Candy Darling's beauty and grace, her tragic end, and of course the gender issues her life story raises, continue to inspire artists to this day. Notably, the singer Antony, whose following is devoted among the avant-garde, chose a famous photograph of Candy on her hospital deathbed, taken by Peter Hujar, for the cover of his 2005 album I Am a Bird Now (another was used for the cover of his companion EP The Lake, of 2004). In an interview with Mike Powell of Stylus at the time of the album's release, Antony said of Candy,

The word ‘artifice,’ to me, is like ‘cabaret,’ it has the same sting; there’s this idea that there’s a process of veiling, something that isn’t true. With someone like Candy Darling, what some might perceive as artifice, this gesture of femininity, is actually a revelation of a true sense of herself: a more intimate gesture couldn’t be made, it couldn’t be more authentic. ‘Artifice’ suggests to me a baroque frill, a sense of defense, a layer of something that separates you from the truth. Sometimes form and creative expression magnifies the truth.

The Smiths, too, have used a photo of Candy for the cover of their single "Sheila Take a Bow"... and a band in Finland have gone so far as to name themselves "Candy Darling."

Candy has been played, to critical acclaim, by Stephen Dorff in the fact-based film I Shot Andy Warhol, directed by Mary Harron and released in 1996. Starring Lili Taylor as Valerie Solanas, the movie depicts events leading to Solanas' near-fatal attack on Warhol, with Dorff as Candy in a significant supporting role.

In January 2006, the play Candy and Dorothy, written by David Johnston and directed by Kevin Newbury, played at Theater Three in New York City to numerous positive reviews, including The New York Times. Candy Darling was played by Vince Gatton. The play is a fantasy on the idea that Candy and social activist Dorothy Day must collaborate in the afterlife to act as guardian angels for a young woman living in today's New York.

Archival footage of Candy appears in several documentary films about the Warhol scene, including Chuck Workman's Superstar (1990), Bill Weber and David Weissman's The Cockettes (2002), Craig Highberger's Superstar in a Housedress (focusing on Jackie Curtis) (2004), and Ric Burns' Andy Warhol (2006).

Best of all, Miss Darling is the subject of her own documentary biography, Beautiful Darling, which premiered in February 2010 at the Berlinale.

Milanese sculptor Davide Silipo has recently created a new bronze of Candy Darling. Through his representations of the human body, Silipo explores themes of being and becoming, death and re-birth, androgyny, and salvation through an atavistic reconciliation between the masculine and the feminine. Small wonder that Candy is one of his favorite subjects! Photo below: