1981

In 1981, Andy Warhol’s diary moves between the alarming spectacle of national news, the practical demands of portrait work and travel, and the everyday logistics that made his life recordable. A glimpse of him reacting to the Pope being shot shows how public events could strike him through the lens of his own work and fear of loss; later entries follow him from New York to East Falmouth and Toronto. These scenes reach the reader through a weekday telephone routine and an edited manuscript, not as an unfiltered transcript of the year.

A diary made by conversation

The record of 1981 belonged to a practice Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett had established in the fall of 1976. Their weekday calls were ostensibly for logging where he had gone and what he had done, along with cash business expenses. The practical purpose never disappeared: Warhol itemized even ten-cent calls from street payphones, while the IRS continued auditing his business after its first major audit in 1972. But the calls also became a way for him to examine daily life. What had been a business log became a personal narrative.

Hackett generally called around 9 a.m., no later than 9:30. The conversations began with ordinary chat, then turned to expenses and the previous day and night. Although Warhol described it as a five-minute job, a session could last one or two hours. Hackett took notes on a legal pad and typed them immediately afterward, while his intonations were fresh in her mind. Every other week or so, she brought the typed pages to the office and attached the loose cab and restaurant receipts Warhol had left her; the pages were stored in stationery-store letter boxes.

The routine accommodated weekends and travel rather than leaving gaps in the record. There were no regular Saturday or Sunday entries; on Monday, Warhol recounted Friday through Sunday in a triple session. When he was away, he might call from his destination, read notes scrawled on hotel stationery after returning, or give Hackett a cassette he had recorded. When she traveled, the two sometimes arranged for him to read his notes to her over the phone. Warhol could also add to or correct an entry in later conversations, asking Hackett to include the new detail. The published voice thus emerged from repeated telling, note-taking, receipts, and revision.

A moment of alarm in May

On May 13, at lunch, Warhol found people gathered around a television reporting that the Pope had been shot. He shouted for the television to be turned off, fearing another loss of a portrait: when Ronald Reagan was shot, he recalled, a portrait had been lost, and he did not want that to happen again. The news registered not simply as a public crisis but as a threat to a working relationship with a subject and to the continuity of his portrait business.

The same entry turns from the broadcast to clients and bodily apprehension. Sid and Anne Bass came to look at their portraits, and Warhol noted that he needed to change some lips and make many new ones. He was down to 119 pounds and frightened by the change, describing his stomach as having shrunk. The juxtaposition is striking without requiring the diary to explain it: commissions still demanded adjustments while his own physical condition had become a source of alarm.

Travel, company, and work

On May 22, the diary records a trip from New York to East Falmouth, Massachusetts. Peter Wise met Warhol, Jon Gould, and Chris Makos when they landed. Warhol recorded that the plane cost about $800 and that he paid by check. At Wise’s house, a tour reached as far as the greenhouse, and the group received room assignments. Vincent and Shelly were expected after work, so the day and night passed largely in waiting for their arrival.

Another small observation redirected attention outdoors: Warhol noticed a large boat on the water, partly painted, found it pretty and odd-looking, and imagined it as a place for a party. Peter Wise and Chris Makos then showed the visitors around town. Wise bought chowder at Mildred’s Chowder House in Hyannis, described as the best chowder place in New England. The entry’s movement from travel cost to house tour, delayed arrivals, boat, and meal preserves the texture of a visit through the specific details Warhol chose to tell.

On November 20, Warhol was traveling from New York to Toronto. He complained of U.S. and Canadian customs, then recorded that Conrad Black had sent a limousine to take the party to a hotel, where Warhol had suite 2910 overlooking Canada. After getting cleaned up and dressed, they went to Black’s office. Black had read Popism the previous night, a detail Warhol treated as evidence that he had done his homework; he also noted Black’s age, appearance, manner, and family wealth in mines, supermarkets, and newspapers. The entry connects a book’s reception to the social and business encounters that surrounded Warhol’s public life.

The year as an edited record

The 1981 material is not presented as a complete calendar. Hackett says the diary originally ran to 20,000 pages and that, for publication, she cut whole days, sometimes whole weeks, and often portions of individual days. She also reduced lists of names, selecting people Warhol spoke with or discussed in greater detail. A published entry therefore preserves particular encounters while omitting others; its silences are part of the editorial design, not a guarantee that nothing else happened.

Hackett also removed much of the interpersonal dimension of their conversations, including references meaningful only to the two of them. Where some personal references remained, she recast herself in the third person so that readers could occupy the position of the person listening at the other end of the phone. The resulting diary feels conversational, but its intimacy is shaped by selection and transcription. In these 1981 scenes, receipts and a precise room number share the page with alarm, appetite, and social observation: the year becomes legible through the daily particulars that Warhol reported and Hackett chose to retain.