especially, smart and clever, i later hung with her in her chelsea hotel apt.

This is exciting news!

Warhol's legacy is greatly diminished.

I totally disagree R385. First, if his Marilyn sets sales records, that's not diminished. Second, when he was alive, he was considered something of a joke, especially in the 80s. If anything, time has increased his legacy.

No mystique around Warhol anymore

He had no mystique when he was alive.

He was a major socializer. For someone who seemed socially awkward he was COSNTANTLY out at parties - almost every night.

Is Mr. Chow still an “in” place to eat?

Now it's called Señor Chow's.

Bette Davis was also photographed with Michael Jackson. She did not look amused. She was a friend of Liz's so that must've been how they met.

Odd that Jon and Jed both had twins.

Fran Lebowitz worked for him and didn't like him. She said people around were always meeting tragic ends. Of course that reckless attitude came back to bite him when he got shot. He survived but was never the same, the wound continued to leak, never completely healed. The life had drained out of him in his later years.

Speaking of Fran:

He was petrified of having the gall bladder surgery and was sure it would kill him, so he kept putting it off. Ironically, had he had the surgery 10 years earlier it would have been a relatively minor procedure and he'd have been fine. By the time he finally bit the bullet, the situation had gotten serious enough that his dire predictions came true.

Both the series and the book needed more of Joe Dallesandro’s ass.

The last episode broke my heart.

R99 This is over 6 yrs old, but very interesting.

Andy had mystique in NYC. If you went to a social event and Andy Warhol was there, his presence added cachet, bizarrely because he went out non stop. But that's the way it was. If it was a big party, every one would have radar to know exactly where Andy was at the party at any moment. The other person with this power was Jackie O. Who didn't go out much. But if she was at the party, everyone was always aware she was there and where she was physically.