‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’ Takes an Intimate Glimpse Inside the Personal Life of an Art Icon

Alci Rengifo

Netflix’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries” reminds us that there is always a fresh angle to explore an icon’s life. This evocative docuseries is another gaze at history from producer Ryan Murphy. Murphy is intensely obsessed with stripping down defining personalities and events to reach their personal essence. Many films and documentaries have been made about Andy Warhol, which is expected of an artist who defined the very word “pop art.” At one point, the equally iconic David Bowie played Warhol in a film about the artist Basquiat. Yet Warhol’s story feels fresh and insightful in this docuseries because the focus is on his own words. By diving into Warhol’s journals, Murphy and team revive him as not only a groundbreaking artist, but also as a gay man struggling with identity in a world constantly attempting to define him.

“The Andy Warhol Diaries” doesn’t follow the typical linear format of most docuseries. The source material is a collection of diaries composed of discussions Warhol had with friend Pat Hackett between 1976 and 1987, the year Warhol passed away. A.I. technology allows for a voice recreation of Warhol to narrate passages. What we hear has the tone of a mind looking in hindsight at their experiences. By 1976, Warhol had already been a famous cultural figure for over a decade. He had nearly escaped death in 1968 when disgruntled aspiring writer Valerie Solanas shot him at his famous Factory in New York City. The details of Warhol’s early days are revisited but the prime setting is the decadent New York society and art scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The days of the Factory were in the past while the drug-fueled environment of spots like Studio 54 pulled Warhol in. Even as he lost himself in a haze of lovers, Quaaludes and other escapes, the art never surrendered its allure.

The origin of a person is still important. “The Andy Warhol Diaries” frames Warhol’s adolescence as key to comprehending the artist. He was born to Austro-Hungarian immigrants in the working class area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a religious household that imposed much Catholic guilt on a gay youth. By the 1960s he had moved to New York City where he first worked as a fashion illustrator for various publications. The rest is history to anyone familiar with the era. Warhol reinvents himself as the head of the Factory, achieving wide initial fame with his iconic Campbell’s Soup can painting regularly seen as the true emergence of pop art. The docuseries gives this stage of his career deeper insights via the journals and interviews with friends, collaborators and artists influenced by Warhol. Director John Waters comments on the experimental films Warhol directed. Some now come across as cheerfully subversive, like “Blow Job,” the 1964 film where the camera stays on a man’s face during the entirety of receiving oral sex.

It is the ‘80s material that receives the broader attention. Warhol’s diaries reveal an artist plagued by much self-loathing. He also has a cynicism that came from longing for affection yet having to keep his true self discreet. His sexuality was almost an open secret. Generally this was true of much gay life at a time when homophobia was a standard in American culture. Filmmaker and essayist John Hughes appears in a documentary cruelly comparing Warhol to Picasso, claiming the latter’s fame comes from robust, masculine work, while Warhol is dismissed as “sexless.” Gangly with a soft voice, Warhol embodied the stereotype of both the spacey artistic personality with the qualities ultra-hetero types instantly suspect as gay. One of the most valuable aspects of “The Andy Warhol Diaries” is by firmly placing Warhol’s achievements within the realm of queer art and not just pop. When the docuseries analyzes work like the “sex parts” paintings or the “shadow” series, one can clearly sense an artist putting his deepest sexual self on display. This is the Warhol that is conveniently looked over when more attention is given to his colorful portraits or Jackie Kennedy or Mao. 

By the late ‘70s Warhol came across as an artist desperate to truly break free. He becomes involved with interior designer Jed Johnson, who becomes worried about Warhol’s growing friendships with the bohemian crowds that defined both an era’s excesses and a freer LGBTQ culture. Journal entries from Warhol describe downing Quaaludes and alcohol at Studio 54 and watching the notorious Roy Cohn cavort with gorgeous young men. He makes portraits for superstars like Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Farah Fawcett. His inner circle also begins to feature characters like the artist Victor Hugo, dismissed by friends as a leech and poseur. This is also when Warhol’s art takes its boldest, most sexual form.  Eventually, Johnson can’t take it anymore and leaves Warhol after finding stashes of graphic photographs. A friend shares how Warhol admitted he was incapable of fully opening up. To do so could mean falling apart emotionally.

Johnson is just one of the central figures in this story. There is also the great artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. In the ‘80s, Warhol and Basquiat became collaborators. It was a fusion that revitalized the elder icon while bringing to prominence the younger protégé. Another lover, Jon Gould, also captures much about the times. He was a handsome Paramount Pictures executive who could pass for gay. As with Johnson, Warhol seems to have had genuinely powerful feelings for Gould and might have even envied his chameleon identity. The relationship would last until 1985. “The Andy Warhol Diaries” exquisitely balances all of its themes. It is an absorbing portrait of a defining artist and gay icon, but also of an entire era. We feel the world changing once more at an ever so rapid pace. Warhol defined a changing world that still brims with a special kind of excitement made more powerful by getting to know his inner struggles.

“The Andy Warhol Diaries” begins streaming March 9 on Netflix.