Author | Andy Warhol |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Published | 1989 |
Publisher | Warner Books |
Pages | 807 |
ISBN | 978-1455561452 |
The Andy Warhol Diaries is the dictated memoir of the American artist Andy Warhol and edited by his longtime friend and collaborator Pat Hackett. The book was published posthumously by Warner Books with an introduction by Hackett.
The 807-page book is condensed from the complete 20,000-page diary maintained by Hackett. It begins in November 1976 and concludes eleven years later, just five days before Warhol's death in February 1987.
The Andy Warhol Diaries was a commercial success, becoming a New York Times Best Seller.
After Warhol was audited by the Internal Revenue Service in 1972, he started dictating a daily diary to his secretary Pat Hackett at The Factory to keep a better account of his deductible expenses. [1] This eventually grew into The Andy Warhol Diaries. [2]
Beginning in 1976, Monday through Friday, Warhol and Hackett talked by phone each morning and he narrated the events of the previous day. Weekend entries were done the following Monday in a longer session. If he was traveling, he would call her from wherever he was or tell her what occurred on the missed days when he returned. [3] Hackett transcribed his monologue onto a legal pad. Later in the morning, she would type it on her typewriter, which turned into 20,000 double-spaced pages of unedited entries. After Warhol's death in February 1987, Hackett edited the pages down to the 1,600 she submitted to Warner Books, who acquired the diaries for 1.2 million in 1987. [4] Hackett said much of the remaining 18,400 pages are drivel. [5]
The diary begins on November 24, 1976, with Warhol in Vancouver. [5] This was the end of his trip to Seattle for the opening of the Seattle Art Museum. [5] Warhol mentioned that while on the West Coast he attended model Marisa Berenson's wedding to Jim Randall in Los Angeles. [5] He flew with socialite Catherine Guinness and his manager Fred Hughes from Vancouver to LaGuardia Airport in Queens. [5] When he got to his home in Manhattan, he had an early Thanksgiving dinner with his live-in boyfriend Jed Johnson. [5]
For the next eleven years, Warhol documented his social life and notations of expenses. The book is filled with his observations about the personal lives and careers of his famous friends and associates. Michael Gross noted in New York magazine:
The cast of characters ranges from employees to celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor ("like a fat little Kewpie doll"), Martin Scorsese ("coke problems"), Yves Saint Laurent ("he has to take a million pills"), Sophia Loren ("Didn't she f--- her way to the top?"), Elaine Kaufman ("stuffing herself with rolls"), Steve Rubell ("Gave me a Quaalude"), Liza Minnelli ("Give me every drug you've got"), Halston ("he gave her a bottle of coke, a few sticks of marijuana, a Valium, four Quaaludes"), Mick and Bianca Jagger ("She can't go to bed with him because she just doesn't think he's attractive"), Lady Isabella Lambton ("picks her nose and eats it"), Margaret Trudeau ("sitting on the toilet with her pants down and a coke spook up her nose"), Patti Smith ("all I could think about was her b.o."), Jerry Hall ("she had underarm b.o."), Allan Carr ("What a butterball"), Truman Capote ("How does anyone make it with Truman?"), Sue Mengers ("so vulgar"), Barbra Streisand ("West Side taste"), Rudolf Nureyev ("mean, he's really mean"), Raquel Welch ("sweet now that she's come down a little in the world"), Julian Schnabel ("very pushy"), Marina Cicogna ("like a truck driver"), Richard Nixon ("like a Dickens character"), Calvin and Kelly Klein ("a hot media affair"), Mercedes Kellogg ("a fat thing"), and lots more. [6]
The last diary entry was on February 17, 1987. Warhol walked the runway with jazz musician Miles Davis during a Japanese fashion show at the Tunnel nightclub in Chelsea. [5] Warhol mentioned that Davis gave him his address and they made a deal—Warhol would paint his portrait in exchange for ten minutes of Davis playing music for him. [5] When Warhol got home called his manager Fred Hughes and told him he was too exhausted to attend a Fendi dinner that evening. [5] Hughes' assistant Sam Bolton and Interview fashion editor Wilfredo Rosado called him before he slept. [5]
The Andy Warhol Diaries was published by Warner Books in May 1989, after Warhol's death in February 1987. [7] The book was published without an index, which Steven Greenberg, the publisher of Fame magazine, said their biggest mistake was they didn't put in an index." [6] Unauthorized indexes were subsequently published by Spy and Fame magazines. Newer editions of the book contain an authorized index.
The Andy Warhol Diaries was a commercial success and remained on the New York Times Best Seller for a few months. [8] [9] The book caused a sensation for its "sometimes malicious and often outrageous gossip about entertainers, artists and jet setters." [7]
Many of Warhol's friends praised the book. Steve Rubell, co-owner of Studio 54 and the Palladium, said, "Everybody knew he was doing this. It's the truth, so nobody can say anything. It's making people crazy." [6] "It's his style; it's his words … A few things are absolutely accurate. Some are sort of invented, but I'd say over his observations are keen," said Paige Powell, who was the advertising director for Warhol's Interview magazine. [6] Former Interview editor Bob Colacello also stated that "some of it's true and some of it's not. [6] Warhol's former assistant Ronnie Cutrone said, "He thought [the people he wrote about] were glamorous, but he pitied them. An artist is curious. It's not meanness. it's wanting to take something apart and see how it works. For once, there's a certain integrity to Andy." [5]
However, some of Warhol's friends expressed their dissatisfaction with how they were portrayed in the book. Fashion designer Halston was reportedly "quite upset about the publication of these intimate revelations and was threatening to sue" before his death from AIDS in 1989. [10] Halston's lover Victor Hugo called the book the "Satanic Diaries" and threatened to auction off every Warhol artwork he owned: "I feel like the Central Park jogger... I've been gang-raped and beaten by a dead person and bunch of thugs that work for him. It is the most vile, disgusting piece of pulp literature I have ever read." Model Barbara Allen felt betrayed and said Warhol exaggerated things. [6] Human activist and former actress Bianca Jagger filed a libel lawsuit for how she was portrayed in the book, but she did not blame Warhol. [11] "I don't believe Andy even wrote it," she said. "It is as if it had been fabricated by someone who had only a vague idea of what really happened. Andy was a mischievous man, but I didn't consider him to be vicious." [11]
In 2008, Hackett told Glenn O'Brien in an interview for Interview: "People always ask 'What was Andy really like?' Well, read the Diaries. That's what he was like. When they came out, people focused on the gossip aspect of them, but as time goes on, I believe Andy's Diaries will be recognized as the incredible personal and historical document that they are." [12]
The book was adapted into a six-part Netflix docuseries The Andy Warhol Diaries . [13] Written and directed by Andrew Rossi, the series premiered on March 9, 2022. [14]
Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Brigid Emmett Berlin was an American artist and Warhol superstar.
The Factory was Andy Warhol's studio in New York City, which had four locations between 1963 and 1987. The Factory became famed for its parties in the 1960s. It was the hip hangout spot for artists, musicians, celebrities and Warhol's superstars. The original Factory was often referred to as the Silver Factory. In the studio, Warhol's workers would make silkscreens and lithographs under his direction.
John Benitez, also known as Jellybean, is an American musician, songwriter, DJ, remixer, and music producer. He has produced and remixed artists such as Madonna, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and the Pointer Sisters. He was later the executive producer of Studio 54 Radio. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked him as the 99th most successful dance artist of all-time.
John Stockwell Samuels IV is an American actor and filmmaker. For his work on the television film Cheaters (2000), Stockwell was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special.
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Julio Galán was a Mexican artist and architect. Galán was one of Latin America's neo-expressionist painters of the end of the last century and the beginning of this one.. His paintings and collages are full of elements that usually represent his life.
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol is a 1975 book by the American artist Andy Warhol. It was first published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Eugenia Benbow Sheppard was an American fashion writer and newspaper columnist for some 80 newspapers (including the Columbus Dispatch, New York Post, The Boston Post, and most notably, the New York Herald Tribune.
Jed Johnson was an American interior designer and film director. TheNew York Times hailed Johnson as "one of the most celebrated interior designers of our time."
Area was a themed nightclub that operated from 1983 to 1987 at 157 Hudson Street in Manhattan, New York City. It was a hot spot for celebrities and luminaries of the New York art scene. The club was known for its unusual invitations and changing themes.
Victor Hugo, born Victor Rojas, (1948–1994) was a Venezuelan-born American artist, window dresser, and partner of the designer Halston.
Reigning Queens is a 1985 series of silkscreen portraits by American artist Andy Warhol. The screen prints were presented as a portfolio of sixteen; four prints each of the four queens regnant. The subjects were Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Ntfombi Twala of Swaziland and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.
Barbara Allen de Kwiatkowski née Tanner, was a model, journalist, and socialite. She is also known as an associate of Andy Warhol, working with him on Interview magazine.
Dos Cabezas is a painting created by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. The double portrait resulted from Basquiat's first formal meeting with his idol, American pop artist Andy Warhol.
Martin Burgoyne was a British-born artist. Burgoyne was part of the downtown New York art scene in the 1980s. He befriended singer Madonna before she was famous and he was a key figure in her early career. He managed her first club tour and designed the cover for her 1983 single "Burning Up."
Paige Powell is an American photographer, curator, art consultant, and animal rights activist. Powell was the public affairs director of the Portland Zoo before she moved to New York City in 1980. Between 1982 and 1994, she worked at Interview magazine. She started out selling advertising and eventually became the associate publisher. As Andy Warhol's close friend and confidante, she became immersed in the 1980s New York City art scene. Since returning to her native Portland in 1994, she has split her time between working on art projects and supporting animal charities.
Wilfredo Rosado is an American jewelry designer. He held various positions at Armani and worked for Interview magazine before becoming a luxury high jeweler. In 2011, Rosado founded his eponymous high jewelry collection. He launched the fine jewelry line W. Rosado in 2020.
Jon Gould was an American film executive for Paramount Pictures. He had a secret romance with artist Andy Warhol in the 1980s. Following Gould's death from AIDS, his collection of Warhol's works was shown at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont.
Pat Hackett is an American author, screenwriter, and journalist. Hackett was a close friend and collaborator of pop artist Andy Warhol. They co-authored the books POPism: The Warhol Sixties (1980) and Andy Warhol's Party Book (1988). She also edited TheAndy Warhol Diaries (1989). Hackett was an editor for Interview magazine and she co-wrote the screenplay for the film Andy Warhol's Bad (1977).