Almost exactly 35 years since the famed pop artist died, Netflix has released The Andy Warhol Diaries, a new documentary that scratches beneath the surface of the artist’s enigmatic life and work. Ryan Murphy’s six-part series is steered by the best-selling book of the same name, compiled by editor Pat Hackett via a series of transcribed calls with the artist over more than a decade.
The New York Post - March 9, 2022
When Harriet Woodsom Gould died in 2016 in her nineties, she left behind a trove of family heirlooms dating back to the 1700s in her Amesbury, Mass., home. Yet in her attic, she had a secret veritable shrine to pop art.
There, she had stashed her late son Jon Gould’s belongings for decades since his death in 1986 from AIDS. He had vases painted by Jean-Michel Basquiat, works by Keith Haring and dozens and dozens of gifts — photos, valentines, sketches, letters and more — from pop god Andy Warhol.
“My mother kept everything,” Jon’s twin brother, Jay Gould, told The Post. Jay knew his brother “had some type of relationship” with Warhol in the 1980s, though Jon always remained discreet about it. “We were very close, identical twins, but we never talked a lot about his sexuality,” Jay, now 68, explained. “It was a different time.”
Yet, he was still stunned to read the poetry and love notes Jon wrote to the older artist. “I didn’t realize the relationship was as deep as it was.”
Andy Warhol Snowmobiling with Jon Gould on new year’s day, January 1, 1983 in Aspen, Colorado.
Gould and Warhol on New Year’s Day in Aspen, Colorado, in 1983. Photo Mark Sink
Actually, no one really knew. Gould was Warhol’s last romance, a young Paramount executive with floppy hair and preppy good looks who died tragically at 33. And though Warhol frequently mentioned him in his famed diaries, published posthumously in 1989, the artist’s dashed-off musings gave the impression that Jon was more of a crush than a genuine partner. (Plus, few could get past the diaries’ droll, often mean, takes on the rich and famous. Poor Liz Taylor was described as looking “like a — belly button”!)
The new six-part Netflix series, “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” however, aims to change that. Premiering Wednesday, it digs beneath the diaries’ surface and into Warhol’s later romantic relationships and their impact on Warhol’s life and work. In doing so, it paints a more vulnerable portrait of the artist, who often presented himself as a cold, asexual weirdo.
“He was a man full of desire, full of humanity, and that comes through in his queer longing and in his search for spiritual meaning,” the series director Andrew Rossi told The Post.
‘They were really in love’
The New York Post
By Raquel Laneri and Nicki Gostin
March 9, 2022
https://nypost.com/2022/03/09/the-andy-warhol-diaries-reveals-artists-secret-love-life/
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