Attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II (d1b91a11)

The Attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II is recorded as a sudden interruption to a working lunch and as a reminder, for Andy Warhol, that political violence could cost him a portrait commission. His response links the pope’s shooting to an earlier loss surrounding Ronald Reagan’s shooting: the news is not only alarming, but a threat to the work and routines that organize his day.

The News at Lunch

On Wednesday, May 13, 1981, Warhol went downstairs for a noon lunch with Charlie Cowles and Sid and Anne Bass. Cowles had already arrived, and the group had gathered around the television when news came that the pope had been shot. The diary gives no further details about the attack itself; its focus is the shock of receiving the news in a room where people had assembled for lunch and to look at Warhol’s portraits.

Warhol’s Reaction

Warhol says that he started screaming and became furious. He recalled that a portrait had been lost on the day Reagan was shot and insisted that he did not want the same thing to happen again, before demanding that the television be turned off. His reaction turns the broadcast into a personal and professional alarm: the public event is registered through the possibility that another assassination could disrupt a portrait sitting.

Work Resumes

After the television was switched off, the Basses came to look at their portraits. Warhol still had to change some lips and make many new ones, so the lunch’s interruption gave way to the ordinary, unfinished business of portrait work. The diary places the attempted assassination beside those revisions without suggesting that the danger had passed or explaining what the Basses thought; instead, it records how quickly Warhol’s attention returned to commissions even as the shooting remained the immediate context of the day.