”The Andy Warhol Diaries” with Andrew Rossi

What more can be said about Andy Warhol? Campbell’s Soup. Marilyn Monroe. Pop Art. The Factory. Fright wig. 15 minutes. Connect the dots and you feel pretty confident in your short-hand knowledge of who Warhol was and his place in modern art and contemporary culture. But, as much as Andy Warhol is a household name when it comes to 1960’s celebrity icons, not a lot is known about Warhol’s interior life or his intimate relationships. Using Warhol’s diaries (published just two years after his death) as a springboard, Emmy Award®-nominated filmmaker Andrew Rossi (“Page One: Inside the New York Times”, “Ivory Tower”) takes aim at those parts of Warhol’s life and career that are far less familiar to us. The result, Rossi’s sprawling new, must-see six-part Netflix series “The Andy Warhol Diaries”, is a fascinating portrait of the man who stated his desire to be “like a machine,” but, in reality, was a deeply emotional person whose intimate relationships and vulnerabilities reveal much about who he was and offer valuable insights into the enduring brilliance of his art.

 

How did Rossi use new A.I. technology, and the skills of actor Bill Irwin, to create a chillingly lifelike version of Warhol’s voice? Who were Jed Johnson and Jon Gould, and in what ways do these men unlock the key to understanding Warhol’s emotional life? Why was it so important to Rossi to explicate Warhol’s diaries as a seminal queer text? How did Warhol’s complicated relationship with the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat lead to one of the most creatively fruitful collaborations in the history of modern art? The truth is Andy Warhol was famous for a lot longer than 15 minutes. But now — thanks to Andrew Rossi’s masterful, exhaustively researched and richly-layered series — we have a window into the off-screen Warhol. It turns out that all the things that he was not famous for give us a whole new perspective on the artist and the man.

Now on Netflix

 

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