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Lot Essay
"...I asked Andy to do my portrait. We went to Broadway and 47th Street, where they had this photobooth. Andy met me there, and we had a bunch of quarters. He was very particular about which booth. We tried a whole bunch of them.
You see, what nobody really understood about Andy at the time, was that he was a great artist. We don't understand that these contemporary painters and artists-when they are good-really understand media. When Andy did a photograph, when Lichtenstein would paint or do a drawing, they understood that medium, and what vocabulary they were going to add to the medium. It was very curious because he didn't like this booth and he did like that booth, and he maybe wanted this one, so we spent about an hour going from booth to booth. We finally decided on a booth.
...if you're in a photobooth for a long time it gets pretty boring; being photographed anyway is pretty boring. After you do one pose, how many poses can you do? I got so bored that I started to really act in them. I was a student of Lee Strasberg, so I started to do all these acting exercises. I spent hours.
Fifty dollars is a lot for a photobooth! So, when I was finished, I just gave them to Andy and said, "Look, you hold on to these and see what you want to do." Then I forgot about them...
Andy was really a great portrait painter and he must have really liked me a lot. He made me into the archetype of the sexually liberated woman of our time.
It really is an icon of this liberated woman, who is just trying very hard to be liberated. In the 60s there were rules, if you were an intelligent woman, you were an upset woman. Truly upset. You had to be thin. We grew up with all these rules. We were on amphetamines. I was taking Seconals to go to sleep, I weighed 87 pounds. I wanted to be an actress, I couldn't ever acknowledge that in public because my husband's family and my family would have been very upset...
I never really think they are portraits, and I don't think they are portraits of me. I've never referred to them as portraits; it's always the Warhol or the Lichtenstein or the Artschwager or the Wegman. It wasn't really about a likeness; it was always about that artist. So when you look at the portrait, it really is that crazy, mixed-up, sexually mixed-up person that we all were. We were crazy. We were out of our minds..."
You see, what nobody really understood about Andy at the time, was that he was a great artist. We don't understand that these contemporary painters and artists-when they are good-really understand media. When Andy did a photograph, when Lichtenstein would paint or do a drawing, they understood that medium, and what vocabulary they were going to add to the medium. It was very curious because he didn't like this booth and he did like that booth, and he maybe wanted this one, so we spent about an hour going from booth to booth. We finally decided on a booth.
...if you're in a photobooth for a long time it gets pretty boring; being photographed anyway is pretty boring. After you do one pose, how many poses can you do? I got so bored that I started to really act in them. I was a student of Lee Strasberg, so I started to do all these acting exercises. I spent hours.
Fifty dollars is a lot for a photobooth! So, when I was finished, I just gave them to Andy and said, "Look, you hold on to these and see what you want to do." Then I forgot about them...
Andy was really a great portrait painter and he must have really liked me a lot. He made me into the archetype of the sexually liberated woman of our time.
It really is an icon of this liberated woman, who is just trying very hard to be liberated. In the 60s there were rules, if you were an intelligent woman, you were an upset woman. Truly upset. You had to be thin. We grew up with all these rules. We were on amphetamines. I was taking Seconals to go to sleep, I weighed 87 pounds. I wanted to be an actress, I couldn't ever acknowledge that in public because my husband's family and my family would have been very upset...
I never really think they are portraits, and I don't think they are portraits of me. I've never referred to them as portraits; it's always the Warhol or the Lichtenstein or the Artschwager or the Wegman. It wasn't really about a likeness; it was always about that artist. So when you look at the portrait, it really is that crazy, mixed-up, sexually mixed-up person that we all were. We were crazy. We were out of our minds..."