Photo of Warhol (left) and Tennessee Williams courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In a first-person article for The Guardian, BBC producer Sandy Nairne recalls what it was like to interview Andy Warhol for a television program. He called the experience “surreal.”
“He was exactly as you’d expect – calm, clipped, polite and very controlled,” Nairne writes.
The BBC was filming an interview with Warhol and neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who had shot to fame as an artist connected to the Lower East Side music and street-art scene.
The Guardian features a photo of Nairne talking to the two legendary artists. “For me, this photograph captures two of the world’s most outstanding artists at that time, who had become close. Warhol was more of a legendary figure, using emblems and signs in his works, but with Basquiat, you could feel the immediacy of his hands in his art.”