by Andy Warhol
Wednesday, December 3, 1986
Stuart picked me up after work and we went down to an anatomy class on East 23rd Street because they were cutting up cadavers and it was formaldehyde and one was hanging by its head and one was on its back. The skin was half on and half off and art students were drawing the muscles. It was just disgusting.
Friday, December 5, 1986
Archie and Amos were sick last night. Jed picked them up and took them to the doctor’s. Ran into him later, he was with Katy Jones, and he was talking about what was wrong with the dogs. They’re just really getting old. I told Jed I’d give him one of the Dog paintings. Life’s so short and a dog’s life is even shorter—they’ll both be going to heaven soon.
Sunday, December 7, 1986
Stuart said he’d take me to the Liz Taylor night at his art school. Joseph Papp had rented the building for the night—it was the Creo Society organizing a benefit for AIDS. Stuart thought it was black tie and then he was the only one in black tie so he looked like a waiter. There was an hour of cocktails first at Papp’s place next door in the Public Theater, and then they put up a plastic sidewalk for the people to get to Stuart’s school, and they had it done up so beautifully with flowers and food. I told Stuart to just look at what his dump could really look like. And the first people I saw were Anne Bass and Peter Martins and Jock Soto. And I stiffened because I’d eaten so much garlic and I didn’t want to breathe on anybody.
Leonard Bernstein was there, and he cried. He always cries. He’s such a weirdo. The Hamlisch guy played, and Eileen Farrell was singing and Marilyn Home and Linda Ronstadt and a guy sang “Ave Maria” in be-bop or rap or rock and roll and it was like an Ed Sullivan Show. And there were no speeches because Liz Taylor didn’t show up. A New York Times reporter asked me what I thought of the performance and I said why didn’t these stars do this show on Broadway because most of them were out of work—that since there’s no more Ed Sullivan we don’t ever see them all anymore. And then Papp came over and he said oh no, these people are much too big to work on Broadway, that they just got together for this one special night. And I mean, how can you be “big” if you’re not working.
And then Bernadette Peters was there with her tits hanging out of her dress and I had already said hello but Stuart wanted to meet her, he insisted, and so I interrupted her and he started talking and then his violining fingers started moving all over her and as much happened as she’d let happen. And Stuart’s standing there with so much tension, he said to her, “Can I give you a ride?” and she said, “No thanks, darling, I have my own car.”
Monday, December 8,1986
Cab to the West Side to Dr. Li ($4) and did my business there.
Then Paige was having a ballet lunch at the office (cab $5, newspapers $2). Anne Bass was coming with Peter Martins and Heather Watts and Ulrik Trojaborg and Bruce Padgett. And they want me to design a curtain and a poster and I should’ve told them to talk to Fred. I won’t be able to do anything with that little gold Noguchi lion medallion that Peter Martins brought to show me—if that’s what they want, they should just have Noguchi do something. But if they want me to do something it should be more American.
Oh, and Jock said that after the AIDS thing Sunday night, the reason they didn’t go to Indochine was because Mercedes Kellogg and Sid Bass go there so Anne Bass didn’t want to run into them, so they went to Nell’s.
Fred came in with Mary Boone in her fur coat and she wants me to go with her gallery, I didn’t talk to Fred yet about what they talked about at the lunch. She sits there and smiles. The Ileana Sonnabend kind of smile.
And Fred after another fight last week that I guess I forgot to talk about, with Paige and everything, he called me and said that he decided to change, and so he’s done a ninety-degree turn and he’s trying to be a different person.
Tuesday, December 9, 1986
Tony picked me up and we went to the chiropractor that Prudential Insurance wanted me to see. Our office health insurance company. He was in an old hotel on West 72nd Street on the second floor (cab $4). And the guy didn’t believe in vitamins, he didn’t believe in anything. He had fifteen framed things on the wall but I don’t know what they could’ve been for. I lied about my age on the insurance thing, I said I was born (laughs) in 1949. And then later Stuart told me it’s a federal offense.
Watched Letterman and God, I hate it when he puts his tongue in his teeth and tries to be handsome for the camera. It’s like he § doing whaf he does when he s home looking in the mirror.
Wednesday, December 10, 1986
I thought I was going to have to take photos of Tatum in the morning for the portrait I’m doing so I lugged all the camera stuff home and everything but then when I called her it was too difficult for her to schedule, she said why didn’t we wait until after Aspen. I think the O’Neal family is probably a really stupid family where the father just happened to make it big in one movie. Because here’s this little girl who thinks she’s so smart, she just thinks she’s so intelligent. And when she was a little girl she was advanced, but …
A portrait guy came to the office in the afternoon and he was one of those cigar-smoking guys who talks about himself and looks fresh, like he’s just come out of a gym. About fifty-five. Like what Mike Todd probably looked like.
The other day Victor sounded so sick I thought he had the magic disease, but yesterday he sounded fine, totally recovered. I think Elsa Peretti’s dropping lumps of money into his account. He knows when not to go overly too far. I guess he’s bored living out in East Hampton. He has a whole house there for $1,500 a month. He’s being supported in the style to which he’s accustomed.
Odd people keep telling me how much they love the TV show.
Steven Greenberg had a car and we went to the ballet to see “The Nutcracker.” I’d sent flowers to Heather and Jock and Ulrick … Paige did it for me. The little kids in the audience there were all so rich, in just the right clothes with the right hair and eating the right (laughs) chocolates. They looked the way Sandy Brant would dress her kids. Jock and Heather were the leads. Heather’s getting tired-looking, but she’s a really good dancer. The performance was wonderful. Really, dancing is only good when the kids are fifteen and you get that skinny frail pinpoint look.
Thursday, December 11, 1986
Tony didn’t pick me up. I wish I could figure out how in his mind he decides when he’s going to and when he’s not. Walked the streets and it was a nice vigorous walk. Stopped in at B. Altman’s and it was so jammed for a change. For once it looked like they were really doing business, and so many salespeople wanted to help me I had to get out of there.
Corice Arman called about helping me get a French visa. I mean, those French are so awful, making only the Americans get them and they let everybody else in the world right in. The office was busy, worked around there. It began to rain and snow and get really horrible out.
I went to Liza’s husband Mark Gero’s opening at the Weintraub Gallery, which is just a small gallery. Liza was upstairs getting photographed. Then I picked up Paige at 8:30 and we went over to Liza’s apartment on East 69th Street for the party. And there was a big crowd. Halston was there, and Calvin and Kelly and Steve Rubell. And Bob Colacello was really nice, just saying how he’d gotten so much training at Interview and how it did so much for his writing. He had the breath he gets when he drinks, so I guess he’s drinking again. Like champagne fermenting.
Liza had people from Vogue and Details and Vanity Fair there so she was doing her best to publicize Mark’s paintings. And the paintings used to look like sensual vaginas, but now they look like they’re having trouble. They’re holes with blood around them and they’ve got names like “Death of a Baby.” It’s like Liza’s life.
And Steve Aronson was there and he was fun, carrying on about how he didn’t get his Christmas bottle of champagne from Interview in 1977. And Ethel Scull was there and I said she should start living it up and she said she was going to, soon. Ethel
’s either had too much of a facelift or else she’s had a stroke, I can’t tell which.
Paige and I talked about our blind-date dinner the night before and nobody made out except Steven Greenberg. Tama’s date, Amos and Archie’s vet, Dr. Kritsick, did nothing but complain to her—that his book didn’t make money, that his pipe had a leak in it—everything. And Paige’s date overcomplimented her, and mine, well … I think my dates on these things should be good talkers who can entertain the table because I don’t talk and Paige doesn’t talk and Tama doesn’t and it gets so boring.
I told Steve Aronson he should write the real Revlon story, the story of the three Lachman wives—Ruth, Rita, and Jaquine—and he said that was a good idea.
And Calvin and Halston were sitting on the same chair, so cozy. It was odd, and then Calvin said wouldn’t it be fun to go to Halston’s, a gas, and so we all got into cars and we went over there and Dick Cavett came, he was at the party with Bianca. And Bianca looked a little fat in the bottom but she said she was thin. And she was looking her age. I don’t know what the age is, but she was looking it.
Friday, December 12, 1986
Thomas Ammann called and told me I had a running invitation to Gstaad for Christmas, that was nice. Nick Rhodes called and wanted to go to dinner. I was seeing Keith and Kenny and Ann Magnuson. Nick and Julie Anne wanted to eat so early, though. They were insisting on 7:30 and we finally made it 8:00 (cab $5). Went to Mr. Chow’s and of course Nick and Julie Anne didn’t get there until 9:00 or 9:15. Ann agreed to do a four-minute thing about art and fashion for our TV show. Then all the wives—Julie Anne and Teresa—got up and went to Nell’s in one car, knowing the husbands would have to follow, they wanted to kick up their heels, they’d been cooped up.
I walked home and there were drunks all over, falling down. It was the beginning of office parties. It was nice weather, though. Walked up Park Avenue. Benjamin had gone down in the first car with the girls. Bought magazines ($7).
Saturday, December 13, 1986
Benjamin picked me up and we went down to Arman’s on Washington Street. It was supposed to be for lunch but since I told them I don’t eat lunch, there (laughs) wasn’t any and I was starved. And I got so jealous, he showed me the jewelry he’s doing, he gets little hearts and redoes them in gold and glues them down. I asked him to be on our TV show. And then I got even more jealous when he told me about the dresses he’s making—a “sleeve dress” all made of sleeves, a “pocket dress” all made of pockets. I mean, why couldn’t I have thought of those?
In his drawings he repeats images, but not in his paintings. And he’s doing paintings now that are just brushstrokes across. But I always wonder if he copies Cesar. Cesar was the artist in the fifties and sixties, a short French guy, the one who made the big hands you sit in and things like that. He’s still alive. He did the plastic that got bigger and bigger and looked like poop and he sold it by the piece. I wish I’d thought of that. I was thinking about that dress that I made for that Rizzoli show that was called “Fantasy in Fashion”—the one in the early seventies. My thing in it was a dress made out of sewn-together pieces of designer clothes. Somebody wore it to a ball eventually. But the timing was just too early I guess, because the bluejean jacket thing a few weeks ago at Barneys for the AIDS benefit, that was sort of the same thing. Corice set it up for me to get a French visa.
I took Benjamin to lunch, the lady cut the sandwich in half and it fell on the floor and she laughed, and I don’t know if she charged me for it ($19). We ate in the car on the way to the studio. Paige was meeting me there before we went down to Dennis Hopper’s show at Tony Shafrazi’s gallery.
And Dennis’s show, the photographs were nothing special, I guess Tony just wanted publicity with a movie star. Met Keith and Kenny there, they were fun. Paige was peeved when she took a picture of Keith and then he said (laughs), “Oh Andy, why don’t you sign this for me?” Matt Dillon was there with a blonde girl who looked like a young Diane Lane. Diane Lane’s only like twenty, but this girl was even younger. Everybody kept telling Dennis how great he was in Blue Velvet. I tried to get him to be on our TV show but he was leaving town the next day.
Monday, December 15, 1986
Tony was coming to pick me up but I didn’t know he was coming with a car. I don’t know how he decides these things, he’s very abstract, there’s no pattern. John Powers called, he’s back from Japan, he said he had a new magic watch that has a crystal instead of a battery, but he sounds older all the time so I don’t know if these crystals work. It’s funny about voices, Diana Vreeland still has a young voice. Strong.
Keith was putting down Schnabel, saying that he sat himself right down next to Dennis Hopper at Tony Shafrazi’s dinner for Dennis over the weekend and then made the speech about Dennis although he didn’t even know him.
Oh, and Dennis told me the other night that they cut the scene out of Blue Velvet where he rapes Dean Stockwell or Dean Stockwell rapes him and there’s lipstick on somebody’s ass.
Then went up to the Metropolitan Museum for the Shiseido party. I guess maybe they funded the Vreeland costume show and so then they got to give a party there. They had two big Flower paintings of mine. Peach with black outlines. One was a gift from Peter Brant and one was a gift from Irving Blum who I didn’t even know had one. The museum should get all of them—I mean, that’s how they’re supposed to be—all together.
Then from the museum Steven Greenberg gave us a ride down to the first party at the Tunnel on Twelfth Avenue and 28th Street, the club that’s built in the tunnel of some abandoned railroad tracks. I’m the one that told the Bonjour jeans guy to just keep the name the “Tunnel.” And it was fun there, good music and Glorious Food. Serge the Glorious headwaiter came over and said hi. Haoui was the doorman, Rudolf was there, it’s a great building.
Ian Schrager was there but he walked out of one of my pictures. I guess he didn’t want to be photographed at somebody else’s club. He was in this beautiful blue suit and tie, and he’s gained some weight, so he’s got that hefty, stocky, prosperous look. Handsome. Like James Caan. Steve Rubell was in a business suit the other night saying, “I’m still in my business clothes, I just closed a deal.”
Talked to Stuart. He said that this one guy was giving so much of his time to do charity work for Stuart’s school, but I told him, “Look, there’s a reason a person will give up so much time, it’s not for nothing—either he’s down there using your phones or he’s getting away from his wife or he’s using your limousine or he’s drinking up your liquor—it’s always something, it’s never for nothing.”
Tuesday, December 16, 1986
I was picked up by Tony and had to go to Schnabel’s. He drove me to West 11th Street, to his huge studio. So huge. And a balcony and a roof. And he has beautiful girl secretaries answering the phone and I asked him if Jacqueline got jealous and he said, “You have to have beautiful boys and girls working for you.” He’s still making his plate paintings so I guess that’s what’s selling. And he gets on the phone and says, “Dahling! Come right down!” and it’ll be Al Pacino who’s tearing himself away from Diane Keaton to come down and see him. Or it’ll be Dustin Hoffman.
And the secretaries say things to him like, “You can either see your editor at Random House at 2:44 and get out by 3:32 or at 3:46 and get out by 4:34,” and Julian says, “I will take the 2:44.”
And he’s painting over beautiful Japanese backgrounds and ruining them. And he’s got tarpaulins with words glued on them and he says, “These are from my San Salvadorean exposition.”
It was the most pretentious afternoon I’ve ever had. And I left there completely convinced I should buy a Schnabel. Fred thinks so, too. I told Julian I’d give him a ride uptown and we went outside and there’s a limousine parked and he’s striding toward it and I said, “Uh, Julian, that’s not my car,” and I pointed to Tony in the little Japanese one. So we dropped me off, and I said Julian could “have the car”—I was grand and Tony took him where
he was going.
Wednesday, December 17, 1986
So Tony picked me up and we went to Rockefeller Center and I had my photograph taken for my visa. Then we went to Calvin Klein’s to drop off his wedding present. Went to the office. It was busy there. Lisa Robinson was interviewing Ric Ocasek. Gael came in and said they were doing Charlie Sheen for the February cover. Greg Gorman shot him already and they’re doing the second half of the interview today. I have the feeling he won’t marry Dolly.
Ric didn’t want to be on our video. And Ann Magnuson is weird, she’d said she would be our emcee for the show and now she isn’t even sure she wants to do a little thing on art and fashion. I don’t understand her—she does all these free things downtown and then she won’t do something when we’re trying to help her.
And Gael called Sydney Biddle Barrows and asked her would she be a “Christmas present” for Steven Greenberg and she was insulted and said how dare you. I mean, I’d said to Gael, “What makes you think she’d do that?” It’s like if somebody was arrested for selling secrets and they got off and then you asked them, “Could you steal a secret for me, too?” I mean, what did Gael say to her? “Since you’re a whore anyway …” And Gael had been saying, “She’ll do it for me, she’ll do it for me.” I mean, just because Gael had Cris Alexander photograph her in a good light for Interview doesn’t mean she’ll give a freebie.