Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor emerges in Andy Warhol’s diary as more than a familiar Hollywood star: she is a friend and recurring presence in his social life, a possible subject for his paid portrait practice, and a public figure whose image could alter the atmosphere of a room. The diary follows her between intimate exchanges and highly managed appearances, ultimately finding a sharp contrast between the power of her fame and the loneliness it could produce.

Identity and Place in Warhol’s World

Taylor appears regularly in the company of Halston and John Warner, moving through the same overlapping worlds of fashion, entertainment, politics, and celebrity that Warhol inhabited. He encountered her at dinners, benefits, theater openings, and parties, sometimes alongside her husband and sometimes in private gatherings at Halston’s home. His descriptions make her presence unusually tangible: she could be “river purple,” in a dress being discussed by everyone around her, or the focus of a tribute whose decorations filled the room with enormous flower vases and photographs of her.

The diary also records the familiar intimacy of her relationship with Warhol. At a 1977 opening for his Hammer & Sickle works at Castelli Gallery, Taylor did not attend, but Halston brought Warhol a small painting she had made for him. Her absence disappointed him because he thought her appearance would have made the opening more important. The gift nonetheless made her part of the occasion: even when she was not in the room, her name and image could lend an event distinction.

That intimacy was not limited to formal occasions. At a benefit dinner, Taylor came over to Warhol’s table and ate with him, while John Warner brought her notably smaller servings of wine than he brought Warhol. She challenged the discrepancy with a playful question, and Warner blamed the bartender. Warhol’s diary records the exchange as a small social performance, but it also shows him watching the couple’s habits closely, attentive to the details of their public manner and private familiarity.

The Star Image and the Portrait

Taylor’s image circulated through the media as well as through rooms she physically entered. In 1977, Warhol watched a television interview with the Empress of Iran in which a close-up of his Mick Jagger print appeared among the art. The interviewer identified it as a Warhol painting of the rock star, and the Empress responded that she liked modern art. Taylor was not the subject of this broadcast, but the episode helps establish the media environment in which Warhol’s celebrity portraits, and Taylor’s celebrity presence, were repeatedly made visible and interpreted.

A portrait of Taylor was also part of Warhol’s commercial world. His commissioned portraits began with roughly sixty Polaroid photographs, from which he selected four images for screen-printing proofs. He chose a final image, decided how to crop it, and retouched it to flatter the sitter before enlarging it for the silkscreen. His assistants prepared colored canvas backgrounds, and slight misalignments between the printed image and the painted areas produced the portraits’ characteristic shifting effect. The first canvas generally cost about $25,000, with additional canvases priced separately.

Taylor’s own wish to be portrayed appears explicitly in a later diary episode. At a gathering, she repeatedly asked Warhol when he would “Xerox” her, using the name of the reproduction process as her shorthand for having her image made in his style. A companion urged Warhol to tell her the price, suggesting that the commission might be financially startling. The exchange presents Taylor not only as an image already recognized everywhere, but as someone who wanted Warhol to remake that image. The diary does not confirm that the proposed portrait was completed.

Her appearance remained a subject of Warhol’s attention over the years, sometimes in the same blunt, visual terms he applied to other celebrities. At the 1977 opening, he regretted that she had not come; at a later party he disparaged her appearance while describing the crowd gathered for her. In 1986, after she had lost weight, he noted that her nose had not become smaller with the rest of her figure and recorded that her waist measured twenty inches. MTV also used Warhol’s paintings in its videos, including his portrait of Taylor, carrying her likeness into another medium and generation of celebrity circulation.

Parties, Friendship, and Public Performance

Taylor’s social appearances could turn an ordinary night into an event. At a party for her at Studio 54, Warhol had expected a gathering of fifteen or twenty people; instead, about two thousand attended. The scale made the party potentially costly for Halston, but it also made the evening useful to Warhol: he saw a prospective portrait client, Aly, who said she would be ready to have her photograph taken the following week, and they discussed a Joan Crawford sale. Taylor’s celebration thus joined spectacle to business, with celebrity drawing the crowd and the crowd creating opportunities for Warhol’s work.

The tribute’s visual arrangement reinforced that centrality. Huge vases filled with flowers and photographs of Taylor on the walls made her image the organizing subject of the party. At another celebration, her presence was felt through expectation and absence: at Liza Minnelli’s birthday gathering at Halston’s home, both Taylor and Muhammad Ali failed to appear. The party was still pleasant, but Warhol noted that it lacked people. Across these scenes, Taylor’s significance is measured not only by what she did when present but by the attention her anticipated arrival—or failure to arrive—commanded.

Warhol’s diary also preserves a playful, sometimes conspicuously staged closeness. At one gathering, Taylor rebuked him for leaving Diana Vreeland alone. Later, Minnelli kissed Taylor repeatedly in front of photographers, and Warhol observed that he did not get to speak with Minnelli amid the picture-taking. The affectionate gesture and the cameras were inseparable: the moment was both a display of personal warmth and a scene made for public images. Taylor could direct Warhol’s attention and, at the same time, become the focus around which other people performed for photographers.

Politics, Benefits, and Private Candor

In 1978, Taylor hosted a benefit for John Warner. The event struggled to raise money: guests wore small pieces of jewelry, an attempted auction drew little interest, and the room’s comic confusion culminated in Taylor offering to buy an unsold painting herself. The diary sets her charitable effort against the reluctance of wealthy guests to bid. Her own star power did not guarantee that the audience would give generously, and the failed auction left Warhol feeling sorry for her.

Afterward, Taylor joined Halston and Warhol at Halston’s home. Warhol urged her to speak directly to Black voters in the days before the election, arguing that her usual approach would not be enough. In a more intimate conversation, she said that she wanted to be a senator’s wife rather than imagine herself in the White House, and wondered how such a role would look for a Jewish woman who had married seven times. The exchange places her public ambitions beside her awareness of the scrutiny attached to her identity and personal history. Warhol’s diary records both her laughter and her hesitation, without resolving how she understood the political role herself.

Taylor’s later appearances at benefits again brought together celebrity and public purpose. At a large AIDS fundraiser, organizers planned an enormous group photograph with Taylor, Calvin Klein, and the mayor. A boy from Indiana who was reportedly refused permission to attend school because he had AIDS was also present. Warhol’s account moves from the scale and glamour of the event to the visible signs of illness on attendees, making the party’s charitable purpose impossible to separate from the crisis it addressed.

When Taylor finally arrived, people rushed and crowded around her. Keith Haring wondered aloud what it took to be that famous. Photographers pressed in, used Taylor for their pictures, and then left her standing alone. The episode gives the diary its clearest image of the costs of celebrity: Taylor’s arrival could seize an entire room, but the attention was transactional, ending as soon as the cameras had obtained their pictures. Her fame was immense; the moment after its performance was unexpectedly solitary.