The New York Post

The New York Post, especially its Page Six column, was more than a paper Warhol read: it was a participant in the social network his diary records. Its headlines could turn rumors into public claims, provoke fear of scrutiny, or invite a response from the people being discussed. At the same time, Warhol treated the paper’s language and images as material that could be reused, making it both a source of pressure and a tool of publicity.

A daily presence in Warhol’s world

Warhol’s references to the paper range from celebrity gossip to crime reports and health rumors. The stories entered his conversations and shaped how he interpreted other people’s actions. In 1977, for example, a call involving Ronnie, Gigi, and Spyro became a small drama of messages and competing claims: Ronnie left messages at the Waldorf Towers saying first that Gigi’s husband had called, then that her brother had died. The reported pretexts were part of the social maneuvering, while Spyro later explained his own account of Gigi’s approach and said he felt she had drawn him into her conflict with Ronnie. The episode shows how information, whether delivered directly or relayed through others, could alter the terms of a relationship before anyone had settled what was true.

The newspaper also made distant events feel personally consequential. After the Post reported that Aly Kaiser’s jewels had been stolen following a party, Warhol was relieved that he had not discussed jewelry with her: he worried that such a conversation might make him a suspect. The report described a necklace valued at half a million dollars, and Warhol dwelt on the paper’s description of Kaiser as a divorcée. He speculated about the circumstances of the theft, but the diary presents that speculation as his own uncertainty, not as established fact. The article’s details turned a social encounter into something he reconsidered through the possibility of suspicion.

Gossip, reputation, and response

Page Six’s power in these entries rests partly on its ability to make private relationships public. In 1982, Bianca Jagger accused Warhol of telling People about her and Senator Dodd, saying that only Warhol, Steve Rubell, and Halston knew. Warhol concluded that Rubell had probably been the source, though the diary does not establish who disclosed the information. The Post’s Page Six also reported that Bianca was seeing Woodward as well as Bernstein. Bianca called the paper and secured a correction the following day, insisting that she was seeing only Bernstein. The sequence captures gossip as an information chain with practical consequences: suspicion moved among acquaintances, a newspaper printed a claim, and the subject of the report intervened to correct it.

The paper’s coverage could also make illness legible as rumor. At a dinner at Regine’s, Maura Moynihan told Warhol that Page Six had asked whether he was sick. Warhol feared that the question referred to AIDS, though Maura said the column had meant flu. He remained convinced that the underlying implication was AIDS and found the possibility frightening. The uncertainty mattered: even a question framed as concern could carry the weight of public speculation, leaving Warhol to distinguish between a benign explanation and a more alarming one.

Headlines as material and spectacle

Warhol did not only react to the Post; he sometimes imagined using its language as part of his own work. In 1985, he wanted to make a Madonna headline from the paper’s phrasing about nude photographs, pairing it with a photograph of Madonna taken on a different day. Keith Haring preferred a photograph he had made of Madonna with Sean Penn, which Warhol thought looked gray. Warhol planned to make both versions, and he also noted that they were making a painting together as a wedding present. The proposed headline and the competing photographs show how a news item could be detached from its original occasion and recombined as image, caption, and social gesture.

The diary’s account of that episode sits alongside Warhol’s broader work of turning people and publicity into pictures. His commissioned portraits began with about sixty Polaroid photographs taken on a Polaroid Big Shot; he selected a small group, chose and altered an image, and had it enlarged for screen printing. His assistants prepared canvas backgrounds in different flesh tones for men’s and women’s portraits, while the slight misalignment between painted color and screened photographic detail produced the portraits’ characteristic shifting effect. The Post’s headlines were not part of that mechanical process, but Warhol’s interest in adapting its wording belongs to the same practice of treating public images as material to select, edit, and circulate.

Power, exposure, and the public image

Warhol’s diary also notices the people who make and manage publicity. In 1985, he had dinner with Susan Mulcahy of the Post’s Page Six and observed that the job had placed her in a position of power. He thought the need to fill the column had made her tougher and compared her change to Bob Colacello’s earlier turn toward a more aggressive manner. His description is a personal judgment, but it identifies the column not simply as a collection of gossip: it was work that conferred influence on the person responsible for producing it.

That influence could run in both directions. The Post’s coverage supplied Warhol with news, fed his fears about being suspected or discussed, and helped shape the reputations of people around him. Yet he could also borrow its headlines for an image, while the paper’s reporting could be answered, as Bianca’s correction demonstrates. Across these episodes, the newspaper appears as an instrument of circulation: it carried stories from private circles into public language, and its words returned to those circles as suspicion, embarrassment, argument, or usable artistic material.