by Andy Warhol
Sunday, March 30, 1986
Easter Sunday. Woke up and it was a beautiful day again. Paige called and said she’d be ready at 12:30 and then Wilfredo called—I’d asked him to come, too. We were going up to help serve the Easter meal to the poor people at the Church of the Heavenly Rest at 90th and Fifth Avenue. Picked up Paige and she said Stephen Sprouse was in the subway on his way (cab $3). It turned out we were really needed because if we hadn’t been there they wouldn’t have had enough helpers. I never made eye contact with the people, I looked sideways and up and down. It went fine. And people were stocking up with oranges and apples and Easter eggs and with shopping bags, taking stuff, and some people were collecting cups and even plastic knives and forks.
And let’s see what else … a lady had her teeth in a napkin and the guy went to clear it away and she got excited. It was a lot of hard work. Wilfredo was good, he handed out the ham, he worked hard. They used six of those restaurant urns of coffee. And the four of us prayed and we saw a lady bring in a potted plant and trade it in for one of the better ones there. A lot of the ladies looked like my mother. A man looked like something from Arabian Nights, all wrapped up. It was fun, had a good time. Outside it was sunny and bright and we ran out.
And James Cagney died.
Monday, March 31, 1986
It’s funny but after seeing Dr. Ruth in person at the Emmys she doesn’t look like she seems on TV. The magic of TV is what makes her look crunchy. In person she’s just a normal person you want to kick around.
Cabbed to the West Side ($3) and Dr. Linda Li. She was messing up my wig, my brain wasn’t functioning. I don’t know what she does, but you do feel better when you get out of there (phone $2).
The Folk Art Museum kicked me off the board of trustees! It was ridiculous anyway, but I mean, they never even bothered to send me a notification!.
Tuesday, April 1, 1986
Stuart and I went up to see Rock Hudson’s exhibit at the William Doyle Gallery (cab $3). And the whole thing was so nelly, not one good thing. You’d like to think that a big brute movie star would have had great fifties stuff, like maybe big rugged Knoll pieces, but it was just comfortable nelly junk from his New York apartment. There was only one sort of nice thing, a wooden box that was so ugly and Elizabeth Taylor had written on it.
Fran Lebowitz came by to pick up some art that Bob Colacello promised her when she was writing for Interview. She came in her beige Marathon Checker cab and she drove off with it.
Thursday, April 3, 1986
Went right downtown because Maria Shriver was coming at 11:00 (cab $5). And she’s really pretty and she took good pictures. She’s a little heavy on the bottom. She was cute, she talked a lot.
Paige and I wanted chocolate on the way home so we stopped at Neuchatel, and they gave us free quarter-pound bags and we just walked up Madison eating it. Dr. Li gave Paige some flower-water stuff and after she eats the candy she’s supposed to say, “I love what I just did, but I won’t do it again,” and then drink the purple Flowers of Providence.
Friday, April 4, 1986
Rupert made some printing mistakes. He has a new boyfriend who goes to Princeton and this one looks exactly like him. Exactly. It’s so odd. Elizabeth Saltzman invited us to a surprise birthday party for Wilfredo out in Coney Island. She had an All-City cab pick us up.
It was kind of exciting out there at this place called Carolina’s, a Mafia-style place. Spaghetti. Coney Island was closed up and rainy. It was just Wilfredo and Benjamin in drag and Kate Harrington. The Italian owner found out who I was and got autographs. Then the lights went out, totally, and then they came in with a lighted birthday cake singing “Happy Birthday” and these big butch fifty-year-old waiters came in, and Wilfredo groaned and resigned himself and braced for it, and then we waited and—they went right by us to another table! (laughs) It was so shocking. It was like when you think you’re getting an Academy Award and it goes to somebody else. It was worth the whole evening. It was just great. We couldn’t believe it. And then later on they did come for Wilfredo.
Sunday, April 6, 1986
Jean Michel was picking me up to go see Miles Davis at the Beacon and it was rainy and cold, and I curled up and watched TV for a while, and ate some garlic and then he called and said to meet him over there (cab $4). His cab arrived after mine and he had Glenn O’Brien with him and some other people. He and Glenn are friends again. B.B. King played first and he’s just great. And then Miles Davis came out, blond, in gold lamé, and he plays really terrific music. High heels. Then we went to Odeon for dinner.
Tuesday, April 8, 1986
Worked till 8:00. I have to have the Maria Shriver thing done soon. I guess I can’t go to her wedding because they won’t let me bring anybody. And I’d have to stay in Boston and then go alone to Hyannis. Fred wasn’t invited. He wasn’t even invited to Caroline’s. I think hers is before Maria’s.
Wednesday, April 9, 1986
Was picked up by Paige at 11:00. We went over to Elektra Records, and she was in a funny mood all day and never got out of it. Then, at the end of the evening, she handed me her video camera and said she didn’t want it, that she wasn’t going to take pictures anymore.
Thursday, April 10, 1986
Missed lunch at the office, but got in a few good hours of work. Paige gave me the rest of her camera, the attachments, and I told her I couldn’t use that voltage in Europe but she said to do whatever I wanted with it, that she was through with it.
Saturday, April 12, 1986—Paris
The gallery was pretty nice, and I guess the guy’s just trying to make a name for himself (cab $5.00). Lavignes-Bastille. The dollar’s gone down now in Paris so people are more interested in art. I had done the 10 Statues of Liberty thing (cab $6). Wandered around Paris with Chris Makos and Fred. Went to the Café Flore and didn’t meet anyone (dinner $100). Stayed in and watched TV, caught up on sleep.
Tuesday, April 15, 1986—Paris
We were going to do live TV on this very famous Johnny Carson-type show. When we got there they were setting up. All of a sudden they heard about Libya being bombed, so the main guy had to leave and he left some lady there, so then they weren’t interested in me anymore but they had to pretend to still be, and I don’t know if they were really doing it or just going through the motions. I think they just faked it. They didn’t even ask me anything and it sounded like they just made it up. They said they put it on tape but I don’t think they did (cab $10, $5).
Went to an Arab restaurant or Libyan, one of those kinds of restaurants in the rich area, near YSL. It was fun, started to rain more. Couscous (lunch $75).
We had dinner with Billy Boy and all the people from the gallery and it was like a twenty-course dinner and Billy Boy said he was a health-food person, that he didn’t drink, but there he was drinking right in front of me while he was telling me. He ate meat while he told me he didn’t, too. He was great company because all you had to do was say “Barbie,” and he just talked away and that solved everything, nobody had to worry about conversation. We had a good time and then Chris went off with Billy Boy and did the nightclub scene.
Monday, April 21, 1986—New York
Sam didn’t call. Paige didn’t call.
Cabbed to 33rd and Fifth ($6) and then the party problems started. I was planning to have a surprise birthday party for Sam, but then Paige had already organized one, but Paige wasn’t talking to me. I called her at Interview and she said, “I’m working, I can’t talk.” I said, “Paige, it’s me.” And she said, “Yes, well, I’m very busy.” And so she was mad at me, but I knew she was mad at me before we went to Europe because she gave me the camera, and now Paige without a camera just isn’t herself, there’s no more darting around and being hysterical. And this went on all afternoon, and then Jean Michel called and came over and Paige came in while we were sitting together, and that was tense, and then she said that she would set up the dinner for Sam’s birthday at Odeon but that she wouldn’t be going to
it, and she left work early. And then somebody at the office talked to Paige and told me what was wrong and we straightened everything out—she was mad that I didn’t call all the time I was over in Europe, since she always calls me when she’s on vacation, and also because she said I led her on right up until the last minute, letting her think I would make it okay with Fred that she could go on the Paris trip and then instead we took Chris. Fred just didn’t want the extra work—it’s so easy to dump Chris at a hotel and with Paige it would’ve meant finding her a nice hotel and then picking her up and having dinner and seeing advertisers, and all that. And Fred was so grouchy on this trip and I told him he was and he said, “I’m old enough to be rotten if I want.”
And so at the office I talked to the girl from the Schwarzenegger wedding and they won’t let me bring somebody so I told them I just couldn’t go alone, and so she started giving me my choice of people to go with and she said, “You can go with Grace Jones.” I said, “Grace is not reliable. And if she did go she’d bring her own people, anyway.” And then they said, “Well Abe Schmuck is coming, you can go with him,” and I said, “I don’t know Abe Schmuck.” And then they said, “Joanne Schmuck is going,” and I said, “I don’t know Joanne Schmuck.” And then they said, “Lady Schmuck is going, you can go with her,” and I said, “I do not know Lady Schmuck.” And I mean who are these nobodies? I said, “I guess I can’t go.” So I guess I’m not going. And Fred said not to try to get him invited, since he hadn’t been invited on his own. And Maura Moynihan called and said she hadn’t been invited to the thing but that she was going up anyway, to Boston, because Kerry Kennedy and Mary Richardson were going to be there.
So anyway, Paige and I sort of made up and so it was over, it was interesting. It’s weird that Paige would get so emotional about me. And then I had to be creative to think of birthday presents for Sam during the fight with Paige. I stuck money in that grandmother-type birthday card, and I did a canvas that had dollars pasted onto it and then I remembered they even make those sheets of money, but this you can just rip money off when you need it, like for tips. Went home and Geraldo Rivera was starting to open Al Capone’s secret rooms on live TV in Chicago, but it was going to go on for two hours.
Sam picked me up (cab $10) and we went to the Odeon. And Paige had some advertisers there to do some business, and I told her to invite Keith and his new Juan, and then Billy Boy had just arrived in town from Dallas and Paige invited him, so it was actually fun and not strained. And Keith gave Sam a radio from the Pop Shop which he just opened, and Paige gave him a book on the White House and Wilfredo gave him boxer shorts from Armani.
Tuesday, April 22, 1986
Dilly-dallied around. Went to the office. Gael came up and made those mm-mm noises she makes and she mmm’d and looked at her portrait. I decided to make it a portrait, not a drawing, just because it was easier. She was hard to do. She has good eyes but her jaw was difficult. She was thrilled, I guess. Grace Jones called with laryngitis and I said that maybe I’d rent a plane for the Schwarzenegger wedding on Saturday, so maybe we’ll go up together.
Wednesday, April 23, 1986
I didn’t call Grace yesterday but I guess we’re going to the Schwarzenegger wedding because the weather’s supposed to be nice.
Walked down for a while then cabbed ($3) and there was a huge lunch going on. There were Whitney Museum people and Shiseido cosmetics people and someone from Guy Laroche. And the Laroche people told about being in the same building with Adolfo and how the Adolfo people spray their perfume in the lobby and then the Guy Laroche people come and scrub it down and put theirs, and back and forth.
Billy Boy came by to see Gael for something and I caught him before he left and invited him up, and it was a good thing I did because he entertained those Shiseido people, he just filled up the lunch with Barbie talk.
Thursday, April 24, 1986
Brigid came rushing into the middle of the Fiorucci lunch and I don’t know what was wrong with her—she had this gold bracelet and she said, “I got the guy on the street down from $60 to $40.” And I just looked at her and said, “Are you serious?” She said, “Look, it’s got 14K in four places.” And Jay laughed and asked her, “Was it a black guy?” and she said yes. And I said, “Don’t you know that they just sit there on the street with a little stamper machine and stamp on the 14Ks?” And she wouldn’t believe us, and I told her to go to the jewelry store on the corner and ask the guy. I bet her $5, and then when she came back from the place she sent $5 upstairs to me because the jeweler just looked at it and said, “No.” I didn’t want the money, though—I just wanted her to have it tested. And Jay was wearing a suit. He looks nice when he wears a tie and jacket, but then you can’t ask him to do anything.
I called Rupert to find out where he was and he said Edmund Gaultney was rushed to St. Vincent’s. He just came back from Taos. He was going to move there. I don’t know why he was taking these plane trips, you really pick up viruses on planes. Like he went to Key West before. And they thought he’d had a heart attack, but it was an epileptic seizure. Now he’s in a coma.
Friday, April 25, 1986
I talked to Dolly Fox and she said that Charlie Sheen sent her a ticket to go to the Philippines. So that’s exciting. I read in the papers that Grace Jones was taking me up to the Shriver-Schwarzenegger wedding in her plane, so I guess Grace called her press agent and put that in so I guess that means we’re going. And I called her a few times during the day and she’d answer the phone and say hello in this low slurred voice and then hang up. She’d stayed up all night I guess and was answering the phone in her sleep.
Peter Wise agreed to fly up with us—the wedding’s right near his house on the Cape, and then drive us back to the plane, so that’ll be good.
Went over to Bernsohn’s and it was sort of fun. He gave me a bear hug and asked if anybody’d ever given me one, and I said no. But I didn’t tell him I didn’t want one.
Worked on drawings of Maria Shriver to give for a wedding present.
Saturday, April 26, 1986—New York—Hyannis, Massachusetts—New York
I got up at 6:00, called Peter at 7:00. The doorbell rang half an hour early and it was Peter with no Grace. He said he went to pick her up and woke her up and she said to come back in an hour. The weather was just a little off. Slightly cloudy.
We went to pick up Grace in the Village and she came out in Norma Kamali black wool underwear. Also a fur Kenzo hat. She put her makeup on in the car and in the plane. We arrived an hour late to the airport. The flight was so easy, through this grey fog all the way and nothing happened, whereas on a clear day sometimes you hit an air pocket and go diving. Grace put on a green Azzedine in the ladies’ room of the airport. Peter rented a car, a yellow station wagon, and he knew where the church was and drove us there. Then he went to check on his house in East Falmouth.
The crowd outside the church screamed, “Grace!” and “Andy!” There was the biggest mob I’ve ever seen around a church. We went in and they had folding chairs near the door. Oprah Winfrey gave a speech. Jamie and Phyllis Wyeth were in front of us and they turned around and said that we’d caused too much commotion outside, they were funny. And at the car rental we’d seen all these glamorous names like “Clint Eastwood” and “Barbara Walters” and the St. James girl, but they weren’t there. And watching this storybook wedding, you just wonder about what it’ll be like when the divorce comes.
Jackie got communion so she walked all the way around the church with John-John to show herself off, she looked beautiful. The church service was an hour, and the wedding ceremony was fifteen minutes. They had a girl singing “Ave Maria.” Peter was waiting outside and later he told us that when Arnold and Maria went out they were nice for the photographers, they rolled down the window and smiled and posed. But Jackie never smiled at anyone, she was a sourpuss. And I guess they’d had parties for three days or something, because everyone told me that at a thing the night before, Arnold gave my portrait of
Maria to the Shrivers and said, “I’m gaining a wife and you’re gaining a painting.” And everyone was telling me how great it was, they really loved it. And then a friend of Arnold’s brought in a sculpture that Kurt Waldheim sent them and it was really ugly. And Arnold’s always giving all these speeches, and he said, “My friends don’t want me to mention Kurt’s name because of all the recent Nazi stuff and the U.N. controversy, but I love him and Maria does too and so thank you, Kurt.”
Outside the church there was a limo and a guy shoves us in and we couldn’t see Peter. Then we got to the compound and Peter had seen us get in the limo and followed us so he was right there. He handed me the drawings I did of Maria, but then I didn’t know what to do with them. But Eddie Schlossberg saw me and he said he’d put them in the house and I thanked him.
It was freezing. Ran into an Austrian and he took us to a tent where oyster openers were getting oysters ready and Grace wanted some right then and there but they said they were being served to people in the other tent, but then someone came over with a plate of them just for her and she ate thirty oysters and then twenty more, just slurping them down.
And Christopher Kennedy was around, he’s so cute. Jackie was sitting with Bettina. And Marc Bohan. I didn’t look at Jackie, I felt too funny. Then there was dancing and music. Peter Duchin and his wife. He was (laughs) going off to do another party. He works so hard. Grace began dancing and it was like in a movie, everybody stopped to watch. She was dancing with a little boy. We were at Joe Kennedy’s table with his wife. Talked to Nancy Collins. I asked her if she was covering it and she said, “Oh no no no. This is a personal thing.” She was best friends with Maria, I don’t know when. We talked about the Stallone piece she did for Rolling Stone, which wasn’t much, and she was annoyed with Stallone, she said he put her off six times and then didn’t give her much time. But he only gave PH an hour and Interview’s was really great, unusual. I was trying to take pictures but I couldn’t get in there and really shove. Arnold’s body-building friends had cameras and so the Kennedys couldn’t really stop them, but they had their own photographer and they would say, “Oh, Chuck, would you come and take this picture?” And so then the pictures all belonged to the Kennedys.