Nick Ripatrazone finds the latest series about the artist perfectly depicts the startling paradoxes that guided his life and work

The final episode of The Andy Warhol Diaries, a new six-part documentary series on Netflix about the pop artist’s life and work, examines how the HIV/Aids epidemic roiled New York City in the Eighties. Bronx painter Glenn Ligon, one of the many artists interviewed, says “Warhol was going to Mass every Sunday and stayed a good Catholic boy, even though his lifestyle would seemingly be the opposite. How do you reconcile those things?”

The Andy Warhol Diaries doesn’t attempt to reconcile the Warholian paradox of faith and desire, nor should it. A true Catholic artist, one steeped in the aesthetic and sensual, finds the line between the sacred and profane to be porous – a place of temptation for sinners and saints alike. For Warhol, it was a place for genius.

The series begins with a mash-up of contemporary pop figures and the superficial conception of Warhol as merely pop personified, a cardboard caricature. It is a necessary step towards purgation, as the series quickly and effectively pivots to examining the Warhol mythos – with healthy assistance from the publication of his diary in 1989. Warhol kept his diary via phone with a freelance writer, so that it became a public confession rather than private document.

Halfway through the first episode, the filmmakers make the essential pilgrimage to St John Chrysostom Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Byzantine Catholic Church where Warhol was baptised. Warhol’s devout mother brought him to Vespers on Saturday nights and the Divine Liturgy on Sundays – a long service that placed young, impressionable Warhol in front of the iconostasis, a wall of icons

Bob Colacello, a close associate of Warhol and editor of his magazine, Interview, thinks the icons explain Warhol’s entire aesthetic. Interviewed for the series, he says: “All his really important images were icons. Icons in the classical definition of objects of worship: Marilyn, Liz, Jackie, Elvis. These were American saints, secular saints. His sensibility was so Catholic.”

I once spoke with Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, the last employee Andy hired, about the enigmatic artist’s faith. “Almost everyone who remained relevant in Andy’s life was Catholic,” she told me, “whether it was Paul Morrissey, Fred Hughes, Bob Colacello, the photographer Christopher Makos or Vincent Fremont. Being brought up Catholic gives a sense of hierarchy, discipline and faith. Faith, when embraced, anchors the creative … I think it would also be fair to say that the romantically rich and multi-layered religion that forgives all – lest we forget! – allows unconventional traditionalists.”

Unconventional traditionalist is a masterful way to describe Warhol, and thankfully, the series accepts the paradox. Warhol was lonely. He had a series of lovers – of unknown physical intimacy – but he was preternaturally lonely, ashamed of his physical appearance, a performer who wanted you to look but not judge. A melancholy strain pervades his work, including his death and disaster series, with its depictions of electric chairs. Catholics are aware of death, and few mainstream artists were as Christological as Warhol. 

Among other tensions in his life, Warhol was acutely aware of the blessings and burdens of fame. “I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist,” he said. “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.” Warhol’s commercial work was profoundly sacred. As early as 1956, he designed Christmas cards for Tiffany & Co – his mock-ups and final productions lifted by a light, almost child-like faith. Warhol the commercial artist is truly inextricable from another pop culture Catholic contemporary, Marshall McLuhan, whose first book, The Mechanical Bride (1951), examined the aesthetics of print advertising. 

The series builds toward Warhol’s iconic Last Supper work, commissioned by Alexander Iolas, who had put on Warhol’s first New York City show years earlier. After receiving the assignment, Warhol was unable to find a store that sold an affordable sculpture of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, so he went to Times Square to get a plaster, mass-produced version. It is a perfect detail to capture Warhol’s immigrant, workmanlike sensibility.

His Last Supper collection is eccentric, expansive. He created a yellow Last Supper, and one in camouflage. Other reproductions mine the sacred in the corporate: Dove as a permutation of the Holy Spirit, GE’s tagline “we bring good things to light” as following Genesis. The work is not only cultural Catholicism; for Warhol, Christ was absolutely essential.

A late scene in the series depicts art historian John Richardson’s eulogy at Warhol’s funeral: “Andy’s use of a pop conceit to energise sacred subjects constitutes a major breakthrough in religious art. And how awesomely prophetic is one of his very last paintings, which simply announces Heaven and Hell are just one breath away.” 

That Warhol is still mysterious by the end of The Andy Warhol Diaries is testament to how his paradoxes resist simplification. Catholicism was Warhol’s muse, his source of tension and, most importantly, his faith. 

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