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| Warhol : The Fan |
| Warhol himself had been fascinated by the major stars of stage and screen all his life, an idollizing attachment which his own celebrity status enabled him to pursue into the three-dimensional reality of this world of fame, fortune and glitz. His social interaction with these stars was obsessively documented by Warhol, whose polaroid camera became his most treasured and constant companion, and from 1976 he began dictating his detailed diary to Pat Hackett each week day morning over the telephone. The dictations formed the basis of the "Andy warhol Diaries" |
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| As a youth, Warhol's obsession with the big-screen celebrity had been nourished by the many tabloids and celebrity journals which lined the shelves of the book-stores, their pages filled with celebrity photographs, tales of glittering Hollywood events and celebrity gossip. It perhaps comes as no surprise then that Warhol himself ventured into celebrity journalism |
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| It was perhaps also inevitable that in Warhol's art which embodied American culture, he would adopt as subject matter the celebrity icons whose universal fame stimulated the dreams of every American citizen. The most famous of his celebrity portraits includes his paintings of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy. That they formed part of his Death and Disaster series was indicated by Warhol himself. That these paintings reveal a distinct Warholian sensibility seems certain despite his calm insistence on his artistic passivity. |
