Artist Andy Warhol was an enigma, a closed book. He made countless films and paintings, but the real, deeper meaning behind his work has always remained somewhat obscure. The book was published after his death The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989): a diary series in which the activities and thoughts of Warhol – from 1976 to 1987 – can be read. That book – at the time Warhol dictated his experiences to bosom friend Pat Hackett over the telephone – suddenly gave insight into Warhol’s life and forms the common thread in The Andy Warhol Diaries† None other than Warhol himself can be heard in this six-part documentary series produced by Ryan Murphy.
At least, an algorithm ensures that spoken texts by actor Bill Irwin – straight from Warhol’s diaries – are transformed into Warhol’s voice. This results in an unreal experience, perhaps because there is an essential difference between the written and the spoken word. Reading Warhol’s diaries is a little less intimate than hearing him read the passages. Even though his voice is artificial. This also raises ethical problems: do we really want that? That people appear everywhere again after their death? although The Andy Warhol Diaries was made with the permission of Warhol’s estate, that question is no less dire.
Nevertheless, The Andy Warhol Diaries what you can expect from a portrait of a great artist: superlatives and criticism alternate. Warhol was, as is often emphasized, one of a kind, but the effigies of the soup cans for which he was known also heralded the end of his hegemony. Filmmaker Andrew Rossi lets intimates do the talking as he meticulously sketches New York at the time using archive footage, in which The Factory – Warhol’s workshop – functioned as a progressive bastion. Also fascinating is the way in which Warhol’s youth is illuminated, and how he is inspired by the icons of the Catholic Church.
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Above all runs The Andy Warhol Diaries about how the artist became one of the first ‘accepted’ homosexuals in the American mainstream, and how important that has been. It is therefore nice to see that new generations are still inspired by the man whom we now know a little more about thanks to the diary and this series.
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