Word: warholism
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HOLY TERROR: ANDY WARHOL CLOSE UP by Bob Colacello...
That's how Warhol remembers Colacello in The Andy Warhol Diaries (807 pages), published in 1989, which is not exactly how Colacello remembers Colacello in this 514-page nag. Dueling diaries may be the perfect '80s moment, in which two shallow people recount in mind-numbing detail the comings and goings (a lot of time is spent in cabs) of long-forgotten and always boring celebrities like Viva, Baby Jane Holzer and Jerry Hall. Warholian scholars, if there is such a category, might want to read this book to decide once and for all whether Truman Capote liked Bob better...
Holy Terror is something of a get-even book. Colacello spends an obligatory few words professing initial affection for his benefactor, but he is soon disillusioned by Warhol's "bad skin, bad teeth, bad hair" and all the work Colacello has to do, ghostwriting Warhol's books, selling ads, even doing Warhol's social climbing for him when he is too tired to go out at night. Editing is too kind a word for Colacello's job at Interview, which included cozying up to advertisers and selling expensive Warhol celebrity portraits, for which Colacello would earn a fee (about...
...Hours must be spent reading the gossips, days whiled away worrying about seating plans. The phone is a tactical weapon. A night at home alone induces existential dread, and success for someone like Colacello is measured not simply in invitations secured but also in invitations to events from which Warhol is excluded. Friendship seems to be beside the point; in a moment of accidental insight, Colacello remarks of the clot of people around Warhol that they wanted to go out with Andy, not home with...
...drawback to linking up with high-visibility people like Imelda Marcos is "their tendency to attract assassins." But mostly, he is petty and meanspirited. He fittingly closes with a bit of celebrity mugging that serves as a pathetic epitaph for his putative patron. In a group invited to Warhol's house after his death, Colacello takes the opportunity to steal into Warhol's private bathroom so that he can catalog the anti-aging cosmetics and acne ointments for inclusion on the last page of this book. These two creatures of hype and commerce masquerading as art may have deserved each...