The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan appears in Andy Warhol’s diary not as a direct account of the attack, but through the anxious chain of associations it set off in his working and social life. News that the pope had been shot made Warhol fear another lost presidential portrait; later, a red newspaper headline and conversation about bulletproof vests carried the violence into dinner at Halston’s.

The news and the portrait

On May 13, 1981, Warhol went to lunch with Charlie Cowles, Sid Bass, and Anne Bass. When he arrived, everyone was gathered around the television, and the pope had been shot. Warhol began screaming. He recalled that a portrait had been lost on the day Reagan was shot and insisted that the television be turned off because he did not want the same thing to happen again.

The diary links the pope’s shooting with Reagan’s without describing either attack in detail. Its focus is Warhol’s immediate fear for the portrait: political violence becomes legible to him as the possible disappearance of a commissioned image. After the television was shut off, the Basses looked at their portraits, and Warhol noted that he needed to alter some lips and make a number of new ones. Work resumed, but the interruption had exposed how closely his attention to portraiture was tied to the prospect of public violence.

News carried into social life

That evening, Warhol went to Halston’s, where Liza Minnelli was present. A copy of the Post lay there with “POPE SHOT” printed in red. The headline converted the television report into an object in the room, and the conversation turned to bulletproof vests. The diary records the news moving from a gathered crowd around a screen, to Warhol’s concern about a portrait, and then into the charged social atmosphere of dinner.

The diary’s framing

The episode survives in a record created through a weekday morning phone routine between Warhol and Pat Hackett. What began as a way to log his activities and business expenses had become a personal diary, while retaining its practical attention to details such as cash expenditures. Hackett took notes during the conversations and typed the entries afterward; the published volume was later distilled from about 20,000 pages, with whole days and portions of days omitted.

That editorial history matters to the event’s presentation. The account offers a sharply bounded sequence—television news, a shouted reaction, portrait work, and the repeated headline at dinner—rather than a comprehensive report on the attempted assassination. Hackett also removed many direct references to herself so that readers could occupy the position of the person listening at the other end of the phone. The result places the reader close to Warhol’s reported response while leaving the attack itself outside the scene.