The Andy Warhol Diaries
From hating his own image to employing a beautiful courier who becomes his lover, these thrilling stories about the artist are based on his own diary entries. Based on his own words and transcribed by his friend Pat Hackett on a daily basis between 1976 and 1987, then published as a book in 1989.
Andrew Warhola, the son of Austro-Hungarian immigrants from a poor part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, relocates to New York and reinvents himself as both the boss of the Factory, a sanctuary at the avant-garde end of the 1960s Manhattan art scene. He is an outsider who craves a mass mainstream appeal. The central point to the show focuses on Warhol’s sexuality, religion, and self-image. As a gay Catholic who hates his own hair, skin, and features – “I’m just a freak. I can’t change it. I’m too unusual”.
Some of the episode’s centre around his various relationships, personal and professional. There’s a particular interesting instalment on the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the genius whose shared canvases with Warhol change his creativity in the early 1980s. The appreciation of these joint efforts is exciting, particularly enhanced by the superb archive footage.
The last episode delivers a reappraisal of Warhol’s final work, seeing them as his response to the AIDS epidemic. Having lost friends & lovers, Warhol looks painfully disinterested as suggested by his public facade. But it’s a false impression as this series shows us that Warhol, was always personal.
The series is available exclusively on Netflix. Also worth noting, that it contains graphic imagery which might upset viewers. Strictly adults only.
