When Harriet Woodsom Gould died in 2016 at the age of 90, she left many family heirlooms dating back to the 1700s at her home in Amesbury, Massachusetts. However, she had a secret real shrine of pop art in her attic.
There, she kept the belongings of her late son, John Gould, for decades after his death in 1986 from AIDS. He had vases painted by Jean-Michel Basquiat, artwork by Keith Haring, and dozens and dozens of gifts—photographs, valentines, sketches, letters, and more—from pop god Andy Warhol.
“My mother kept everything,” John’s twin brother Jay Gould told The Post. Jay knew that his brother “had some kind of relationship” with Warhol in the 1980s, although John always kept it secret. “We were very close, identical twins, but we never talked much about his sexuality,” Jay, now 68, explained. “It was a different time.”
However, he was still stunned after reading the poems and love notes that John had written to the senior artist. “I didn’t realize the relationship was as deep as it was.”
Gould and Warhol on New Year’s Day in Aspen, Colorado, 1983 Mark Sink.
In fact, no one really knew. Gould was Warhol’s last novel. A young Paramount executive with flowing hair and a neat appearance died tragically at the age of 33. And although Warhol often mentioned him in his famous diaries, published posthumously in 1989, he was more of a hobby than a real partner. (Besides, few could get past the funny diaries, often sneaky looks at the rich and famous. Poor Liz Taylor was described as looking “like a navel”!)
However, the new six-episode Netflix series The Andy Warhol Diaries is set to change that. Premiering on Wednesday, it dives deep into the diaries, into Warhol’s later romantic relationships and their impact on Warhol’s life and work. In doing so, he paints a more vulnerable portrait of the artist, who often posed as a cold, asexual eccentric.
“He was a man full of desire, full of humanity, and it shows in his strange yearning and in his search for spiritual meaning,” series director Andrew Rossi told The Post.
Third row from bottom, Gould, Warhol and Sylvia Miles at the New York Film Festival in 1983. Patrick McMullan.
“They were really in love”
Gould didn’t so much enter Warhol’s life as Warhol wanted him to enter it. It was April 1981 and the 52-year-old Warhol was still reeling from his split with Jed Johnson.
Jed – everyone agreed – was an angel. He arrived at the Warhol factory in the spring of 1968, at the age of 19, having just stepped off a bus from Sacramento and delivered a telegram. He began working odd jobs and learned film editing in his spare time, eventually working on Warhol films.
When Warhol, then 49, was shot to death in June, Jed moved into the townhouse on East 66th Street that the artist shared with his mother to help him recover. He stayed for 12 years.
“They were really in love,” says Jed’s twin brother, Jay Johnson, on the show, confirming that the relationship was sexual. “They shared a bedroom.” (Yes, Jed, like Gould, also had a twin named Jay. As Bob Colacello, who edited Warhol’s Interview Magazine, notes in the document, the Marilyn diptych artist “loved twins”.)
Johnson and Warhol in an undated image. Ron Galella
Jed gave Warhol the sense of stability he craved after the traumatic shooting and devastating chaos of the 1960s Factory scene. They adopted two dogs, and Jed decorated their new home, starting a new career as an interior designer along the way. But by 1980, Warhol’s diaries reveal “family problems” due to some of Warhol’s X-rated Polaroids, his relentless partying at Studio 54, and his friendships with toxic people. Jed left in December of that year, and that spring Warhol admitted he felt lonely.
“Now I live alone, and in a way I feel relieved, but then I don’t want to be alone in this big house with only Nena and Aurora. [Warhol’s maids] and Archie and Amos [the dogs]”, – he admitted in his diary. “I have such a desperate feeling that nothing means anything. And then I decide that I should try to fall in love, and this is what I’m doing now with John Gould.”
Gould was a 26-year-old Paramount executive: WASP from New England with a lithe, strong physique and a charismatic personality who appeared to be straight forward. Warhol reasoned, “John is a good person to fall in love with because he has his own career and I can develop movie ideas with him, you know? And he might even be able to convince Paramount to advertise in Interview. Right? So my falling in love with him will benefit the cause.
After Johnson and Warhol broke up, the artist pursued Paramount executive John Gould. Andy Warhol Foundation/Courtesy of Netflix
Warhol began wooing Gould with a vengeance, sending extravagant bouquets of roses to his office at Paramount. He even offered a fashion watch to their mutual friend, photographer Christopher Macos, if he could get Gould to be his boyfriend. “I guess he was never loved,” Makos says on the show. Because I didn’t get my watch. (Jay Gould also reports on camera that his brother admitted he was in a relationship but said they didn’t have sex.)
At first, Gould resisted Warhol’s attentions, but they eventually began to spend a lot of time together, although Gould often pulled back if things got too stressful, and often told Warhol not to write about him in his diary. “I think my brother was worried about his career at the time,” Jay Gould said. But the young man attended parties and art events with him, invited the artist to ski with his family in Aspen, and even temporarily moved in with him on 66th Street.
“I love dating John because it feels like a real date,” Warhol wrote early in their relationship. “He’s tall and strong and I feel like he can take care of me.”
“This fear and shame”
However, it turned out that Warhol would have to take care of Gould. On February 4, 1984, John was admitted to a New York hospital with pneumonia, although he was believed to have AIDS. Warhol stayed with him in the hospital every night for the 30 days he spent there, despite his fear of hospitals after he was wounded and his fear of contracting AIDS. (Warhol could not bring himself to diary about Gould’s illness, but his editor notes that when Gould was released on March 7, Warhol had his housekeepers wash John’s clothes and dishes “separately from mine.”)
Around 1985, Warhol began work on his huge series of 100 works based on da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Jessica Beck, curator at the Warhol Museum in Warhol’s hometown of Pittsburgh, said the paintings seem to be a direct reference to Gould and the AIDS crisis, especially those featuring bodybuilders (Gould was obsessed with fitness) and one with a capital “C”. a reference to what Warhol called “gay cancer”.
Around 1985, Warhol began work on his huge series of 100 works based on da Vinci’s The Last Supper. The artist is seen above in front of one of these works.Mondadori Portfolio
“He had this deep-rooted Catholic faith, this fear and shame, and he was very afraid of getting AIDS,” Beck told The Post. “When I first started researching The Last Supper paintings and saw that he was writing so much about John Gould at the time, I was stunned. I thought: “Who is he and why is no one talking about him?”
Gould never saw these paintings. He eventually left for Los Angeles and died there on September 8, 1986. The diary contains an editor’s note stating that he had lost 70 pounds and was blind. “Even close friends, he denied that he had AIDS,” the note concluded.
The other side of Warhol
The new six-episode Netflix series The Andy Warhol Diaries reveals a different side of the artist. Andy Warhol Foundation/Courtesy of Netflix
The Andy Warhol Diaries made a splash when it was published in 1989, two years after Warhol died at the age of 58 from cardiac arrest. Compiled from some 20,000 pages of the famed pop artist’s daily musings, dictated and then edited by his friend Pat Hackett, the massive tome includes every party he attended, the taxi rides he took, the trash he watched on TV, and communication with celebrities, in which he participated. the last 11 years of his life. It is often viewed as a brilliant, vacuous, guilt-inducing pleasure.
But read carefully, The Andy Warhol Diaries reveals a different side of Warhol.
“I think all the celebrities and party lists are a distraction, they’re almost a false flag from the true purpose that lies behind them,” Rossi told The Post. “So I lived for several years and tried to almost decipher the diaries, read between the lines and connect events with photographs and works of art.”
Jay Gould said he was grateful that a relationship that had been hidden for so long was being explained on screen. “When my brother died, a lot of magazines put him in the hanger-on category that Andy took advantage of, and that worried me a lot,” Jay said. “I knew that my brother would want me to [set the record straight]”.
He has already watched all six episodes of the series, but plans to screen in Maui, Hawaii, where he owns a restaurant and spends his winters.
“John was larger than life and Andrew [Rossi] fixed it,” he said. “I still miss my brother. He brought my brother back to life again.”