Book summary “Andy Warhol”: summary

Introduction

You often wonder how fame, art, and commerce intertwine behind closed doors in New York. You struggle to separate the myth of the pop artist from the daily grind of survival, expenses, and social scheduling.

Andy Warhol records two decades of Manhattan high society, art business, and daily survival through meticulous morning telephone calls.

Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett distilled twenty thousand manuscript pages into a single volume documenting life from 1976 to 1987. You will discover how the Factory operated, how Interview magazine grew, and how nightlife at Studio 54 shaped cultural production.

• How did daily telephone calls generate an entire manuscript?
• What mechanisms sustained the commercial portrait business?
• How did health regimens and collaborations influence final artistic works?

1. Diary Routine and Editorial Genesis

Beginning in the fall of 1976, Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett established a weekday morning phone call routine. Warhol recounted his activities from the previous day and night primarily to satisfy tax auditors and log business expenses.

Warhol maintained a strict daily diary routine via morning phone calls to record his expenses and social itineraries.

The Morning Call Routine

Pat Hackett would typically call Warhol around 9:00 or 9:30 AM. What was ostensibly a five-minute log of business expenses would turn into a one-to-two-hour conversation covering his entire life and social calendar.

You can follow the exact methodology that produced the records:

• Call Andy in the morning around 9 A.M. or no later than 9:30 A.M.
• Chat warmly to warm up and ask about breakfast or television channels.
• Collect his cash business expenses and details of the day and night before.
• Take extensive notes on a legal pad during the conversation.
• Sit at the typewriter immediately after hanging up to get everything down on paper while intonations are fresh.
• Staple loose cab and restaurant receipts corresponding to reported amounts to the back of each typed page every other week.

Editorial Distillation

Andy Warhol's daily diaries were condensed from an immense manuscript archive down to a single readable volume. Pat Hackett edited the original 20,000 manuscript pages of Warhol's diaries down into a single publication by removing redundant names and minor days while preserving Warhol's unique voice.

Pat Hackett worked with Steve M.L. Aronson and publisher Jamie Raab at Warner Books to shape the massive record into its final published format.

2. Artistic Production and Portrait Business

Commissioning private portraits became a major source of Warhol's income in the 1970s. Warhol sustained his art business and subsidized his magazine through an elaborate, standardized procedure for commissioned portraits.

Commissioned Portrait Procedure

The process involved shooting dozens of Polaroids, selecting and doctoring specific images on acetates, transferring them to pre-painted canvases via carbon paper, and applying silkscreens. You can follow the precise steps used in the studio:

• Have the subject pose while taking approximately sixty Polaroid photos using a Big Shot camera
• Choose four shots from the sixty and give them to a screen printer to make positive images on 8 by 10 inch acetates
• Choose one image, decide on the crop, and cosmetically doctor it to make the subject appear attractive
• Blow the cropped and doctored image up to a 40 by 40 inch acetate to make a silkscreen
• Prepaint rolls of canvas in flesh tone shades using a lighter tone for men and a pinker tone for women
• Trace the image from the 40 by 40 acetate onto the canvas using a carbon transfer under tracing paper
• Paint in colored areas like hair, eyes, lips, ties, and jackets by hand
• Line up the detailed silkscreen with the prepainted colored areas to screen the photograph's details onto the canvas

Art collector Ethel Scull, gallery owner Holly Solomon, and Happy Rockefeller were among the non-show business subjects whose portraits Warhol commissioned alongside his pop celebrity series. The first canvas cost $25,000, while each additional canvas cost $5,000.

Art Market and Fakes

Forged artworks circulating in the market can directly depress the value and public trust in an artist's genuine output. Counterfeit Flower paintings attributed to Warhol appear in Europe through dealers like Gerard and Arman, causing buyers to fear purchasing authentic works and driving down market prices.

Arman admits to selling eight forged Flower paintings, while Peter Brant puts up authentic Warhols like a big Electric Chair and Soup Can for auction. Art market prices fluctuate based on trends, prestige, and dealer manipulation rather than stable intrinsic values. Warhol notes that a Coke Bottle sold for $135,000, an Elvis went for $146,000, and Thomas Ammann bought a Flower painting for $40,000.

3. Factory Management and Workplace Culture

Warhol utilized distinctive, non-confrontational methods to manage employees and maintain a respectful workplace atmosphere.

Operating in chaotic environments like the Factory requires patience. You must treat everyone with politeness and avoid direct firing. Warhol thanked everyone profusely, making thank you the last words he ever said to Pat Hackett. You never tell anyone directly to do things, instead asking in a hopeful tone if they can help.

Handling incompetence calls for subtle tactics:

• Watch employee incompetence for minutes before turning away without a word, raising eyebrows, and closing eyes philosophically
• Rant and rail for half an hour at an offender without ever firing them
• Break into an impromptu, funny imitation of the person's vision of themselves

Managing the entourage of assistants, artists, and hangers-on demands constant boundary-setting. Your daily life at 860 Broadway involves managing workers like Rupert Smith and Brigid Berlin while dealing with eccentric visitors, intruders, and financial requests.

A creepy intruder hid behind a packing crate at the office to pull off a supposed piece of performance art while Warhol was being interviewed. Henry and Bob gave 40 dollars to satisfy a shakedown artist claiming to represent Steve Rubell. Warhol maintained a constant weight of 140 pounds that he could not seem to reduce.

Studio Dynamics

Managing studio assistants and young staff members involves balancing productivity, personality clashes, and office expenses. You record volatile moods, hiring decisions, and training processes of assistants like Sam and various office personnel at Interview magazine.

Sam wasted nearly a thousand pages of Soldier of Fortune magazines by photocopying on the wrong paper size, leading to an argument about financial waste. The alarm company charged a 50-dollar fine every time the office alarm was accidentally triggered. Workers at Keith Haring's Pop Shop earned an hourly wage of 8 dollars.

Prominent artists and celebrities lend their presence to charitable benefits, community service, and high-profile public fundraisers. Warhol, Paige, and Wilfredo volunteered to serve Easter meals to the poor at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on 90th and Fifth Avenue. You can participate in community work through specific steps:

• Go to the church or charity venue to help serve meals to people in need
• Handle food distribution such as handing out ham or coffee from restaurant urns
• Keep focused on the task and maintain respectful boundaries with attendees

Volunteers used 6 restaurant urns of coffee during the church charity meal. A total fund of 30,000 dollars was raised through church raffle tickets priced at $100 each with a $10,000 cash prize.

4. Publishing Interview Magazine

Interview magazine grew from a low-budget movie fanzine into an elite publication requiring constant operational juggling.

Magazine Evolution

Interview started in 1969 to let stars talk unedited about movies. The publication evolved under executive editor Bob Colacello into a politically conservative, androgynous, and elitist magazine. This approach successfully kept Warhol relevant long after the 1960s pop art wave.

When a lawyer advised that calling a movie critic a drag queen was libelous in the first issue, Warhol and his staff spent 6 hours crossing out the word drag with black felt-tip pens across bundles of magazines. A late 1970s survey indicated .001 children as the average reader's family size.

Business and Staff Pressures

Publishing operations require constant juggling of advertising contracts, celebrity cover stories, and eccentric staff dynamics. Warhol and his colleagues manage Interview magazine by handling cover shoots with figures like Paloma and Jerry Hall, dealing with fluctuating ad revenue, and navigating staff members who mix work with personal chaos.

Brigid trains new office workers like Robyn Geddes with invented rules about answering phones rapidly while staff members juggle high-profile interviews. The magazine secured 15 pages of ads in the new issue. Fred screams at Warhol for destroying office protocol by inviting kids into a limousine without checking their hierarchical titles, while Interview struggles to secure stars like Travolta and Sean Penn because of Rolling Stone. The office handled events such as the 70th anniversary party for Paramount and noted box office earnings of 9 million dollars for the movie Lords of Discipline.

You can manage communication standards through specific office habits:

• Let the phone ring twice at home
• Answer the office phone on half a ring to maintain high call volume of 5 calls a minute expected by Brigid for office phone performance

5. Nightlife and Studio 54

Venues like Studio 54 function as networks for nightlife recruitment and social positioning among young aspirants. You can observe how co-founder Steve Rubell uses the surrounding nightlife scene to maintain an entourage of young people eager for fame.

Discos like Studio 54 functioned as networks for nightlife recruitment, social positioning, and eventual legal crackdowns.

Stevie Rubell explained that he had to go around to discos to pick out boys to work at Studio 54. Steve Rubell's estimated wealth was reported at $25 million.

Tax Raids and Arrests

Tax raids and legal investigations can abruptly disrupt high-profile nightlife establishments. Federal agents and Internal Revenue Service investigators raid Studio 54 to seize financial books.

The Daily News reports that thirty-six IRS agents raided Studio 54, seizing the books and busting Ian Schrager for two ounces of cocaine. Steve Rubell told Andy Warhol that his lawyers advised him he could get off by giving evidence to the government about Washington people taking drugs at Studio 54. Legal and tax troubles eventually caught up with the owners of Studio 54, leading to a prison sentence of 3.5 years given to Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager.

Makeup artists at the studio use specific techniques to make portrait subjects' faces white. When photographing Adriana Jackson and a Swiss lady, makeup artist Gigi whitens their faces to improve the quality of the final portrait screens. You can follow these technical steps:

• Apply white face makeup to subjects before photography
• Ensure wrinkles are minimized for better printing results

6. Collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat

Collaborating with Jean-Michel Basquiat brought fresh energy into Warhol's artistic process while exposing personal demons and drug addiction.

Young artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat experience meteoric rises in the art market while battling severe personal demons, including drug addiction. Basquiat moves between major galleries, commands high prices for his work, and collaborates with international dealers like Bruno Bischofberger and Mary Boone, yet struggles intensely with heroin addiction.

Paige Powell cries and worries over Basquiat's heroin addiction, noting he developed a hole in his nose, while later he shows up looking healthy after a trip to Jamaica.

Joint Canvases

Collaborations between contemporary artists often involve joint painting sessions that mix distinct styles while carrying personal tensions and drug-related unpredictability. Warhol works closely with artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente on joint canvases, noting Basquiat's erratic behavior, heavy drug use, and frequent paranoia.

Basquiat visits Warhol's office while heavily intoxicated by drugs, sometimes painting over canvases or falling asleep during collaborative sessions.

You can trace the scope of these artistic partnerships through specific metrics:

• 15,000 dollars price for Basquiat's paintings
• 10 percent commission taken by Paige Powell compared to 50 percent by Mary Boone
• 19,000 dollars auction price for Basquiat's painting
• 15 joint paintings worked on by Warhol, Basquiat, and Clemente

Fame and Addiction

Collaborating with Jean-Michel Basquiat brings fresh energy into Warhol's artistic process, though Basquiat struggles with fame, paranoia, and drug addiction. Warhol and Basquiat work together on paintings, but Basquiat's erratic behavior, substance use, and shifting living arrangements between luxury hotels and his studio create constant friction. Despite his financial success and gallery backing, Basquiat remains burdened by his past struggles and anxieties about exploitation.

Basquiat spends $250 a night staying at the Ritz Carlton and Mayfair Regent hotels while occasionally returning to his messy Great Jones Street loft.

Financial scale marks the lifestyle surrounding these projects:

• 250 dollars nightly room rate at the Ritz Carlton
• 12,000 dollars cost of the Cristal champagne at Basquiat's party

7. Health Regimens and Alternative Wellness

Warhol and his circle experimented obsessively with alternative health practices, crystal healing, and weight-loss regimens.

You manage your personal health and weight with strict monitoring and financial incentives. Warhol attempts to help Brigid lose weight by establishing a monetary penalty system tied to weight fluctuations. He tells her he will give her five dollars for every pound she lost, but she had to give him ten dollars for every pound she gained.

Brigid follows a rigid regimen through Overeaters Anonymous where members must plan every meal with each other the night before and are barred from making any changes afterward. On September 2, 1980, Brigid is down to 166 pounds by strictly adhering to her pre-planned dietetic meals.

You can track your physical habits using specific steps:

• Weigh yourself regularly on an office scale
• Receive five dollars for every pound lost
• Pay ten dollars for every pound gained
• Call group members the night before to plan out exactly what to eat the next day
• Stick strictly to the planned menu without making any changes

Hypochondria and Daily Habits

Warhol focuses intensely on his physical health, weight fluctuations, and medical treatments while battling depression. He regularly tracks his weight, performs pushups and situps, takes numerous vitamins, and uses a vaporizer in his bedroom to protect his skin. On January 11, 1981, he mentions taking two aspirin a day to prevent hardening of the arteries.

Warhol develops pneumonia in June 1981 after drinking a cold daiquiri, leading to strict doctor's orders to stay in bed.

Crystal Healing and Alternative Medicine

Alternative treatments and holistic medicine become regular pursuits for maintaining health, energy, and youthfulness. Warhol visits a crystal doctor named Bernsohn who works on his pancreas for $75 after receiving recommendations from alternative health practitioners.

You can engage with alternative wellness methods through structured routines:

• Hold out an arm and push while the practitioner knocks it away to test physical condition
• Use crystals to restore body energy and address physical ailments
• Go to a crystal doctor for an energy session
• Have a crystal programmed over a specified number of days
• Keep the programmed crystal within ten feet while sleeping

A crystal doctor programs a crystal for Warhol over a period of four days, instructing him to keep it within ten feet of him while sleeping.

8. Fame, Security, and Final Days

High-profile public life exposed Warhol to security threats, intense media scrutiny, and final medical emergencies.

Security Concerns

Following national assassination attempts, you encounter disturbed individuals and direct death threats over suspected song plagiarisms. You must purchase protective equipment and civilian disguises to move safely through the city.

A disturbed individual named Joey Sutton calls the office forty times and sends a note warning that May 5 is live or die over a delusion regarding a Mick Jagger song. This prompts Warhol to hire a bodyguard and buy a bulletproof vest.

You can protect yourself from public threats using practical items:

• Purchase camouflage hats and alternate disguises to move safely
• Acquire a bulletproof vest from specialized shops

The bulletproof vest costs $270 at a shop on University Place.

Epilogue and Legacy

Warhol's final days are marked by a routine of intense professional obligations that abruptly end due to a fatal medical emergency. Despite experiencing severe abdominal pain related to your gallbladder, you resist hospitalization out of deep-seated fear before finally being admitted as an emergency patient.

You enter New York Hospital as an ambulatory emergency patient on February 20, 1987. After a successful gallbladder surgery, you watch television and make phone calls to friends, but pass away suddenly from post-surgical complications in the early Sunday morning on February 22, 1987.

The Detroit News asserts that the book's deep capture of a specific era ensures its historical significance for at least a century.

10 Key Ideas

1. Andy Warhol maintained a strict daily diary routine via morning phone calls to record his expenses and social itineraries.
2. Warhol sustained his art business and subsidized his magazine through an elaborate, standardized procedure for commissioned portraits.
3. Warhol utilized distinctive, non-confrontational methods to manage employees and maintain a respectful workplace atmosphere.
4. Interview magazine grew from a low-budget movie fanzine into an elite publication requiring constant operational juggling.
5. Discos like Studio 54 functioned as networks for nightlife recruitment, social positioning, and eventual legal crackdowns.
6. Collaborating with Jean-Michel Basquiat brought fresh energy into Warhol's artistic process while exposing personal demons and drug addiction.
7. Warhol and his circle experimented obsessively with alternative health practices, crystal healing, and weight-loss regimens.
8. High-profile public life exposed Warhol to security threats, intense media scrutiny, and final medical emergencies.
9. Counterfeit Flower paintings attributed to Warhol appeared in Europe through dealers like Gerard and Arman, causing buyers to fear purchasing authentic works and driving down market prices.
10. The Detroit News asserted that the book's deep capture of a specific era ensures its historical significance for at least a century.