by Andy Warhol
And Steve Rubell asked if we wanted to see his new club-to-be. It’s the Palladium Theater on 14th Street, that was originally the Academy of Music. So he took us over there and it was, “Do you love it? Do you love it?” And it’s huge. Some famous Japanese architect is doing it.
Sunday, September 23, 1984
Tried Jean Michel because he’d wanted to go to the Pop Art show at the Whitney and then work together, but he wasn’t around. Jon and I went there without him (tickets $5). I autographed a lot of the postcards they sell there, people handed them to me. Of Marilyn and the others. I don’t think I get any money from these. I had a fight with Fred because he wants me to sign with a card company because he said that then that card company will stop the other card companies from putting them out, but I don’t know if that’s true.
Rauschenberg was the best in the show, somehow his stuff looks new. I don’t know why. And Jasper Johns’s stuff was good, too. The Segal looked good because it was big, but it was so ugly. The tires outside looked so terrific that you thought the rest of the show would be on that scale or something, but the Whitney is small. There’s some early stuff of mine, a lot of mine. Jean Michel had told me he thought my stuff looked the best, but you know …
So then wandered the streets, went home and Jean Michel called. Now he has rooms in two hotels. One at the Ritz Carlton and then he moved to the Mayfair Regent on 65th Street. I guess he was competing with me to live in the chic East 60s. I told him that the TV was terrible around here and he didn’t believe me, but when he got to the Mayfair and found out he couldn’t get the Showtime channel or anything like that he learned his lesson. Good TV means a lot. So he went back to the Ritz Carlton. He has a big Jacuzzi there.
Monday, September 24, 1984
In the morning I rushed to Dr. Li (cab $4). Took some blood tests and she threw it on my body, the blood. I’m now supposed to eat rice three times a day, but I’m cheating, I’m eating rice crackers.
I have to go to Truman’s memorial. Afterwards there’s going to be a party at C.Z. Guest’s. Steve Rubell had the best line, he said to me, “You don’t go to mine, I won’t go to yours.” That’s the best deal. Jay’s going—I guess he and Kate are back together.
I asked Paige if she wanted to go with me to Ahmet Ertegun’s party at the Carlyle (cab $3). Ahmet was at the door. Same usual people—Jerry Zipkin, Mica and Chessy. The lights were so low. Mrs. Buckley was there and Charlotte Curtis, and Charlotte screamed at me, “Oh your eyebrows are dyed!” So what could I say? “Yeah. They’re two-tone.” Charlotte always looks so sour. But I do like her. She did those great columns in the sixties. Paige was the youngest one there.
Tuesday, September 25, 1984
I forgot that while I was at Dr. Linda Li’s Roberta Flack came in and she said, “Oh I saw you at St. Vincent’s church on Sunday.” She said she was going to a Baptist church and just wandered into mine.
Wandered down Fifth Avenue.
Crazy Matty came by the office and Brigid got him to leave. He’s thin again but he’s okay, not more crazy than usual—just normally crazy. I don’t think he still has that girl living with him in his hotel room. Oh, but why is it that crazy people can get boyfriends and girlfriends and normal people can’t? Can you tell me?
I got invited to the Malcolm Forbes boat with Mrs. Marcos. I really want to get her portrai before, you know, something happens over there. Fred Leighton must be so glad when he hears she’s in town. She goes into his jewelry store and drops millions of bucks. Worked till 7:00.
Wednesday, September 26, 1984
I was picked up by Benjamin and we walked out and right into the arms of—Crazy Matty. We got a cab and he left and then two blocks later he came up to our cab that was waiting at the light and he opened the front door—I’d locked the back door—and he asked for money. So now he knows how to—extort.
Thursday, September 27, 1984
Talked to Keith Haring who said he was depressed so he went to the Whitney and that he saw the Pop Art show and saw my Dick Tracy and loved it and I said it’d just been sold for $500,000 and he said that wasn’t enough, that it was worth a million and that if he’d had a million he would have bought it. That was sweet of him to say. And it was sweet to hear. Si Newhouse bought it from Irving Blum.
Went to meet the Brants for dinner at Jams (cab $6). I told the guy we wanted to be downstairs, but he put us upstairs again, but then later I saw why—Robert Redford was right behind me, with maybe his wife and daughter, I think. I didn’t say anything because that’s not cool, but when I got home I happened to read an old Playboy interview with him and then I decided I should have said hello because it turns out he’d tried to be a painter at one point, and he talked about how he was a magazine art director in the fifties in New York. I didn’t know any of that! So then he would know about me.
Did I tell the Diary, by the way, that Mery Griffin turned down our TV show? He did.
Saturday, September 29, 1984
Talked to Keith and Jean Michel. Wanted Jean Michel to come over and paint, but he was giving his mother a birthday party so I went to meet him and met his mother. She’s a nice-looking lady, a little matronly, but she looked good. He sort of resents her, though—he said she’s been in and out of mental hospitals and he felt neglected. But he doesn’t have to be ashamed of her, she was really nice and everything. His father was a no-show. They’re divorced and the father is living with another woman. He’s an accountant.
And Jean Michel still keeps a room for $250 a day at the Ritz Carlton. And that fifty-foot concrete table that he had Freddy the architect do up special for the Great Jones place, it filled the whole room and Jean Michel just broke it up into pieces. And I found out from Robert Laughlin who’s next door to Freddy’s place that used to be Kenny Scharf’s, that when Freddy moved into Kenny’s apartment there were just Kenny Scharf paintings everywhere, all over the walls and Freddy painted them out! He painted it all white! He didn’t even remove the doors that had paintings on them, which would’ve been so easy to save!
Monday, October 1, 1984
It was so cold out. And what do you do when these pushy old broads shove you out of the way and grab your taxi? Finally got a cab ($8) but the traffic was so slow.
Oh, and all afternoon we were waiting for Stuart Pivar to call because Michael Jackson was supposed to call him and come over to see Bouguereaus. But Stuart went out for a minute and missed the call, but he might come today. If this is real. Those Bouguereaus are now $2 million apiece and Stuart has about four. They went up so suddenly. It’s funny, they’re just the perfect paintings for Michael Jackson—like ten-year-old boys with fairy wings, around beautiful women. And Stuart Pivar is really into young bodies. That’s what he thinks keeps you young, is the hormones. He wants seventeen-year-olds, but he can’t get them.
Tuesday, October 2, 1984
Jean Michel came over to the office to paint but he fell asleep on the floor. He looked like a bum lying there. But I woke him up and he did two masterpieces that were great.
Wednesday, October 3, 1984
Jean Michel called three or four times, he’d been taking smack. Bruno came by and saw a painting that Jean Michel wasn’t finished with yet, and he said, “I want it, I want it,” and so he gave him money and took it, and I felt funny, because nobody’s done that for me in so long. That’s the way it used to be.
I was going to the party on Malcolm Forbes’s boat for Imelda Marcos. It was sort of embarrassing because I thought I was late but I was early. Most of the people were so old and they were all from my street, East 66th Street—I guess it must be the richest street in the world. Imelda lives on it between Fifth and Madison. Lee Radziwill came. She looked good in a short haircut. Imelda’s gotten a little too fat, though, so if I did her picture I’d want to do it from the old days, when she was Miss Philippines in the pageant. She was being a hostess and she sang, later on after dinner she sang about twelve songs—“Feelings,” and then that song from the
war, you know, the oozy-doozy-bowsy-lowsy one. Oh, what is it? “Mares Eat Oats.” Everybody said that once Imelda gets started partying you can’t stop her, that she’s always the last to leave, and it was true, she was going strong.
Then cabbed to Mr. Chow’s where Jean Michel was having a birthday party for this girl who’d talked him into having it for her. He had Diego Cortez and Clemente and people and when I got there he was asleep, snoring actually. We woke him up to pay the check, because I wasn’t going to get this one.
Got home and I turned on the Letterman show and there was—Malcolm Forbes! Talking about everything. And I thought, Gee, what a great name for a magazine, Forbes. They just named it their name. And I started thinking about a magazine called Warhol. (laughs) No no, I don’t love my name so much. I always wanted to change it. When I was little I was going to take “Morningstar,” Andy Morningstar. I thought it was so beautiful. And I came so close to actually using it for my career. This was before the book, Marjorie Morningstar. I just liked the name, it was my favorite.
Friday, October 5, 1984
Jean Michel came by. Worked all afternoon. Rupert came and he’s using the back area now at 860 to collate the new prints. The Details. I hate them. Like details of the Botticelli “Venus.” But people are loving these best. It makes you wonder. Like they loved the James Dean cover for the David Dalton book that I did. They’re buying it in prints.
Sunday, October 7, 1984
It was a beautiful day. Talked to Jean Michel and he wanted to go to work, so we planned to meet at 860. I went to church and then there were no cabs, so I wound up walking halfway to the office (cab $3.75). I let Jean Michel in downstairs. He did a painting in the dark, which was great. This was the day of Susan Blond’s wedding to Roger Erickson, and the thing was at the Café Luxembourg and I didn’t want to take Jean Michel home with me to pick a painting up for a present, so we both made her a painting there. Jean Michel is so difficult, you never know what kind of mood he’ll be in, what he’ll be on. He gets really paranoid and says, “You’re just using me, you’re just using me,” and then he’ll get guilty for getting paranoid and he’ll do everything so nice to try to make up for it. But then I can’t decide what he has fun doing, either. Like when we got to Susan’s he didn’t like it, I don’t know if it’s because of the drugs or because he hates crowds or because he thinks it’s boring. And I tell him that as he becomes more and more famous he’ll have to do more and more of these things (cab $10).
I met Roger’s mother and she looks and acts just like Susan. Jonathan Roberts flew in from California and I asked him why he bothered. I said, “Just because you had a date once with Susan?”
Danny Fields was the best man, he gave a little speech. And Steve Rubell was there and he wasn’t that friendly. I mean, he was really friendly, but sometimes he’s really really really friendly. So he wasn’t friendly enough.
A woman at the party was from Los Angeles and she was complaining about a table she bought from Ronnie Levin and saying that he took the money and didn’t get her the table, and so she called his mother, and the mother said that Ronnie’s disappeared. I asked PH about it and she said it’s serious, that nobody’s heard from him for weeks, and that with his big mouth, if he were alive, he wouldve called someone by now.
Monday, October 8, 1984
Picked up Jean Michel and he has people ringing his bell every fifteen seconds, it reminded me of the old Factory. He says things like, “Listen man, why don’t you call before you come over.” A guy he’d given fun drawings to once when he was needing a place to stay sold them now for a fortune—$ 5,000 or something. So Jean Michel’s finding out how you have to be a business, how it all stops being just fun, and then you wonder, What is art? Does it really come out of you or is it a product? It’s complicated.
Oh, I forgot to say that Dr. Rossi’s kid who’s just out of Yale wants to do videos and so I’m sending him to talk to Vincent. Dr. Rossi’s the doctor that saved my life in ‘68 when I was shot.
Tuesday, October 9, 1984
I made up some things for Sean Lennon’s birthday and the painting was still wet—a little heart candy-box that said “I love you”—and I also brought a “paint brush” that instead of bristles had strips of red colored paper in a stack. And a bracelet I’d made out of pennies. PH picked me up and we went to the Dakota (cab $6.50). There were fans outside in honor of the day still on the “vigil.” Because the ninth is Sean and John’s birthday. Inside Yoko’s door everybody had taken their shoes off so there was a line of shoes. I wouldn’t take mine off, though, and I didn’t want PH to, either, so that I wouldn’t be alone. PH said that when she went to the Royal Palace once in Hawaii that the tour guides gave you booties to put over your shoes and that would be a better way to keep the house clean, I think. So then when we heard a glass drop and break, that was our excuse—that we didn’t want to be in our socks when there might be glass. Yoko ran to call Sean and he came in and said, “Did you bring my dollar?” Yoko said that he’d been remembering and wanting the other half of the dollar I tore in half the last time. So I gave him a whole bunch of torn bills that I’d brought for him and he went off to try to find the match to the half he had. Keith was there and he brought Kenny Scharf as his date. Walter Cronkite was there, and John Cage and Louise Nevelson and Lisa Robinson.
On purpose for fun I had spelled Sean’s name “Shawn” on a couple of his gifts, and so when Sean autographed napkins for me he signed it that way, too. He was wearing Michael Jackson-type gloves, but on both hands, that his friend little Max Leroy, Warner Leroy’s son, had given him. Michael Jackson is his favorite singer. He said he likes Prince, too, and he must like Boy George, too, because later on his computer he did a drawing of Boy George. Sean and Keith hit it off. Keith is very good playing with kids—he was playing really well with another baby that was there, too, coming after her with a stuffed animal. Sean sat between me and Roberta Flack.
The cake was a big blond grand piano. Sean was the one who had the idea that it should be a piano. He has a piano in his bedroom. And he cut the cake. Harry Nilsson led everyone singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and later Sean made a really nice speech and said that if his father were there we’d be singing ‘Tor They’re Jolly Good Fellows”
After dinner Yoko and Sean and some of the people went over to the WNEW broadcast that they were originally going to do inside the building, but at the last minute the Dakota wouldn’t let them. But most of the people stayed behind. We went into Sean’s bedroom—and there was a kid there setting up the Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, “Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.” And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color. And then Keith and Kenny used it. Keith had already used it once to make a T-shirt, but Kenny was using it for the first time, and I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who’d helped invent it.
Sean’s bedroom had two mattresses on the floor and lots of Beatles pictures and the big Rupert Smith picture of Yoko on the wall. There was wrapping paper and presents all over the floor, and lots of robot toys on the shelves.
After we left I was so blue because before I was Sean’s best grownup friend and now I think Keith is. They really hit it off. He invited Keith to his party for kids the next day and I don’t think I was invited and I’m hurt.
Saturday, October 13, 1984
Got up early and it was nice out. Jay’s back with Kate Harrington and he’s too happily married to go to work, too. Benjamin’s too happily married to go to work. So I went alone ($6). The only person who was called was Michael Walsh, the kid from Newport who wants me to look at his work. Worked till 8:00 all alone. Went
uptown ($6).
Cabbed to Mick and Jerry’s for dinner on West 81st Street (cab $4). There were three butch bodyguards outside. Jack Nicholson was there, and he’s into Bouguereau now—he has all these Remingtons and now he’s buying Bouguereaus.
The baby wasn’t there. Jerry’s sister Rosy was, and she had her two tits almost popping out, which is so odd, because I don’t know why she would dress like that when she has this big butch sexy great husband. And I talked to Wendy Stark and she had three pictures of her kid, so it looked like triplets. Whoopi Goldberg came and the Garfunkel guy was there and Mike Nichols. Tina Chow was in the kitchen with the food, they’d done it. And I approached Jack Nicholson about being in the Jackson Pollock story that PH and I are now thinking of buying the book rights to from Ruth Kligman, and then Fred came up and said it was a terrible idea, that Ruth Kligman was another Crazy Matty, and so Jack said, “Well I’ll let you two movie moguls fight it out.” Jack was wearing a suit that he’d had made in London that made him look like a box.
Mick was drunk and really friendly, came over and hugged me a few times. I was sort of glad that I didn’t bring Cornelia, because she’d be “a threat” to Jerry. I was surprised to see Whitney Tower there because Jerry always accused him of getting girls for Mick. There was a whole other room with more stars in it.