PRiINT

Rip It Up, Issue 149, 1 December 1989, Page 42

PRiINT

THEANDY WARHOL DIARIES Edited by Pat Hackett (Simon & Schuster) ] Ideally a diary reveals dark secrets, butsince Andy Warhol’s whole life

became a walking sideshow, its most mundane events celebrated in film and paint and ink, this diary could never be arevelation. I's as thick asa phone book and as comprehensive in its

gossipping: “Tama was jealous because he’d had four novels published ... Jerry told us that she gives Mick a blow job before she lets him out of the house...." As an artist, Warhol began making pictures that were strident and powerful. Historians would have you believe that his printing technique was deliberately sardonic and bland as “a comment on our modern age”, but

that's crap, really. His portraits were sharply conceived and executed and they were wonderfully coloured. They were nice to look at and they depicted famous people, which is what Goya did when he painted the Spanish Court. Warhol's trick was to make everyone a star, and by doing ithe became one himself — but unfortunately he worked in the shadow of Phil Spector rather than of Goya. Pop music meant more to him than putti. Glitz begat glitz, and the people were happy. “Suddenly TV cameras arrived to photograph me painting the model of the BMW car I'll be painting lateron ... | was going fo paint itin pink and black butthen Chris Makos had me change it to yellow and black ... the paint was shiny and itslipped. Leo Castelli came by and almost got sick, it was such a mess.” : Artwas a distant memory when Warhol started this diary. Andy, the anarchic propagator of the uptight, had quickly given way to Andy the ringmaster. Warhol had a good eye for art but unfortunately for him he had a better ear for conversation and spent most— if not all — of his time listening to other people. He became a bottleneck for New York: all the crap that people spoke flowed through coke tubes and tape recorders and arrived at Andy, who then spent the rest of his time sifting through it. So diligent was Warhol in his chronicling of what other people thought it comes as a breath of fresh air when he actually wastes four lines on himself and his work: B :

“Rupertis [collating] The Details. | hate them. Like details of the Bofticelli “Venus”. But people are loving these the best. It makes you wonder. Like they loved the James Dean cover forthe David Dalton book that | did. They're buying itin prints.” The self-critique has aweary and cynical tone. But I guess the critical faculties of one painter are nothing compared fo the fun a diarist (and one painter) can have with friends: “Victor Bockris came over with William Burroughs. lintroduced Bianca to William. Bianca’s hair is really short now. Jade was painting in the back with me and she sat on her first painting. | gave hersome diamond dustto throw onthe canvas.” ~

Andsoitgoes. Now it'sup to the readerto sift through the chaff and there are afew grains worth the effort in The Andy Warhol Diaries, even if the irony does wear thin. There’s a regular grumble about the availability of his favourite instant film, Polaroid Big Shot (when it was phased out, he strucka -

deal with the company and bought up the remaining stock) and a brief fuming when one gallery trims the canvas stretchers by an inch —Warhol's factory-line process was so polished that he knew what a difference that one inch would make to the picture. plane! The shadow of Aids grows ever largerinthe last yearsofthe diary, - which covers 1976-87, and its openinghalf drops some bombs: “Robert Mapplethorpe told me he has a show opening in San Francisco and he’s going there fora monthfora “sex vacation” because “San Francisco is the best place for sex in America”.” But really, the best bits would make a slim volume of powerful quotes. The restis all about his hometown and the glitz hippies that made it swing: Liza, Halston, Steve Rubell, Jerry & Mick, Bianca, Leo Castelliandßobby De - Niro. Marty and Lou areinthere somewhere, all the gang'sthere. Saturday, March 11, 1978: “7had alot of datesbutl decidedtostay home and dye my eyebrows.” Good move if you ask me. Oh, for the days when he'd stay home and do a painfingas well. CHADTAYLOR - PRINCE: A POP LIFE By Dave Hill (Faber And Faber) Avery comprehensive look at the career of Prince Rogers Nelson; before this only Jon Bream's 1984 look inside the Purple Reign has attempted anything of this detail. Hillis a British journalist and likes to amass facts and maybe a few factoids. He starts in Minneapolis, talking to those who knew Prince before star time. We learn that his school nickname was “Skipper” and his father named him after his jazz band, the Prince Rogers

Trio. More inferesting is Hill's ; ideological thread of the “brilliant fantasy”, how Prince has always had this vision of cross-over stardom. : Minneapolisis like no othertown in the States, the radio played black funk along with white rock and the two became intermingled. So Prince’s vision is made up from opposites, from contradictions: black R&B and white rock, machismo and effeminacy (taken from Little Richard), spirituality and materialism, futurism and nostalgia, male and female. Prince saw success in the dialetics between the opposites. Most of all, he wantedto be a rock n'roll media machine. Hill is good at putting everything together, and has a nice turn of phrase — like his comment on ‘When Doves Cry': “Aclassic pop cryfor help. The beautiful boy was hurting. He was on top of the world.” It's got everything you ever wanted to learn about MrP Nelson, plus a discography covering US and UK releases. . However, | could have done with a bit more criticism and elucidation about the cross-over problem. As Nelson George points outin The Death of Rhythm & Blues (Omnibus), Prince ran from his blackness. Both his parents were black yet in the film Purple Rain he presented his mother as white. An evil piece of marketing strategy which led to Lovesexy, his totally non-black album, and of course the ‘Black Album’ itself with the anti-rap songs. However, this won't disturb those of you who are real fans— the people for whom this book s intended. So if you want a nice - and clean overview, you can'tgo wrong. v

KERRY BUCHANAN