Willi Smith, Friend Of The Artists

a screenshot of a 1986 photo of a mostly white loft, with a pillow filled white sofa on the left, and a dark metal looking screen behind it, and a coffee table shaped like africa in front of it, and zebra printed rugs on the floor in the foreground, and behind a bent plywood aalto armchair, a set of five christo lithographs and a black and white keith haring painting hang on the white wall. some distinctive floor lamps I wish I'd looked into more are in the middle right. from ny magazine 1986, designer willi smith's loft, designed with rosemary peck

I had to track down this photo from a 1986 New York Magazine feature and take a janky screenshot after seeing @haverst’s tumblr post of someone’s instagram post of photos of designer Willi Smith’s Lispenard St loft, designed with his friend Rosemary Peck.

Because those photos showed Dan Friedman’s Humanoid Folding Screen, but only a corner of Friedman’s Africa-shaped coffee table, and one of Christo & Jeanne Claude’s 1971 lithograph portfolio, (Some) Not Realized Projects. And they didn’t show the wooden shipping pallets Smith & Peck and some hired randos hauled up to the loft from Canal Street to use as coffee tables. [The Cooper Hewitt has a great Peck pic of one pallet. When I tell you they do not make pallets like they used to,]

a white on black keith haring painting of two figures with interlocking infinity ring heads surrounded by glowing rays also each have extremely long penises, also glowing or something, and an x on their chests. haring made this for his friend willi smith on new years eve 1984, and it was sold at phillips london in 2019, who exhibited it sideways
Keith Haring, Untitled, Dec 1984, enamel on metal, originally 40 x 36 in. when its first owner Willi Smith hung it, and around 36 x 40 when Phillips sold it in London in 2019

And they didn’t show the enamel painting on a scavenged metal panel Keith Haring made for Smith on 31 December 1984, at a New Year’s Eve party, at all. [And which was hung sideways when it was sold at Phillips in 2019.]

As Jarrett Earnest presented in the Cooper Hewitt’s amazing COVID-era exhibition on Willi Smith, the designer had been friends with the Christo Jeanne Claudes since the early 1970s, and had collaborated with them on several of their most iconic projects. Smith made pink t-shirts and painter caps for the volunteers installing Surrounded Islands in Biscayne Bay in 1983, of which, more later.

The Cooper Hewitt’s Willi Smith — Street Couture Community Archive is an international treasure [willismitharchive.cargo.site]
Previously, related: WilliWear Showroom by SITE, 1982-87