The Andy Warhol Diaries review – a startling biopic told with the artist’s own words
What were they really like? In a biography of an artist, answering that question can be either an overt mission or a rumbling subtext. The Andy Warhol Diaries (Netflix), Andrew Rossi’s exhaustive six-parter based on Warhol’s own journal, chooses the former to an occasionally startling degree, but the work has already been chewed up and spat out a million times. Here is a long look at why a fallible human made it.
The show is based on Warhol’s own brick of intrigue in 1989. Episode one begins with an instruction to us not to take Warhol’s version of events on trust, which the programme precludes in any case via its rounded roster of contributors: as well as Warhol museum curators, other artists and simpatico cultural figures like Jerry Hall and John Waters, we hear from Warhol’s professional confidants and the loved ones of those closest to him. A man who strove to be unknowable becomes, partly by his own hand but mainly via the observations of others, known. The central point made by The Andy Warhol Diaries is the extent to which these tensions are created by 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” – he is revealed here as brittle and insecure in a personal life defined by three key relationships: the series gives over a whole episode each to Warhol’s lovers, Jed Johnson and Jon Gould, and to his friend and collaborator Jean-Michel Basquiat.
