She made instant friends with Kelly Rector, the future Mrs. Calvin Klein, but fashion wasn’t quite her calling. When I moved into her home at East Sixty-eighth and Madison, a spacious apartment that belonged to her stepmother, Sally, Zara was reading screenplays for the director Susan Seidelman, who was responsible for the sleeper hit Desperately Seeking Susan starring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette.
An irresistible personage, Zara had her quirks of character, such as nursing strong passions for people and then suddenly sending them to the Zara Tower of London, refusing to lock up the apartment, forgetting to pay her phone bills, and renting out the maid’s room, which was a no-no for the building’s co-op board. Being woken up in the middle of the night to let Zara in was tolerable. As was walking into a cow’s skull when she was going through her Georgia O’Keeffe phase. But one day, I returned to find a petrified-looking Zara. “Tashie, we might be evicted,” she began. It turned out that the woman in the maid’s room had stopped paying rent and had done the double-dirty by informing the co-op of Zara’s unforgivable deed. Suddenly I had visions of the apartment being sealed off, tough-looking policemen, and Zara with Oscar, her parrot, not far from their sides. No doubt screeching up a storm, since Oscar was the possessive type and loathed the intrusion of any and all males.
Fortunately, Henry Jaglom, the alternative film director known for Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, rode in and saved Zara. It turned out that he was the most important co-op member. But far from being a knight in shining armor, Henry claimed to be a knight in a nightie! Unbelievable midnight conversations would take place between Jaglom and Zara that began with his description of his night garment. Naturally, I was listening in. Still, Mr. Jaglom promised to save Miss Metcalfe and remained true to his word.
Jaglom’s interaction was just as well, because one member of the board might have been gunning against Zara. I refer to a certain doctor who soothed the nerves of his patients during the day and beat up his wife at night. The couple lived over Zara’s bedroom, and like clockwork we’d hear the beast arrive and smack his wife down to the floor, and she would then sob. This might have merrily continued, until Zara decided to ride a bike to work.
In Zara style, she’d chained her bike to the railings outside the apartment’s entrance. The “mess” offended the doctor, who complained to the doormen, who passed on his displeasure. The high noon of Bikegate happened in the elevator one morning. Wearing a mink fur hat, Zara entered the elevator followed by a hatless me. There we found the doctor looking the opposite of proud and imperious. Turning her back to him, Zara said, “When you stop hitting your wife, I will stop chaining my bike to the railings.” Since we were on the fourth floor, a strained silence followed. And for a brief moment, the domestic violence stopped.
No one was more popular than Zara. Her list of New York–based devotees included John Malkovich, who was the only man capable of calming Oscar; Kelly and Calvin Klein; writer Susan Minot; her sister Carrie Minot, who worked on Late Night with David Letterman; director Michael Austin; writer Robert Hughes; and Fred.
Fred admired Zara’s spontaneity and her “Anything goes” style of entertaining. He had witnessed this when she and pals rented various houses in the Hamptons. “The places were shacks,” he told me. “But when Zara and her friends threw a party, everyone went in droves because they knew that it would be fun.” The likes of Steve Rubell, Bianca Jagger, and Andy would come up from Montauk to revel in the happenings. Sophisticated, Zara knew that the magic lay in the mix of crowd, not the brand of vodka or the size of plate or form of glass.
I experienced only one of Zara’s holiday rentals. It was in New Jersey, in the heart of foxhunting territory, so she nicknamed the place “Tallyho.” Fred, on the other hand, referred to the place as “Tallyhole,” a cheeky reference to the amorous-themed rumors he claimed to have heard about. The weekend I stayed there had Malkovich, Annabel Brooks, and me. According to John, we were clad in Victoria’s Secret all weekend. Not sure about that detail. But I do remember going to a supermarket and his utter bewilderment.
“I noticed that security was following you around,” he later said. “At first, I thought it was because you were all so pretty and then I noticed that you were just picking up packets of biscuits, eating a few, and then returning the opened package back to the shelves.” Led by Zara, we were all grazing—eating items that had not been paid for. Fortunately, none of us were prosecuted. But it does give a sense of the goings-on that spiraled around Zara.
Fred hadn’t given up on the television gig for me. A screen test had been arranged with Don Monroe, who had directed all of Andy’s MTV programs. “Keep still and stop moving your eyebrows up and down,” Don advised. I had also met Gary Pudney, an ABC executive who thought I could offer something different to television. I even organized a series of headshots for him. But Zara scrunched up her face and was dismissive of both ventures. “Tashie, write,” she said.
Bizarre as it may sound, I actually itched to. It had started slowly at first. Then haunted me on a daily level. I would have dreams where I was at a desk scribbling and scribbling away on scrolls of paper that fell around my feet. I can only compare it to a woman who suddenly decides that she must have a baby. All my life I had dismissed the idea of writing. It annoyed me when people asked when I was going to publish a book. Annoyed, because I resented being linked to my mother.
Meanwhile, she and my stepfather were happy that I was gainfully employed—important when you have six children—but made little mention of the Warhol Studio. They knew Andy’s work, recognized his relevance, but it was not really of their taste. My little brother Damian, however, thought it was pretty cool, like most of the younger generation did. And he was thrilled when an American traveling acquaintance described my workplace as “that den of iniquity.”
Putting pen to paper felt easy. It was probably because my mother had always paid my siblings and me to write holiday diaries. “Great cash prizes,” she would cry. A pound per page was generous for the mid-’70s. Still, she had her standards and refused Damian’s entries that just recounted the menus. Perhaps of note, the great man is now in finance.
Determined to write, I signed up for a class at New York University in the early summer of 1987. It was on Tuesday nights and, since I was paying, I didn’t miss one, and complained when one of the professors kept looking at the clock. Insecure, I didn’t mingle with my fellow students, but I do remember one woman with dyed orange hair writing a memorable piece about “jiggling.” Every time I took the subway home, the relevance of taking the course resounded. It gave inner confidence and instilled a sense that it would matter.
When Gael Love was ousted from her position as Interview magazine’s editor in chief in August 1987, I started wondering about going there. Obviously there would be a new regime, and I decided to throw my hat in the ring. Interview had been essential to Andy’s existence. Most mornings, he would go up to Madison Avenue and distribute signed copies of the magazine with the hope of securing new advertising. “Now it’s about social media, but in those days everybody tried to get ads,” Christopher Makos says. And every time Andy went out at night, his much younger escorts, such as Len Morgan, were expected to bring a stack of Interviews. “It was always about business,” recalls Len. “Someone might want to advertise, someone might want to be in the magazine. If you met someone cute, let’s have them in Interview. It was, how can you relate everything you do in your normal day back to Interview, the business and the brand.”
Interview was on the other side of the building from the Warhol Studio. The entrance was on Thirty-second Street. Personally, I liked Gael. She was sassy. Fred, on the hand, was allergic. As soon as he heard that none of her staff liked her, he organized a coup d’état. After that Len loudly sang, “Ding-dong, the witch is dead,” and Lucy, in charge of accounts, claimed that Gael had stolen loo rolls from Interview’s supply.
It was pretty rough considering the po
or lady was in hospital and, it turned out, lacked a contract in spite of being at Interview’s helm for twelve years. I guess Fred had always been desperate to get rid of Gael, finding her vulgar in her faux-Chanel suits. But I thought she was a trip, with her big David Webb baubles and big pastrami sandwiches. Gael cracked me up. Then again, ballsy American broads tend to. Like them or not, they are authentic to themselves—give me them any day over the faux Brits I met in Manhattan in the 1980s!
After Gael’s dramatic exit, writer Kevin Sessums filled her high heels. It was a temporary position, since Fred was keen to change the magazine from being viewed as downtown and lacking in content to finally having substance. A few months later, in the beginning of 1988, he would hire Shelley Wanger, whose background was The New York Review of Books and Condé Nast’s H&G. The introduction of Shelley had been a surprise and a disappointment for Kevin. Unfortunately, Fred had never been entirely clear about the situation.
15 Andy’s Sale at Sotheby’s
When I was working for Vincent, my first desk was a brass-and-marble 1930s wonder that was purchased by Andy on one of his European buying sprees. In strength and size, it felt as if it had belonged to a luxury liner. French in provenance, it had a rectangular black marble top and a long drawer flanked by four short drawers. Evoking the glamour of the era, each drawer was covered with a brass plate that showed a scene of transportation or navigation. The desk had ample room for the knees and was smooth to the touch.
Outlandish as the desk looked, I became quite sad when it was taken away. “It’s for the Sotheby’s sale,” Vincent informed me. And that was how I first heard that ten thousand items of Andy’s were being gathered to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s. “Andy bought so much that the entire sale should take several days,” Vincent reckoned. As the weeks passed, other pieces were spirited away from the Warhol Studio. My friend Ian Irving started to come in on a regular basis. Having initially proposed the sale to Fred, he became Sotheby’s front man.
Taking away Andy’s acquisitions caused a void. However, no one else in the studio voiced such sentiment. No emotion was involved. It was business. Everything was being sold in order to finance the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, set up in the artist’s will to “support and award grants to cultural institutions and organizations in the United States and abroad.”
Fred began referring to the catalogues. There would be at least five or six. “Mind-boggling” is Ian’s expression for describing Andy’s house and collections. “You had no idea of the marvels,” he says. “The Art Deco was fantastic.” Jacques Grange recalls Warhol coming to Paris and buying Art Deco pieces. “The movement wasn’t fashionable, but all the people in the know, like Yves Saint Laurent, were fascinated,” says the interior designer. “The interest in Art Deco was created by the antique dealers, not the museums.” Peter Brant, who accompanied Warhol on many trips, remembers, “Andy liked signatures. Not that he always knew what they said or meant. He deferred a lot to Fred.”
Keepers of the Andy flame Steven Bluttal and Tim Hunt were in constant attendance when Sotheby’s went over everything. Steven, who had been at MoMA, and Tim had been initially hired by Fred to do a professional inventory of the Warhol Studio and then were pulled in for Andy’s treasure trove.
“We could not believe the amount that was there and how many of the pieces were of serious, top quality,” Ian enthuses. “It was proof that Andy had a great eye but he also had very good people advising him.” The list of advisors included the French antiquarian Félix Marcilhac; jewelry dealer John Reinhold, who was one of Andy’s best friends; and Jed Johnson, his ex-boyfriend.
One antiques dealer both Warhol and Saint Laurent enjoyed was Jacques Lejeune, at Comoglio on rue Jacob. “It was a bazaar, and Jacques—who was a little nuts—was always bringing out things,” says Jacques Grange. “Since it wasn’t organized, we all enjoyed discovering pieces. There was the occasional surprise such as the Brancusi chimney, bought by Ronald Lauder.”
With characteristic chutzpah, Len Morgan had asked to see Andy’s house before all the belongings were cleared or taken away. I was surprised. After all, he had gone there constantly when chaperoning Andy. However, Len informed that “very few people were allowed inside.” Then I recalled staying in the taxi when Fred had stepped out and rung Andy’s doorbell. Remembering how the front door was flanked by a pair of columns but had no number.
Kenneth Jay Lane had been to the house. “It wasn’t cozy, and like a museum in a funny way with arranged chairs,” he says. “I went into the small Art Deco library and the only other person was Sister Parish [the legendary decorator]. I liked Sister, but I found it rather interesting. Then, Andy was ‘interesting.’”
Len, on the other hand, found it fascinating. “It was not the Collyer brothers, nor did it strike me as a place where someone actively used all the rooms,” he says. “Andy probably went up to his bedroom and that was it.” Nevertheless, it reminded him of Andy’s daily routine of visiting Vito Giallo’s boutique on Madison Avenue. “The shop was microscopic and he’d buy little objects,” he says. Andy also went shopping with Stuart Pivar, a voracious collector, whom Len describes as having “one of those weird mini Chrysler stretch limousines that was vaguely embarrassing.”
The Sotheby’s sale exposed Andy’s secretive side. Typically, it appealed. Privately I wondered if that wasn’t his way of keeping sane and “far from the madding crowd.” With his silver-white wig, he was such an instantly recognizable figure. Of course, he used that to his advantage. However, being sensitive, it was fundamental that he escape in order to recharge, gather his thoughts, and create.
In Fred’s preface in the Sotheby’s catalogues, he recalled Andy’s first home on Lexington Avenue, which he shared with his mother, and rooms crammed with an amazing diversity of objects ranging from carousel equipment to bizarre Victorian furniture to modern contemporary art. In spite of mingling with renowned collectors and creative types from the early ’50s, Fred stressed “the strong influence” of Andy’s background. Naturally, there was Julia, his whimsical, Eastern European mother, who’d buy “little things from dime stores,” but there were also European immigrants who had built up art collections.
Regarding Andy’s second home—a six-story Manhattan townhouse on East Sixty-sixth Street, where he moved in 1974—Fred highlighted the importance of Jed Johnson, who assisted in mounting the collection. He also drew attention to the American artist’s split personality, which was successfully resolved only in his paintings. Andy loathed the idea of “appearing conventional or grand,” yet he enjoyed the luxury of the surroundings. When Jed left, he changed the arrangement by keeping two or three rooms furnished and free of clutter and using all the other ones for storage.
Viewing Andy as a lifetime collector, it was his lack of pretension and blind enthusiasm for everything that touched Fred. “If American Indian baskets attracted him, he suddenly wanted lots of them,” he wrote. “To him, it was all so much fun.” Occasionally, when the purchasing went beyond fever pitch, Fred would intervene and calm things.
After seeing the private preview of the Warhol Collection at Sotheby’s on April 20, I wrote the following in my diary: What a collector! We are talking thousands of Navaho rugs, masses of exquisite watches, endless cookie jars, elegant desks and the best photographs. It’s the most extraordinary collection I have ever seen. He was the most amazing hoarder. Apparently before coming to the Factory at around 2 or 3 pm, Andy would just go on daily shopping sprees with Stuart Pivar. And when there were large items of furniture, Andy would try and hide them from Fred. Jay [Shriver] is quite funny about that. . . . Typically, Jay complained that he didn’t think that there was one thing of interest in the collection.
Thrilling as Andy’s collection was, it was a vast and thorough mess that required Sotheby’s to do a complete inventory, from A to Z. Moving in with computers, two experts had catalogued all the contents that were re
trieved from cupboards, closets, stacks, piles, crates, and unpacked boxes. Over twenty curators and other employees had then combed through the treasures, transferring most items to a warehouse and curatorial offices. During the process they tidied up the house while retaining the character of the collections.
With Vincent, I had seen Andy’s house mid-cleanup. The writer Andrew Solomon described the house being “like a bizarre dream, magnificent rooms letting on to other magnificent rooms, all painted in unappealing shades of Wedgwood green and highlights of gold and olive drab.” I, on the other hand, couldn’t believe how antiquated it felt. But now, having met many more collectors and ventured into their homes, I know that can come with the territory. “Collectors rarely go for the spare look,” offers Gordon Watson, an antiques expert. “It’s all about the hunt, the chase, and the kill.” Of course, if they have an interior decorator, that person then accommodates and places the item. In Andy’s case, Jed had moved out.
The house had two large rooms on each floor, an important landing, a broad staircase, and modern decorative touches. Organized by Jed, these ranged from faux-marble columns in the hallway to stenciled patterns on the bedroom walls and ceilings to wall-to-wall carpeting. Nevertheless, Solomon’s description of the rooms “all filled with exquisite objects, and all strangely vacant, barren, unoccupied” was apt. As this was Andy’s personal museum, the almost formaldehyde-like atmosphere was to be expected.
Ceramics expert Louis Lefebvre attended the preview of Andy’s sale, the hot ticket at the time. “It was well presented,” he says. “There was none of that business of seeing the bed that Andy had died on or any of that voyeuristic nonsense.” Lefebvre, who ended up buying four cookie jars, was amazed by the choice. “It was very much the collection of an elegant gentleman,” he says. Gordon Watson, however, was exhilarated. “The excitement upon arrival, the room upon room, cabinet upon cabinet, every nook and cranny crammed with endless, extraordinary things,” he says. “Throbbing with people—the adrenaline in those salesrooms kept me high for weeks.”
After Andy Page 18