Warhol-mania: Why the famed pop artist is everywhere again

NEW YORK • Andy Warhol left behind a lot of self-portraits.

There was the black-and-white shot from a photo booth strip from 1963, in which he wore dark black shades and a cool expression.

In 1981, he took a Polaroid of himself in drag, with a platinum blond bob and bold red lips.

Five years later, he screenprinted his face, with bright red acrylic paint, onto a black background.

These and other images of the pop art master rank among his best-known works.

But one of his most telling self-portraits was not a portrait at all, in a conventional sense.

Between 1976 and 1987, the artist regularly dictated his thoughts, fears, feelings and opinions – about art, himself and his world – over the telephone to his friend and collaborator Pat Hackett.

In 1989, two years after his death, Hackett published The Andy Warhol Diaries, a transcribed, edited and condensed version of their phone calls.

And now, more than three decades later, The Andy Warhol Diaries has come to Netflix as a bittersweet documentary series directed by Andrew Rossi.

In a video interview, the director pointed out that Warhol had intended for the book to be published after he died.

“It does seem like there’s some message which maybe he himself didn’t even understand,” Rossi said. “There’s an open invitation to interpret it as there is with any of his artwork – because I do view the diaries as another self-portrait in his oeuvre.”