An overwhelming Netflix documentary series and a biography that has taken its author thirty years humanize the father of pop art, who achieved fame while remaining an enigma at the same time.
Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh, 1928. New York, 1987) was perhaps the most famous artist of his time. We talked about that fame that led to recognizing him even though he had never set foot in a museum. Like another contemporary, Salvador Dalí, Andrew Warhola built a character for himself and always appeared behind a mask. If the Catalan painter opted for Dadaism and eccentricity, the American, aware of his lack of charisma, chose hieraticism under his eternal blonde wig. Deep down, we didn’t know much about Warhol, beyond his hackneyed phrase that, in the future, we will all be famous for fifteen minutes. Just like another great documentary, ‘Anatomy of a Dandy’, has made us see Francisco Umbral with new eyes, the Netflix series ‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’ humanizes an enigmatic myth. At the same time, the Arpa publishing house publishes in Spain a biography of Jean-Noël Liaut that sheds light on this fragile-health son of emigrants, whose shadow is cast at this time in which we live obsessed with fame and success.
Bernard-Henri Lévy said that Warhol’s ‘Diaries’ that Anagrama edited among us in 1990 could be read “as a chronicle of modernity, the description of a century that is ending or the portrait of a Babylon in progressive decomposition”. Every night the artist dictated to his friend and confidante Pat Hackett his balance of the day. Her icy prose reviewed the shows and parties she had attended. The personalities of his time parade through its pages, from Truman Capote to Mick Jagger, from Donald Trump to Jackie Onassis. The Netflix series produced by Ryan Murphy puts annotations from the ‘Diaries’ into images while we listen to the voice of its author, digitally recreated. It is not known how, but Murphy has had access to photos and home recordings among tons of other information.
Andy Warhol with Robin Williams and Valerie Velardi at Studio 54 nightclub in 1979.
The overwhelming result is six episodes of approximately one hour that will fascinate anyone who is interested in the artistic and hedonistic scene of New York in the 70s and 80s. From the orgies in the mythical Studio 54 nightclub, to which the artist was a regular, to the intimacy of moments forbidden to ordinary mortals: Warhol photographing Miles Davis at a party in exchange for him playing the trumpet for him, Warhol at John Lennon’s house while a guy fiddles with his son Sean’s computer – a certain Steve Jobs-, Warhol picking up Bianca Jagger at the couturier Halston’s house to go together to see ‘Saturday Night Fever’… The series also includes the testimony of those who treated him -Jerry Hall, John Waters, Julian Schnabel, the Pat Hackett- and delves into the complexes of a homosexual catholic and voyeur, who soon understood with pain that he could not be like the men he fell in love with, attractive and virile, the incarnation of an American macho as in a Ralph Lau advertisement ren.
It is difficult to imagine pop culture without the influence of the painter of Campbell’s soup cans. Her jump from counterculture to mainstream has been followed by countless artists, from Madonna to Lady Gaga. According to series director Andrew Rossi, Warhol “adopted the way the public wanted to see him.” Master in using the symbolism of advertising as a language, he anticipated all the dynamics of popularity manufactured by social networks. In his own way, he was the first tweeter, the first ‘tiktoker’. In the 80s he was not averse to appearing as a guest star in ‘Vacation at sea’, despite the fact that he was a lousy actor. As soon as he was hosting a talk show on the fledgling MTV, titled, of course, ‘Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes’, he was commenting on a wrestling spot. He became a pop star, although 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 up about his work with the carnality of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who would die of an overdose a year after Warhol.
Andy Warhol in a portrait by photographer Steve Wood during a session that did not come to light until decades after his death. /
For its part, the biography of Jean-Noël Liaut tries to unravel how the son of Slovak immigrants raised in Pittsburgh managed to become the father of pop art, who moved equally comfortably among intellectuals, Hollywood stars, transvestites and drug addicts. In his pages, Lee Radziwill, Pierre Bergé and Ultra Violet, among others, draw a prophetic marketing genius, who knew how to understand his time better than anyone. 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 absent, but from time to time a sibylline observation pronounced with his ‘Bouvier voice’ would come out of his lips,” says the writer, referring to the artist’s way of speaking, imitated by Jackie Kennedy. In 1963, Warhol told ‘Art News’ magazine that “everyone should be a machine.” He knew that the less one talks, the more they will talk about him. Among other prophecies included in the book, “Warhol guessed before anyone else that everyone could achieve success for the most incongruous reasons” and that “all of reality television is contained in its ‘quarter of an hour of fame’.”
Afraid of hospitals, Andy Warhol suffered with his health ever since Valerie Solanas shot him in 1968 at the Factory. He never cared about feeding him. He died on February 22, 1987 at the age of 58 from complications arising from gallbladder removal. He would have liked his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as well as the recognition that 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 that in May it will auction ‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’, from 1964, with an estimated price of 200 million dollars, the highest auction in history behind the 450 million dollars of ‘Salvator Mundi’ by Leonardo da Vinci.
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