1987

1987 appears in the diary as a year of sharp contrasts: late nights followed by enforced rest, a crowded gallery opening after an uncertain start, and the ordinary details of travel and friendship shadowed by growing physical weakness. The surviving entries are selective rather than a complete calendar of the year, but together they trace a January in which Andy Warhol remained intensely involved in work and other people even as illness began to narrow his energies. In retrospect, the diary’s account of his bodily discomfort is especially poignant: a gallbladder problem in February 1987 led to his death, though the published record offers little detail about it.

The diary as a record of the year

The January entries belong to a weekday routine established in 1976. Pat Hackett called Warhol on weekday mornings to record what he had done and where he had gone, along with the cash expenses that had originally made the log useful for business and tax purposes. They did not make regular weekend entries; on Mondays, Warhol recounted the previous Friday, Saturday, and Sunday together. When either was away, the arrangement shifted to calls, notes, or, occasionally, a tape recording. Hackett’s account stresses that no day was left undiarized, even when the means of recording it changed.

The printed diary, however, is not the unaltered daily record. Its original 20,000 pages were distilled for publication, with entire days, weeks, or portions of days removed and many names omitted. That editorial selection matters to any reading of 1987: the year’s surviving scenes are evidence of what the published diary chose to preserve, not proof that every interval was equally quiet or uneventful. Hackett also removed personal exchanges that would have made sense only between the two of them, recasting the reader as the person on the other end of Warhol’s morning call. The result keeps the texture of a daily conversation while concealing part of the conversation that produced it.

Work, weariness, and the January opening

The year begins with a pause. After a New Year’s Eve that kept Warhol out until about four in the morning, he noted that staying out had thrown off his day. On January 1, with rain and unpleasant weather, he stayed in and rested. The modest entry makes rest part of the year’s record rather than a gap outside it: work and nightlife continued to be measured against the body’s need to stop.

By January 4, Warhol was looking at the exhibition of his photographs at the Robert Miller Gallery. He thought the show looked excellent and the catalogue looked good, but objected to Stephen Koch’s essay for returning to familiar names such as Duchamp and Brassai. He thought a younger writer might have brought in fresher references. The complaint shows him attending not just to the presentation of his own work but to the language and critical frame surrounding it. He chose not to go out afterward, preferring to rest before the opening.

The opening on January 6 began with only a scattering of visitors, then grew busier. Warhol arrived at five, worked hard through the event, and later described himself as having worked himself to death. Steven Greenberg offered a limousine, while Paige Powell supplied the gallery with fifty additional people to invite at the last minute. After dinner with Greenberg, Warhol went home early, hoping sleep would help him shake a cold. At three in the morning, Jean-Michel Basquiat called; Warhol talked with him, and the interruption cost him sleep. In a compact sequence, professional effort, social assistance, illness, and an intimate late-night call all press on the same day.

Travel and changing attention

On January 17, Warhol made what he described as his last diary entry with Hackett before a European trip. He worked at the office until seven, then went with Paige Powell to Keith Haring’s opening. Warhol found Haring’s work interesting and different, with a faster, less planned appearance. He also registered a personal sting: Sean Lennon was absent, and Warhol admitted jealousy that Sean preferred Keith. His remark to Haring about Sean’s absence was deliberately meant to make Haring notice it. The entry shifts from an account of an exhibition to a confession of rivalry, showing how closely Warhol’s social attention could attach itself to the people around him.

The next morning, January 18, Warhol left New York for Paris with Chris Makos and Fred Hughes. He disliked leaving in good weather, packed a bag he found too heavy, and traveled wearing layers rather than changing clothes. In Paris, his room at the Hotel Lenox was cold but appealingly small, with old French wood; he and his companions walked over ice to Café de Flore, where they had sandwiches and were the only customers, staying until closing. The details make the trip less a glamorous itinerary than a sequence of practical discomforts and small observations. On the return journey, Warhol noted that he had appeared in the International Herald Tribune and, for the first time, had not bothered to clip the article. He wondered whether being sick explained his indifference, but still marked the moment as a change in his response to publicity.

Care, illness, and retrospective significance

By January 25, Warhol was back in New York and still feeling unwell. Paige Powell brought him soup, bread, and dessert from Café Condotti. He contrasted her attention to other people with Chris Makos’s tendency to act for himself, and recognized how much Powell invested in those she cared about. This moment of practical care sits alongside the diary’s more public scenes: the exhibition, the trip, and the newspaper notice. It shows the year’s record being shaped not only by Warhol’s movements but by the people who looked after him.

The diary’s retrospective account gives these January references a grave context. Warhol’s greatest fears were going broke and getting cancer; a headache or freckle could provoke the possibility of serious disease. Yet Hackett observed that when he was truly worried about a health problem, he scarcely mentioned it. She identifies the gallbladder problem in February 1987 as the illness that led to his death. The contrast is decisive: the diary preserves conspicuous worries and everyday bodily complaints, but the condition that proved fatal remains largely outside the detailed January scenes. Thus 1987 is recorded both as a working year, full of openings, travel, calls, and acts of care, and as the point at which the apparent continuity of those routines gives way to a danger the diary barely articulates.