This photo is quite beautiful, this Polaroid, because it’s almost got a sculptural quality to it. And Paige Powell was kind of in the middle of it-Andy set her up as Basquiat’s girlfriend, and he wanted Paige to have a baby with Basquiat, which Andy would then adopt-this is what Paige told me after Andy died. I left, like, right after this all happened, and in the subsequent four years, from early ’83 to when Andy died in ’87, they became kind of, um, inseparable, Andy and Basquiat. a year later, with Bruno Bischofberger, who was Andy’s big European dealer from Zurich, then, Basquiat was starting to make money, and had his studio. But no one knew who Basquiat was I think Glenn O’Brien was one of the first people to sort of pick up on him. I mean, Andy was scared and Andy didn’t even really meet him¬-he ran to the back of the Factory and sort of hid in his studio. Glenn O’Brien had brought Basquiat to the Factory a year earlier, but he was still sort of in his street phase, and he looked really dirty and messy and scary-to Andy, anyway. I left in early ’83, which was just about the time that Andy and Basquiat were formally introduced by Bruno Bischofberger to exchange their portraits. And they all wanted to have their portraits done, and at first it was, ‘Oh, Andy wants to paint me! I’m so flattered!’ And then it was, ‘Oh, well, it’s $25,000.’ And originally, it was $5,000 for each additional panel, and then he went up to $15,000, sort of in the mid-70s, for each extra. “Andy realized early on I was good with people, and I could talk to anybody, so he started telling me I should pop the question-I should ask these ladies if they wanted to have their portraits done for $25,000. “I mean, I sold a lot of commissioned portraits,” Colacello says. In addition to his editing duties at Interview, Colacello was roped into laying the groundwork for Warhol’s now-iconic portraiture format, the genesis of which is seen in many of this book’s Polaroids. While Warhol was best known for his multi-panel screenprint portraits, “the Polaroids he tended to take more when you were in a small group,” Colacello says, “or they were the first stab at someone having their portrait done.” “When I met Andy in 1970, he was carrying the Polaroid Big Shot in his Brownie’s health-food store plastic bag, along with his little Sony tape recorder and extra tapes and extra Polaroid film,” he says. He remembers Warhol’s Polaroids-and the artist himself-very well. Vanity Fair’s special correspondent Bob Colacello was one of Warhol’s right-hand men, serving as the editor of Interview. Filled with the expected characters who comprised Warhol’s Factory, as well as those who made cameos-Mick Jagger and Jean-Michel Basquiat are here, but so are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Audrey Hepburn-the collection demonstrates the sheer expanse of Warhol’s reach as an artist and society figure. Next month, Taschen releases Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958-1987, a Factory-doorstop-thick collection of the artist’s instant portraits.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |