Every morning, Andy Warhol received the call from his secretary, Pat Hackett. After chatting for a while about trivial matters, the artist continued to talk about what he had done the previous day. “Nothing was too trivial to be told in his language daily. These sessions actually lasted one to two hours,” Hackett recalled in the foreword to the artist’s diaries, “My five-minute job a day.”
Thanks to this material, it is possible to know, for example, that on Friday, January 14, 1983, Andy Warhol did not have a good day. He had visited the work in his new studio and found that nothing was going as expected. When he came home with the intention of tracing the day, he saw to rebel for no reason. “James Dean’s head was in Natalie’s lap [Wood] and then it was Sal Mineo, he put his head on James Dean’s stomach and fell asleep. Then James Dean and Natalie tiptoed off because they wanted to kiss and be romantic, and that was sad. [porque Mineo] I had no one,” he collected in his diary, Warhol’s next post on Thursday, January 25.
Despite all his meticulousness, the artist did not deign to write anything that happened in the 11 days that passed from one recording to the next, or anything that exactly matched what happened in Madrid. While for Warhol those days were irrelevant, for a generation of Spaniards, it was proof that the country had moved from being a Halovetonic town to a modern city.
capital of pop
That January, Madrid had become the pop art capital. On Tuesday, the 11th, Roy Lichtenstein was in town to oversee the staging of a retrospective of his work at the Fundación Juan March. After attending the opening, the painter left Spain on Saturday, the 15th, just hours before Andy Warhol set foot in Barajas on Sunday, the 16th.
Like his colleague, Warhol traveled to Madrid to support one of his exhibitions: Guns, knives and crosses. The works, consisting of 30 paintings and 10 drawings, were seen for the first time in the world thanks to the special agreement signed by the gallery owner Fernando Vijande with the artist. It was bought by the gallery, something that seemed unlikely.
“There are so many people here, why? Did you come on a charge or are you spontaneous?” asked. asking himself, “Is it true that you have been injected with plastic?”, “Are you still Catholic?”, “Why do you wear two watches on your left wrist?”, “Do you like it?” such questions were asked. action punk?”, “What’s your favorite character in the series? eight is enough?”, “Have you changed the brand of your underwear?”
Despite his shyness, Warhol was a nice guy and handled the process with complete professionalism. aware of its existence Spain It was a business trip, not a touristic visit.. “He had to pay the bills and of course he was trying to get commissions for portraits. He made a living from his job. But he also loved to breathe the atmosphere of the party. He had never been to Spain, he lived it as a new experience. And of course he loved it. I loved being surrounded by artists who went to those parties.” , he recalled to the newspaper World Photographer Christopher Makos, who accompanied Warhol on his Madrid visit with the artist’s representative, Fred Hughes.
Although he managed to close three portrait commissions for 3,250,000 pesetas per person [alrededor de 18.000 euros]The sales of the paintings in the exhibition were unsuccessful. In the documentary, he explained, “Andy was never known in Spain. He was never known. Now everyone talks about Andy Warhol. Everyone has four colored pictures of the newborn child on their wall…” Warhol’s stars public relations Carlos Martorell Described as “my Spanish friend” by Warhol himself. As a result, despite the efforts of Vijande, who decided to charge even a hundred pesetas to see the exhibition and put up for sale 1,000 catalogs signed by the artist, the revenues barely covered the cost of airfare and the Villamagna hotel. , more than 15 million pesetas payable for shipping of works and unsold paintings.
nothing is welcome
Alongside the press conferences, trips to Toledo, Chinchón, and the Prado Museum gift shop visit, Andy Warhol’s Madrid schedule was packed with cocktails, lunches and parties. These included the incident at the March family estate at Calle Miguel Ángel, number 27, in which Warhol appeared wearing dress pants over his characteristic jeans after Vijande had warned him. jeans They weren’t the right clothing for a situation like this.
“Two or three years ago, two of the brothers—Juan and Manolo, especially the first—opened the once very closed doors of his pyramid of supermillionaires (at least one of his lavish residences) to all radical and innovative movement. that’s what it was. Or so it seemed,” he explains in his book. madrid is dead Luis Antonio de VillenaThe author, who had the privilege of attending the dinner held in honor of the painter on the upper floor of the house before the main event. A very special action of which they are also a part. Carlos Falco and Isabel PreyslerHe was sitting in one of the chairs next to Warhol, but due to the artist’s shyness they hardly spoke during the dinner.
The artist was much more talkative at the after party, where he had short conversations with guests who had a heterogeneous mix with professional profiles rather than social classes. Among them were: Pitita Ridruejo, Pedro J. Ramirez, Lucía Dominguín, Princess Tessa of Bavaria, Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada, Luis Escobar, Cecilia and Ariel Roth, Carlos BerlangaBernardo Bonezzi, Carlos Martorell, María Eugenia Fernández de Castro, Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, Fabio de Miguel, Jaime Chávarri, Gorka Duo, Ana Obregón — those who, in the face of the artist’s complete indifference, get the opportunity to take a picture with the painter -, or Pedro Almodovar, The artist asked why they named him “Spanish Warhol”, even though at first glance it seemed like they had no resemblance. Recalling the scene in the film’s preface, the director replied, “It must be because I also bring out transvestites and drug addicts in my films.” Patty Diphusa and conceded that “the conversation and my role here is pretty ridiculous.”
During the party, de Villena recounts, “people – the modern ones, everyone who was there after the special dinner – danced, talked, jumped and laughed and literally – and with complete serenity – got into it all. It seems that nothing It was not well received, and it seemed as wonderful as it was surprising to me”. However, the outward demeanor of the guests contrasted with that of the award recipient. Warhol, who was always accompanied by a few handsome young men whom De Villena went so far as to say he believed he needed them by contract, spent most of the evening wandering expressionlessly through the mansion’s corridors, taking pictures left and right. He enjoyed it so much that many thought the camera didn’t even have a film.
Whether I have it or not, it is a fact that those images, if any, never come to light. While Makos confirms that Warhol was delighted with his visit to Madrid, found the Spaniards very sexy, and was fascinated enough to receive a large shipment of Mallorcan pasta to New York, the truth is that the King of Pop never hid. He said that Madrid is not a desirable destination. At a press conference at the Vijande Gallery, when someone asked him: “Why did you choose Madrid to announce your latest art?” Warhol replied: “Because he was helpless.”