Saturday, December 08, 2007

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Friday, January 16, 1987

I just can't face going to Europe. And the TV news said they're smearing themselves with bear grease in Russia this week, it's so cold over there.

Rode uptown to the David Salle opening. Bruno and Yoyo were there. It's sixties work all from Jim Dine and Rauschenberg and Jasper and me--all put together and beautiful. It's intellectual. And Sam Wagstaff died the other day.

Then cabbed to Mr. Chow's for the Salle dinner ($5). All the art dealers were there. And Mary Boone who wants to give me a show, the Rorschach things. And the Voice gave my photography show a good review.

I still want to do the "Worst of Warhol," all the stuff that didn't come off. I'll (laughs) have to do more, though.

Bruno wanted to sit with Robert Mapplethorpe but I didn't want to. He's sick. I sat at another place.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, January 14, 1987

It was a beautiful warm day. Went to the office and Ian McKellen was there for lunch, it was Fred's lunch, and Sarah Giles from Vanity Fair. And he was so cute, he's so sexy, his play Wild Honey just closed on Broadway and I really wanted to see it, it looked so good in the TV ads.

Went to the Dolly Parton party with Sam and Len down to the Gotham (cab $3.50). Dolly was arriving right when we got there and she gave a speech saying that this was a party to celebrate signing with CBS Records after being with RCA for twenty years. She just turned forty and she looks absolutely beautiful, but like everything's been done. She's really tiny but her tits are so huge they have to be implants because you just can't get that thin and still have those big tits--I'm sure they would've shrunk. Barry Diller came with Calvin and Kelly, and David Brenner came.

Dolly was sweet. Danny Fields was there and I told him I want to tape his life story and he said he would let me.

All the Details people were there and they had the new issue with Stephen Saban's pictures that he took in a photo booth in '65 when we were down at the University of Pennsylvania for my first art show. I guess at the time he was a student and he had me sign one picture and Edie signed another and Gerard signed another. It's a full page and it looked great. Annie Flanders was there and Michael Musto. James St. James was wearing four-inch heels and so was Dolly. And a black guy named Childs was there and he said, "I'm Cedar Bar," meaning he was somebody who used to hang around there, and he looked at young Sam sitting there with his snotty attitude and said, "I see these young kids and all I can think is, 'Pay your dues.' " And he was right, Sam has a lot to learn and I hope he learns it. I spoiled him, taking him to glamorous places when his mind wasn't ready for it. Now he thinks that's what he deserves and he's fresh to everybody.

And then Paige and I walked over to Nell's. It was beautiful weather, in the forties or fifties. And Nell's was so glamorous. Fred was there with Ian McKellen and his I guess boyfriend Sean. And against the wall was Claus von Bulow and Cosima and Andrea Reynolds, and Nell just goes around taking pictures of people like Fred passed out on the divans. She has a funny picture of Taki whispering in Bob Colacello's ear and Anthony Haden-Guest trying to hear it. And Sting was there, he wears Cerutti clothes now, and Nell asked him how his career and all started and he said "And then Andy made me a star." Maybe we were the first to put him alone on a magazine cover. He said he wants to do plays now. I don't know why Sting would ever do that Frankenstein movie, The Bride. If it had been a singing Frankenstein, that would've been something.

And then Nell left her chair and then Bob Dylan came over and sat down and he said he'd just seen my photography show at the Miller Gallery--that he'd literally just come from there. And then Nell came back and pretended she didn't know who he was and said that that was her seat.

I want Nell to take pictures for Interview, but she only takes color pictures so I left her some of my black and white film.

I introduced von Bulow to Nell and then to Dylan. I lost my scarf and I was glad because I hated it. But then I found it. That cashmere scarf I ordered from Brigid's friend who knitted it on a machine and it was supposed to be like the red Halston one I'd lost, but the Halston one was somehow so light and this one is so heavy. Paige dropped me off at 2:00.

And poor Bess Myerson's on suspension. She's really in trouble because they say she sort of bribed a judge to reduce her married boyfriend's alimony payments. I can't believe all these men fighting over this sixty-year-old lady.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Monday, January 12, 1987

Sean Lennon came down. I'm doing a portrait of him every year, one a year. And he was fun. Went to Castellano's for dinner (cab $6) with David Whitney, but without Philip who was off having dinner with some swells. And David still reminds me that he wants us to get married, and now that I hear how many Jasper Johnses he has, it would be really worth it. He's doing the David Salle show at the Whitney. He said that Jasper fell out of a tree at La Samanna but that he just broke a wrist. He and Rauschenberg have given up drinking so I guess they'll live forever.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Sunday, January 11, 1987

Pee-Wee Herman is being sued for $130,000 because he didn't pay his (laughs) video bill. His whole show's all video effects.

These two kids have been ringing my door bell all weekend. A boy and a girl. I guess they saw me come in and there's been nobody in the house with me--Nena and Aurora were away--and it's creepy. I just don't answer.

Went to church, then Paige called and said she'd pick me up for the ballet (cab $5). The ballets were great. "Symphony in C" which I havent' seen in years, and then two Jerome Robbins ones. We had Peter Martin's seats. Jock and Heather were up there just flying around. And they said I could photograph the company for as long as I want, so I'm going to start that.

Anne Bass wasn't at the ballet but she came to the dinner afterwards that Paige had arranged at Baton. And Paige and I are fighting. She keeps making these digs about Jean Michel, she said, "Are you starting up your gay affair again with Jean Michel?" and I got my dig in and said, "Listen, I won't go to bed with him because he's so dirty, and I just can't believe that anyone would. I mean, you're the one who had the affair with a dirty unwashed person." And then we had a fight about Eizo and Shiatsu because her guy went on vacation so she's been using Eizo and she asked me if he ever did a thing on my stomach and she described how he'd put his hands and was shaking it and she got nervous and took his hand away, and so I said, "No, but he told me how fat you are"--I was kidding--and so she said, "Okay, that does it, I'm not using him anymore." And then I tried to tell her he didn't say she was fat, but she wouldn't believe me.

And Peter Martins who commissioned me to do the ballet curtain, he actually does have great ideas. I didn't think so before but now I do. He talked to Stephen Sprouse about the Touch Tag thing where the kids who play football use clothes with Velcro so that instead of tackling and wearing shoulder pads, they have to tear the Velcro off, so they're working on the "Fluorescent Orange" ballet, and then the kids thought of fluorescent snow.

And then Ulrik told me he hadn't had time that night to walk his dog, I used Heather's aggressive personality and I said, "Why didn't you just put the dog on stage and have him do it there and no one would notice." And I was telling everyone about my idea for a "Shower" ballet that I've always had-- nude dancers getting into the shower after a heavy dance number and then shaking the water off on the audience.

The ballet kids were quiet at first but after ten glasses of wine they were really funny. And Stephen Sprouse was showing how he writes backwards, he's so clever and he had such beautiful writing. And then something really surreal happened. A busload of eight-year-olds came into this restaurant, about fifty of them, and filled it up, at the bar and everyplace. And we asked them what they were doing there and they said they were going from bar to bar researching a school paper. It got really loud and noisy. They said they were going to Nell's.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, January 7, 1987

Lost my cold when I went to Bernsohn in the morning. I walked in and didn't tell him I had one but he said I felt congested and then he worked on me and for the first time used a lot of crystals on me like the long skinny ones and for the first time I really completely totally believed in it, because my cold was absolutely gone when I left there. and he said to me "Do you mind if I raise my price $10?" and I said "Yes!" I mean, he's telling me about all the clothes and records he's buying. And so he said, "Well, then how about $5?" and I said, "Well, what can I say?"

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, January 6, 1987

Everybody wanted to give me their limo--Steven Greenberg, Stuart Pivar, the glamour days--and Paige gave the gallery fifty more people to call and invite at the last minute. Had a full day at work. Got to the gallery at 5:00 and then there was only a scattering of people, but it got to be more and more and I worked myself to death. The show looked great. Then we went to dinner with Steven Greenberg and then I went home and went to bed early, I thought I would shake this cold, but then Jean Michel called at 3:00 in the morning and I talked to him and it just ruined my sleep.

Oh, and I've just been watching the new Joan Rivers show a few times and it's just only about sex all the time--so boring.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Monday, January 5, 1986

There's a cable news show that I see at 5:30 in the morning when I get up to pee that's good. I don't know what it is I'm allergic to. Dr. Linda Li says it may be the paint I use, but I'm hardly ever near it now. I think it's something in this house. Or maybe it's something in the buildings on either side of me, maybe radiation from the doctor's building. Maybe it's the teddy-bear coat I sleep in, although the label says it's all cotton, I don't know. It's Armani. I somehow feel it might have a little polyester, it has that fuzzy feeling. And I also sleep under the Larissa leather coat that Jane Holzer gave me, it's so great. Jane keeps saying I never wear it and I tell her I wear it every night.

Paige picked me up and we went to the St. Regis for the Adolfo show. The clothes are beautiful but it's so abstract to me that somebody should copy Chanel suits for years, that you'd make a career out of copying somebody else's suit. It's been decades and it's still the same suit. There was a tall lady next to us and I didn't smile at her or anything, I didn't know who it was, and then later, I realized it was Evangeline Bruce. There were so many ladies there that I just should be doing portraits of, just every one was one of those rich ladies. And they still have all their energy from not having hard lives.

You know, Heather Watts is so interesting. She's in this "reading group" that Anne Bass is in, they all read the same book every month and then they meet to discuss it. And it's all these rich ladies like Brooke Astor and Mrs. Rupert Murdoch and Drue Heinz. And they meet at a different member's house every week with the butlers and cooks and maids, and Heather says she's the only poor one and that she's the only one who reads the books. She dropped out of school at fifteen. And you know how vivacious she is, she said she heard about Anne Bass's group at a party and she said, "I want to be in it!" Heather can't wait for the group to have to come to her loft and they'll all sit on the floor.

Then Paige and I went to the Robert Miller Gallery and the show of my photographs looks absolutely great. Terrific. The catalogue looks good but Stephen Koch's essay throws in the same old name like Duchamp and Brassai. Brassai!!! and if they'd had some young person do it it would've been different names and fresher.

I decided not to go out and just rest up and be fresh for the opening of the show.