After Andy

by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni

  Done with finesse, the flashing was quick as a wink. So quick that it had fellow guests wondering if they had imagined the deed. Just as I was having an intense conversation with John Richardson—it concerned Brigid Berlin’s elegant look that day—Issy caught my eye and flashed. Covering my mouth, I both could and couldn’t quite believe it.

  Wherever I went—whether being introduced to Calvin Klein, Diane von Furstenberg, or other notables by Fred—the threat of Issy’s tits hovered. Fortunately, Mr. Hughes did not see what she was doing. Being wound-up and nervous, he was not in the right mood, when normally he was as amused by Issy’s antics as Andy was. They both admired her utter disregard for other people’s opinion. There was also her flapper girl–like appearance: the then naturally champagne-blond hair, the heavy lids, and the shredded state of her satin pumps.

  The buffet lunch was the art world event, further enhanced by The Last Supper, one of Andy’s paintings from his final show, and the waiters wearing a Stephen Sprouse–designed apron using Andy’s camouflage print. When talking to everyone, it was hard not to be struck by the genuine fondness and good feeling toward the artist. Kenneth Jay Lane, the king of costume jewelry, who had known Andy from the 1950s, watched him evolve from “the sweetest thing but ugly as sin with a green nose” to a character “who sorted his skin out” and then succeeded spectacularly.

  Andy managed to keep in with his old acquaintances and effectively create new ones. He seamlessly swam in the worlds of both uptown and downtown. It was not the case of Frederick W. Hughes. “Fred was intimidating, the way he dressed, no one was Mr. Style like Fred,” recalls Vincent Fremont. “There were preconceived ideas. . . . Unlike Andy, he didn’t do the Mudd Club and places like that.” Fred preferred the company of the well-born and/or elegant; he didn’t like crowds or mess. Having had my share of the latter in London in the 1980s, I understood. But the downtown art world was not at ease with his attitude.

  I realized this when harmlessly mentioning his name. There were frowns and even a froideur, whereas the ever popular Vincent Fremont was perceived as Andy’s adopted nephew—he had worked at the Factory since 1969—and Paige Powell, who ran Interview’s advertising, was viewed as Andy’s widow. They had hung out constantly, and she had briefly gone out with Basquiat.

  Fred was different. Peter Frankfurt reasons that “he represented the changing of the guard at the Factory. After the assassination attempt on Andy, Fred was the first one to put a barrier and cleaned up a lot of the downtown freak-show business. He was going to make a proper business.” In the opinion of Peter Brant, one of Warhol’s most prominent collectors, “Fred was the perfect person to filter Andy’s genius. He was one of the most interesting, well-rounded people, but he never got the credit that he deserved. No one understood how right and special he was.” Bruno Bischofberger, Warhol’s main European dealer, who had right of first refusal from 1969, recalls the partnership: “I’d look at new work, ask ‘How much?’ to Andy. He’d say, ‘You have to talk to Fred.’ Then Fred would say, ‘Oh, I have to talk to Andy.’ But they always knew what they wanted.”

  Nevertheless, there was a lingering sense that Fred’s business dealings, including the highly profitable commissioned portraits, made Andy more social than serious. It was hard to agree. During Andy’s lost years—the lean times of the 1970s when his work was dismissed by the American art establishment—Fred had taken him to Europe, where he had enjoyed major shows at top galleries like Anthony d’Offay, Daniel Templon, and Lucio Amelio. “He fashioned Andy into an international icon,” says Colacello. However, I soon realized that the society portraits were the constant carp against Fred. Although as Vincent Fremont rightly points out, “throughout history, art patrons have been commissioning portraits of themselves, wives, and family.” Or to quote Nicholas Haslam, an international tastemaker, “Fred made Andy into an old master.” He also introduced Larry Gagosian to Andy. The art dealer would become a key proponent to revitalizing the Warhol market as well as exhibiting the Oxidation work in 1986, marking Andy’s final Manhattan show of paintings.

  During my three years of living in New York, “I miss Andy” was a frequent refrain. Some people opined that the Big Apple changed with Andy’s passing. “The steam went out,” says photographer Eric Boman. Andy’s death created an immediate vacuum, because it was universally agreed that no one was like him. “He was Mr. New York,” says Vincent Fremont. Andy was omnipresent: his social schedule for one day may have consisted of a department store perfume launch, followed by the cocktail party of a Park Avenue swell, a cozy dinner for Diana Ross, and finally visiting a club to see a hot New Wave band. “Andy made it seem as if he was everywhere even if he sometimes arrived at places and slipped out by the VIP exit,” recalls Fremont. However, a Warhol appearance made an event. “Andy would walk into a room and people would stop,” says Wilfredo Rosado, who worked at Interview and was a frequent Warhol escort.

  Not only was the “Andy suit” recognizable—Warhol’s term for his wig, the l.a.Eyeworks glasses, and his uniform of sober jacket, shirt, and jeans—but everyone felt a benign, approachable vibe about him. “I always say this,” says Len Morgan, who worked at the Warhol Studio in the mid-’80s. “We got a lot more out of Andy than he got out of us.” Morgan recalls “a generosity to taking you places—I wanted to be an architect, and Andy introduced me to Philip Johnson”—and how “it never felt icky.”

  It was the business side that impressed Rosado. “When Andy went out, he was always hustling on every angle, getting ads for Interview, drumming up portraits,” he says. “He often said, ‘I’ve got to keep the lights on.’ He did feel this sense of responsibility.” Rosado found him “fatherly and concerned. When I say that, people look at me as if I’ve got three heads!”

  • • •

  CATHERINE HESKETH (NÉE GUINNESS), the Factory’s second English Muffin, refers to a curiosity that motivated everything. “Andy would sit next to someone and really want to find out about them, whether they were a lord, a film star, or someone handsome,” she says. Far from being “a Svengali” and “a bad influence,” he was positive. “That film [Factory Girl] that showed him encouraging [Edie Sedgwick] to do all those ghastly things, it wasn’t like that at all,” she says. “Andy wanted everyone to do the best they could if they were an actor or a writer . . . and work hard. That was his great ethic.”

  There was also a magnanimous attitude toward other artists. All apart from Robert Mapplethorpe. “They really didn’t like each other,” states Hesketh. “Maybe they were jealous, but they were pretty rude about one another.” Otherwise, Fremont recalls how Andy “never trashed other artists, particularly his fellow Pop ones,” and “loved trading work with other artists, particularly the young ones from the 1980s like Keith Haring.” When becoming a mentor to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol collaborated with him and tried to get the troubled artist off drugs. “I found Basquiat scary,” says Florence Grinda, a French socialite. “But Andy insisted on bringing him to an important fashion dinner that I organized at Mortimer’s.” Andy helped young, unknown gallery owners such as Thaddaeus Ropac, then based in Salzburg. “Andy was the only person to take me seriously,” he recalls. “Our first night together, he introduced me to Basquiat—that led to a show.” Warhol also optioned the film rights of Tama Janowitz’s short story collection Slaves of New York, based on her relationship with artist Ronnie Cutrone, one of his previous assistants.

  Contrary to rumors about Andy’s fear of AIDS, he was tender and supportive to Antonio Lopez, the brilliant fashion illustrator who died of the disease a month after him. “Antonio was really worried about his legacy,” recalls Rosado. “Andy was so kind and said, ‘Antonio, you’re the best, you’re better than Erté, you’re better than all of us.” He also went to Madonna’s AIDS benefit at the Pyramid Club for Martin Burgoyne. “Andy gave money and hugged Martin. He showed up for friends,” says Rosado.

  There was the sweetness. �
�I remember him snowballing with my daughter Victoria and other children in St. Moritz,” says Doris Brynner. “When I made him the godfather of our youngest son, he came to the church and held the baby,” says Bischofberger. There was also the lineup of his mini Mao and Flower paintings that were easy to sell and handed out as presents. “That’s what Andy did and expected,” says Fremont.

  • • •

  STILL, WARHOL’S FAME AND CHARISMA could lead to problems. “Everyone wanted to perform for Andy and get his attention,” says Hesketh. “They would say things they really shouldn’t just to engage him and his magic quality.” Geraldine Harmsworth, the fourth English Muffin, remembers parties where “people behaved like complete twits. They would say, ‘Look at me, Andy, I’m really kooky and wild.’ What do you say to that? Since he was shy, he would say, ‘Gee.’ But in private, he talked like a normal person.”

  Since Andy’s magnetism was extraordinary and touched so many different worlds, Ropac wonders if people got tied up with the performance and not the art. “I am sure that Andy was very clear about what he wanted to do,” Ropac says. “But it was only later, when his performance was finished, that we could look at his work.”

  • • •

  TOWARD THE END OF HIS LIFE, Warhol felt profoundly undervalued and ignored. At a group show in 1982, Leo Castelli exhibited his Dollar Signs and Knives in the basement and gave star positioning to Donald Judd’s ninety-foot sculpture in the front upstairs. The esteemed Castelli had been Warhol’s representative since 1964. “It was really the last straw,” says Larry Gagosian. “Every artist has an ego, and he called Judd’s sculpture ‘the spice rack.’” From Castelli’s gallery, Andy made a frantic call to Jay Shriver, his studio assistant. “He was very upset and not pleased by how [his work] was hung,” says Fremont.

  Warhol did not die on a career high, either. “It is possible that he was anticipating something extraordinary, but there was not a new dialogue,” states Abigail Asher, an international art advisor. She points out that “his genius was mixing culture and low art—Coke and Campbell’s soup tins—and making it into high art” and that his 1960s body of work—Marilyn, Liz, Elvis, and the Death and Disaster paintings—“created a new language.”

  Yet thirty years later, the Warhol market has exploded. “Tastes change,” says Gagosian, who confirms that all the young prominent collectors are after Warhol. Nowadays, there’s an Andy Warhol Museum; exhibitions are held at major museums—the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris come to mind—and the artist’s prices have soared beyond measure. Jacques Grange, a leading interior designer, puts it down to “the freshness of the work. He remains contemporary and that is the sign of a great artist. Not only was Warhol an exceptional colorist—exceptional!—but he covered so much territory with his repetitions and subject matter.”

  To give an idea of prices: 200 One Dollar Bills (1962), bought in 1986 for $385,000, sold for $43.8 million in 2009, and Triple Elvis, sold in 1987 for $400,000, is valued at over $80 million today. Warhol, as an artist, has become “really up there”—to quote a favorite Andyism—alongside Pablo Picasso, one of his heroes. He has affirmed the prediction of the German artist and Warhol subject Joseph Beuys, who said that “if the first half of the twentieth century belonged to Picasso, the second half belonged to Warhol.”

  Asher wonders if the “prohibitive prices of his iconic work have caused a reevaluation of Warhol’s late work.” A market exists “where there is a supply,” she says, but adds: “Does Warhol transport like Rothko?” Still, he greatly suits “a new breed of collector who wants everyone to understand the value hanging on his wall. There is nothing subtle about Warhol. As an artist, he manifests wealth and functions on many different levels.”

  Whereas many dismissed Warhol as a lightweight during his lifetime—especially the American art establishment—Joseph Beuys pegged that he had “a kind of observing sense in the back of his mind” and an “imaginative process going on.” Indeed, with his famous line “In the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes” and his daily tendency to tape and photograph everything, Warhol was a precursor for celebrity culture, reality TV, and Instagram and other social media. “He was a prophet,” says Norman Rosenthal, the art expert. Indeed, thirty years after he died, we are almost living in a Warhol-imagined world. “Andy guessed and predicted it all,” says Diane von Furstenberg. “The era of fame, icons, branding . . . he started it all.”

  Warhol still influences the art world. “When I go and see young artists, they only want to talk about Andy,” says Irving Blum, the legendary art dealer. “By silkscreening a canvas and calling it a painting, he started a revolution that continues today.” There is also the depth to Warhol’s talent. Peter Brant is reminded of religious medieval art of the thirteenth century; collector Éric de Rothschild compares him to Fragonard; Pierre Bergé says he is “as important as Marcel Duchamp.” More than anything, Andy was an artist’s artist. When Cy Twombly was asked who was the greatest artist of his generation, “without hesitation, he said Andy,” recalls Gagosian. Yet in spite of all this praise, Warhol avoided the self-laudatory. “At his home, he kept his own canvases in the cupboard and covered the walls with other artists,” recalls Bruno Bischofberger.

  02 Early Years

  I first heard Andy Warhol’s name via my father, Hugh Fraser. My elder brother, Benjie, and I were in his forest-green Jaguar, headed for our holiday home in the Scottish Highlands. A long drive, or so it seemed to an eight-year-old schoolgirl who lived in London and rarely traveled. The hours were spent asking my father questions. Benjie, older by two years, was the main perpetrator, and The Guinness Book of Records—a childhood bible—influenced his line of thought. It tended to be “What’s the tallest . . . the biggest . . . most expensive,” and my father always seemed to know and often added a further aside on the topic. And that was how Andy came up.

  Somewhat typically, the conversation had bounced from the world record of hiccuping—a man had almost died from hiccuping for twenty-four hours—to mention of Warhol and his film Sleep. “He filmed a man sleeping for hours and hours,” my father said. Both Benjie and I were rather amazed. Poppa went on to explain that Andy was a New York–based artist who had initially caught attention with his paintings of Campbell’s soup cans.

  Warhol, Campbell’s soup cans, American artist. I loved the idea of America. Upbeat, colorful, it catered to kids. It also represented Elvis, an early heartthrob whose films I devoured on a grainy black-and-white television, and gripping, lighthearted entertainment via American TV series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii 5-O, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek. They presented a universe that was flash yet predictable in content. The baddies always lost. Then there were my father’s friends, the Kennedys. An alliance started by their father, Joe Kennedy, when he was the American ambassador in England in 1938. Socially ambitious, he was keen that his children mix with Catholic bluebloods. In 1945, JFK had canvassed for my father in his first election campaign. And in 1969, my father had been part of Bobby Kennedy’s funeral entourage. In their yearly Christmas cards, Bobby’s brood appeared white-toothed, sporty, and all-American. Eunice Shriver, his sister, would send glossy JFK memorial books to my brother Damian, who was her godson. Years later, in 1980, when the Queen knighted my father, the next generation of Kennedys—Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver—joined us for a small celebratory lunch. There was also the fact that America had brought fame and fortune to my mother, Antonia Fraser. Her book Mary Queen of Scots had been a sleeper hit in 1969. It caught the nation’s interest via romance and tragedy. Thanks to the American royalties, she saved my father from selling his inherited home in northern Scotland. She then transformed the dark, dismal, and icy place by putting in seven bathrooms, central heating, a tennis court, and eventually a swimming pool; every single element considered the height of luxury at the time.

  Discovering An
dy via my father was the best way possible because everything he said to me remained etched in my memory. Officially, Poppa was a conservative politician and member of Parliament, but unofficially he was my everyday hero. My mother was beautiful and charismatic, and I was proud to be her daughter. She was publicly active and worked—rare for that period—and I loved seeing photographs of her in magazines and watching her on television. Still, there was a distance. Her business of writing books was exclusive. She performed magic by locking herself away in an invisible tower that was jokingly referred to as “the Boudoir.” I even illustrated a sign confirming the fact:

  NOBODY ALOUD IN THIS ROOM NOT EVEN YOURSELF OR ELSE:

  NO CONVERSATION

  NO POCKET MONEY

  AND WORSE OF ALL NO MOTHER

  I can still envision her typing away at her Olivetti, an array of Florentine notebooks packed with her handwritten research.

  My father’s profession, on the other hand, was inclusive, dependent on others, and involved my two older sisters, three brothers, and me. Before each general election, happening every four years, my siblings and I would canvass for him. We would ring doorbells, talk him up to grannies and young mothers, accost smiling individuals on the main street, and bellow “Vote for Fraser!” from a loudspeaker in a car driving at a snail’s pace, smothered in posters of his image. It was fun. I really enjoyed meeting strangers, eating their biscuits and cakes, occasionally persuading them to vote differently or being amused when they told me to “push off.” (I also thought it was hilarious that one of my father’s political opponents was called “Screaming Lord Sutch” of the “Go to Hell” party.) I’m often asked where I learned to talk to a door. I could! It was out on the Stafford and Stone (Poppa’s constituency) campaign trail that I developed my social fearlessness.