An overwhelming Netflix documentary series and biography that took the author thirty years to humanize the father of pop art, who achieved fame and at the same time remained a mystery.
Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh, 1928. New York, 1987) was perhaps the most famous artist of his time. We talked about that fame that led to his being recognized, even though he had never set foot in a museum before. Like another contemporary, Salvador Dalí, Andrew Warhola built a character for himself, always appearing behind a mask. If the Catalan painter chose Dadaism and eccentricity, the American, aware of his lack of charisma, chose hieraticism under his perpetual blond wig. Deep down, we didn’t know much about Warhol, other than his corny phrase that we’ll all be famous for fifteen minutes in the future. Just as another great documentary, Anatomy of a Dandy, has shown us Francisco Umbral with new eyes, the Netflix series, The Andy Warhol Diaries, humanizes a puzzling myth. At the same time, Arpa publishing house in Spain is publishing a biography of Jean-Noël Liaut that sheds light on this fragile health son of emigrants, whose shadow is cast at a time when we live obsessed with fame and success.
Bernard-Henri Lévy said that Warhol’s ‘Diaries’, which Anagrama published among us in 1990, can be read “as a chronicle of modernity, the description of a century drawing to a close or the portrait of a Babylon in progressive dissolution”. Each evening, the artist dictated to his friend and confidant Pat Hackett his balance of the day. His icy prose reviewed the exhibitions and parties he had attended. The personalities of his era parade through the pages, from Truman Capote to Mick Jagger, from Donald Trump to Jackie Onassis. The Netflix series produced by Ryan Murphy puts notes from the ‘Diaries’ into images as we listen to the author’s voice, digitally recreated. It is not known how, but Murphy has had access to photos and home recordings, among other things.
The overwhelming result is six episodes of about an hour that will fascinate anyone interested in the artistic and hedonistic scene of New York in the 70s and 80s. From the orgies at the mythical nightclub Studio 54, where the artist was a regular , to the intimacy of moments forbidden to mere mortals: Warhol photographs Miles Davis at a party in exchange for him playing the trumpet, Warhol at John Lennon’s house while a man fiddles with his son Sean’s computer – a certain Steve Jobs, Warhol picking Bianca Jagger at the couturier Halston’s house to go to ‘Saturday Night Fever’ together… The series also contains the testimonials of those who treated him -Jerry Hall, John Waters, Julian Schnabel, the Pat Hackett-en delves into the complexes of a gay Catholic and voyeur, who soon realized with pain that he could not be like the men he fell in love with, attractive and ma apparently, the incarnation of an American macho as in a Ralph Lauren ad.
It’s hard to imagine pop culture without the influence of the painter of Campbell’s soup cans. Her leap from counterculture to mainstream has been followed by countless artists, from Madonna to Lady Gaga. According to series director Andrew Rossi, “Warhol took the way the public wanted to see him.” A master of using the symbolism of advertising as a language, he anticipated all the dynamics of popularity produced by social networks. In his own way he was the first tweeter, the first ‘tiktoker’. In the 1980s, he was not averse to guest-starring in ‘Vacation at Sea’, despite being a crappy actor. Once he hosted a talk show on the brand new MTV, titled “Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes,” of course, while commenting on a wrestling room. He became a pop star, even though he was completely silent about his sexuality or his relationship with the Catholic faith. He was never an AIDS activist like his friend Keith Haring. He never opened in his work the carnality of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who would die of an overdose a year after Warhol.
The biography of Jean-Noël Liaut, for its part, tries to unravel how the son of Slovak immigrants, raised in Pittsburgh, managed to become the father of pop art, moving equally comfortably between intellectuals, Hollywood stars, transvestites and drug addicts. In its pages, Lee Radziwill, Pierre Bergé and Ultra Violet, among others, draw a prophetic marketing genius, who understood his time like no other. Liaut assures that he has invested thirty years of his life in unraveling the genius and the man who became a brand. “Most of the time Andy was silent, as if he were absent, but every now and then a Sibylline remark, pronounced in his ‘Bouvier voice’, came from his lips,” says the writer, referring to the artist’s manner of speaking. , imitated by Jackie Kennedy. In 1963, Warhol told Art News magazine that “everyone should be a machine.” He knew that the less people talk, the more they will talk about him. Among other prophecies included in the book: “Warhol suspected before anyone else that anyone could achieve success for the most absurd of reasons” and that “all reality television is contained in its quarter of an hour of fame.”
Afraid of hospitals, Andy Warhol has suffered from his health since Valerie Solanas shot him at the factory in 1968. He never took care of his diet. He died on February 22, 1987 at the age of 58 due to complications related to the removal of the gallbladder. He would have liked to have seen his funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as well as the recognition his work began to receive after his death, including a retrospective at MoMA, which had always eluded him. A few weeks ago, Christie’s announced it will auction 1964’s ‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’ for an estimated $200 million in May, the highest auction in history behind Leonardo da Vinci’s $450 million “Salvator Mundi” .
Source: La Verdad
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