Soup-er: The artist in a scene from the docuseries ‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’. Photo: Netflix
Andrew Warhola was born on 6 August 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a Slavic ghetto. He would become a pioneer of modern pop culture and one of the leading figures of the pop art movement. You might know him as Andy Warhol.
The docuseries The Andy Warhol Diaries, on Netflix, reveals Warhol was an outcast at school. In an attempt to win over the kids who bullied him, he would invite them to his home and offer to draw portraits of them.
In the 1950s, Warhol packed his bags, and with $200 in his pocket, moved to New York and changed his name to Warhol.
He began his career in commercial art and, once he had made enough money, he bought The Factory. This would be where most of his work would come from.
His first painting to gain notoriety was Campbell’s Soup Cans. He enjoyed creating art from everyday things. He believed art was in everything.
In the 1960s Warhol was at the peak of his career. He had become an integral part of New York’s underground scene. In public, he stated he was asexual, however, he created a stir when he held an exhibition of homoerotic scenes from the parties he would host at The Factory.
This docuseries highlights Warhol’s sexuality, personal life and lovers. He had two serious lovers. Jed Johnson, interior designer to the stars, and Jon Gould, an executive at Paramount Pictures. He loved these men deeply but struggled to handle his emotions.
He said, “Machines don’t have problems. I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?” This made him an interesting person to observe in public settings. He would often be the centre of attention but he never felt like he belonged.
Some of the people closest to him share their memories and speak about his diaries in the series. When Warhol created them, he hoped they would be used to make a documentary in the future.
As Warhol has been dead for 36 years, the production team used AI to recreate his voice reading the dairies. Viewers feel as if they are sitting with him, listening to him talk about his life, from childhood to the shooting at The Factory, to his final illness.
Warhol paved the way for pop culture today and probably would have loved living in this period. He once said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” That is true because of apps such as Instagram and TikTok.
Warhol was not only a pioneer in the pop art movement. He was also a producer, band manager and head of Interview magazine. His show Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes would influence how MTV was styled.
Warhol could be considered the father of modern pop culture and yet he’s mostly known for his artworks.
He faced criticism for his lack of public response to the Aids crisis.
The docuseries examines how he expressed himself through his work. He was a mysterious person but these six episodes help us get to know him. We may never understand Andy Warhol but we are given a glimpse into the mind of Andrew Warhola.