You know how at the end of The Player, Griffin is talking on the car phone to his erstwhile rival-colleague Larry Levy, who’s driving through Century City, on his way to an AA meeting? And Griffin says, “Gee, Larry, I didn’t realize you had a drinking problem?” And Larry admits, “Well I don’t really, but that’s where all the deals are being made these days.”? You know that scene?
Maybe that’s how it was with orgies in the New York art world of the 1960s. They’re just where all the deals were being made.
Here’s an entry from Gary Comenas’ exhaustive and ever-growing timeline on warholstars.org:
c. 1961/62: ONDINE MEETS ANDY WARHOL AT AN ORGY. (PS423)
Ondine:
“I was at an orgy, and he [Warhol] was, ah, this great presence in the back of the room. And this orgy was run by a friend of mine, and, so, I said to this person, ‘Would you please mind throwing that thing [Warhol] out of here?’ And that thing was thrown out of there, and when he came up to me the next time, he said to me, ‘Nobody has ever thrown me out of a party.’ He said, ‘You know? don’t you know who I am?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t give a good flying f**k who you are. You just weren’t there. You weren’t involved…'” (PS423)
JANUARY 31 – FEBRUARY 18, 1961: “JASPER JOHNS: DRAWINGS, SCULPTURES & LITHOGRAPHS” AT THE LEO CASTELLI GALLERY.
According to Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol, published in 2009, it was at this exhibition that Warhol first met Johns.
Oh, whoops, it looks like I accidentally cut and pasted part of the next entry in the timeline.
PS423 is Comenas’ own annotation system, a reference to Patrick S. Smith’s 1986 dissertation, Andy Warhol’s Art and Films (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1986)