The New York Times

The New York Times is a recurring presence in Andy Warhol’s diaries, not merely as a newspaper but as an arbiter whose reviews, profiles, headlines, and reporting enter the daily calculations of artists and celebrities. Its coverage can certify a book, unsettle an artist’s standing, or make a private story newly public; Warhol reads it closely, questions its accounts, and measures his own and others’ visibility against it.

Reviews and artistic standing

The paper’s judgments become especially consequential when they concern people in Warhol’s orbit. In March 1978, Bob showed him John Leonard’s review of Fran Lebowitz’s book. Warhol could not understand the praise: the put-downs and complaints did not match his sense of humor, and he wondered what the point of the writing was. Bob, by contrast, wanted the review to demonstrate that others considered Lebowitz an asset to Interview. The disagreement made the newspaper review more than a verdict on a book: it became evidence in an argument about taste and the magazine’s editorial choices.

Two years later, the balance of approval and frustration reversed when Calvin Tomkins published an enthusiastic review of Popism in The New Yorker. Warhol’s diary celebrates the praise but turns immediately to the practical question of advertising: he wanted Harcourt Brace to explain when an advertisement would run in The New York Times. Critical recognition mattered, but so did its conversion into publicity and readership. In another setting, Warhol objected to the Times’s negative notice of American Gigolo. Richard Gere said that long lines outside the film had cheered him despite the review, setting the paper’s critical authority against visible audience interest.

The diary also records Warhol’s judgment of the paper’s cultural coverage beyond art criticism. After seeing Stranger Than Paradise, he simply found it unsuccessful; the entry then notes that fashion and gossip writer Eugenia Sheppard had died of cancer, describing her as someone who had brought those fields together. Elsewhere, a weekend arts section in the Times drew Warhol’s interest for its account of a person who drew dollar bills and spent them on meals, receiving change. Such details show his attention to the newspaper as a source of odd, usable stories as well as formal reviews.

Profiles, publicity, and the making of reputations

The Times’s magazine coverage could turn a person’s life into a public profile. In July 1978, Truman Capote invited Warhol to dinner on the day Capote’s photograph appeared on the cover of the newspaper’s magazine section. Warhol brought eight tapes and a camera and recorded a phone call with Jack Dunphy, Capote’s partner for thirty years. Capote discussed how the article’s writer had included Dunphy, while Warhol privately questioned Capote’s account of the calls surrounding the article. The newspaper profile thus framed an evening of recording, conversation, and uncertainty about what had happened behind the scenes.

The paper’s attention also marked the rise of Jean-Michel Basquiat. In September 1984, Warhol noted that Basquiat had dinner with a woman preparing a cover article about him for The New York Times Magazine. Basquiat told her that he had once been a male prostitute, but, according to Warhol, she could not use that material. Warhol speculated that Basquiat had offered the story to make himself seem fascinating. The episode captures both the pull of a major profile and the boundary between what a subject discloses and what a newspaper can publish.

A year later, a Times headline about Basquiat and Warhol made that boundary more personal. At the Odeon, Warhol asked for a newspaper and saw the headline “Basquiat and Warhol in Pas de Deux.” He read that Basquiat had been called his “mascot” and was distressed by the description. He later asked Basquiat whether the characterization had angered him; Basquiat said it had not. The label nevertheless exposed the imbalance Warhol feared the article might imply: their collaboration could be narrated as a supporting role for the younger artist, or as a diminishment of Basquiat, rather than as a partnership on its own terms.

Headlines, scandal, and the limits of the record

Warhol repeatedly treats the newspaper as a powerful but fallible narrator. In March 1986, he read that Imelda Marcos had left 3,000 pairs of shoes in the Philippines and reflected on the contrast between the Marcoses’ entertaining and their public image. He then joked about the possibility of a television program that would inspect a person’s apartment and infer a life from its contents. The imagined show turned the newspaper’s report into a question about privacy: what appears to be evidence in public can feel invasive when applied to one’s own possessions.

In October 1985, discussion of the Marcos family’s reported U.S. purchases prompted Warhol to add that newspapers could lie. He speculated about political motives and compared the possibility of the United States wanting the Shah’s fall with the country’s defeat in Vietnam. The entry records conjecture rather than established fact, making his skepticism about reporting part of the passage itself. His engagement with news is active but not credulous: he tests what he reads against his own suspicions, even when the resulting interpretation remains uncertain.

A December 1985 article about Carl Andre and the question of whether he had pushed his wife out a window led Warhol to imagine a possible argument and to assess Andre’s reported explanation for scratches on his face. Warhol said he would be disappointed if Andre were guilty, partly because he associated him with integrity. The diary does not resolve the allegation; instead, it shows how a newspaper account can prompt a reader to construct possible circumstances while withholding certainty. The entry’s significance lies in that unresolved movement from reporting to speculation, not in a conclusion about the case.

The newspaper as a public measure

The Times also provides a measure of cultural recognition that can exceed the parties, openings, and invitations of Warhol’s social world. At the Whitney Biennial, a woman enthusiastically told Basquiat that he and her husband considered him their favorite artist. Warhol offered her an autographed copy of Interview, but she declined. The scene contrasts the immediate recognition of Basquiat with the lesser value, in that moment, of Warhol’s magazine as a token of access. The newspaper’s forthcoming profile and the public’s attention to the artist were already changing the terms of their shared visibility.

That shift became explicit when the Times headline reduced their relationship to the image of a “mascot.” Warhol’s concern did not prevent him from continuing to work and socialize with Basquiat, but the incident shows how a short phrase could travel from a newspaper into their personal conversation. In the diaries, the paper’s power lies not only in whether it praises or criticizes. It can assign roles, amplify reputations, and make a relationship legible to readers in a form that the people involved may resist.

The newspaper’s coverage of a benefit for AIDS brought another kind of public judgment into focus. At an event organized for the cause, a reporter asked Warhol what he thought of the performances. He responded that many of the performers seemed out of work and wondered why they did not present the show on Broadway. Joseph Papp answered that they were too prominent to work on Broadway and had gathered for one special occasion. Warhol challenged the logic of being considered prominent while not working. In this exchange, the reporter’s question opened a debate about celebrity, employment, and the gap between public stature and professional opportunity.

By November 1986, Warhol was reading auction results reported in the paper as another record of cultural value. A James Rosenquist work sold for $2 million; a Jasper Johns drawing fetched $800,000, while a Robert Rauschenberg drawing sold for $90,000. Warhol emphasized the surprising disparity, especially the price of a drawing, and inferred that David Whitney must own many works by Johns. The figures gave the market a public, numerical language of reputation, one that could elevate one artist’s work and make another’s seem comparatively undervalued.

Recurrence and narrative significance

Across the diaries, The New York Times recurs in sharply different roles: reviewer, profile-maker, news source, witness to public spectacle, and recorder of art-market prices. Its coverage can be welcomed as recognition, resisted as an unconvincing judgment, or treated warily as an incomplete account. Warhol’s responses move between private taste and public consequence: he questions why a book is praised, tracks whether an advertisement will appear, notices who receives a cover story, and reacts when a headline assigns meaning to a collaboration.

The paper’s place in the diaries is therefore inseparable from their account of fame. Newspaper attention does not simply report reputation after the fact; it helps organize the terms in which reputation is discussed. Yet the diary preserves reactions and doubts that the newspaper’s compressed formats cannot contain. A headline may name a relationship, a review may attempt to settle a question of taste, and a report may turn private objects into evidence, while Warhol’s entries reopen each account to argument, uncertainty, or irony. The resulting portrait is not of a single, consistently trusted authority, but of a publication whose public reach makes it impossible for the diarist to ignore.