Andy’s Favorite Beauty
By
November 2, 2012
Every so often, the worlds of art, fashion, and culture pause to have an Andy moment. This time, Francois NARS has sounded the bell with the NARS Andy Warhol Collection that captures the stardust of an era in a compact. With a palette as motley and as cheeky as Warhol’s tastes and iconic lithographs, NARS celebrates the factory girl, the artistic deviant, and other ghosts of a New York past that deserve tribute thanks to Mr. Warhol’s vision. In true Andy moment fashion, we look back to where the pop art magic began and revisit the friendship between Andy and one of his favorite superstars, Bianca Jagger.
Bianca Jagger
By Andy Warhol and Bob Colacello
(Sunday, June 29, 1975, 8:00PM, the Pierre Hotel, 2 East 61st Street, where Bianca Jagger, to protect her privacy, has registered successively as “Mrs. Royce” and “Mrs. Benz”. AW and Bob Colacello are standing outside the door to her suite. AW is wearing the usual.)
KNOCK/KNOCK/KNOCK
BIANCA JAGGER: Coming!
[Two-minute wait.]
JAGGER: Who is it?
WARHOL: It’s Bob Volskwagen and Andy Fiat.
[Bianca opens the door, wearing a white man-cut terry cloth robe, barefoot, with no make-up.]
WARHOL: Hi.
COLACELLO: You can’t wear that to “Pearls’s”.
JAGGER: Why not? Would you like to have something to drink?
COLACELLO: Let’s just go eat. I’m so hungry.
JAGGER: Really? I’m so sick . . . so tired. . . I could die.
WARHOL: What do you think about love, Bianca?
JAGGER: About what?
WARHOL: About love.
[Bianca leaves the room.]
WARHOL: Bob, how can I phrase that question over again? Bianca’s in the bedroom. She wouldn’t talk about it. C’mon, Bob let’s ask Bianca about love. Phrase it in a different way.
COLACELLO: Do you believe in love, Bianca?
JAGGER: I can’t do an interview while I do my make-up!
WARHOL: It’s the best time.
COLACELLO: You’re looking at yourself in the mirror-how can you tell a lie?
JAGGER: Yes, it’s the worst! I am the most Romantic person in the world.
COLACELLO: How come the bathtub is full of water? Do you still have to take your bath?
JAGGER: I take my bath last. . . jump in it. . . when I am made-up.
COLACELLO: What does “romantic” mean to you?
JAGGER: Why do you ask these questions of definitions?
COLACELLO: Because each person has their own.
JAGGER: I think “Romantic” is a very . . . unrealistic view of life.
COLACELLO: So it must be difficult for you being a romantic and, at the same time, having a very realistic life.
JAGGER: But I don’t really have a realistic life. Anyway, I am a schizophrenic so there two persons in me. Because I am the person I put on for the public and the person that I am really . . . deep inside me. So I have to cover it all up with . . . glamour and all that bullshit . . . make-up . . . glamour, dresses, color, etc., etc. . . . trying to hide a very . . . fragile person, really . . . very vulnerable to attack. This is like LA CUREE. Do you remember LA CUREE? The film that Vadim made with Jane Fonda?
WARHOL: I missed that one.
JAGGER: Where she was putting make-up on her face? No, a cream. And she looked like a clown? Ad they have a sort of fight, or love scene, and he makes love to her while she has all this mask on? That’s how I feel while you are doing this interview. I feel . . . something tragic . . . like a clown.
COLACELLO: What film was this?
JAGGER: LA CURREE. It was from that book of Zola.
COLACELLO: I thought you were going to be in Washington today.
JAGGER: No, I go on the 2nd. They’re in Philadelphia today. They’re coming back tonight.
WARHOL: Tonight?
JAGGER: I think. Were you at the concert Friday?
WARHOL: I was there.
JAGGER: Why didn’t you go backstage?
WARHOL: I got scared—too many cherry-bombs.
Firecrackers
Groupies
Goldie
COLACELLO: I heard there was a party afterwards in the worst neighborhood in Brooklyn. People couldn’t get taxis to take them there.
WARHOL: Where?
JAGGER: Do you know the West Indian that played the tambourine? I wanted you all to come. You would have liked it. But it wasn’t like we thought it would be. We thought it would be . . . real . . . West Indian . . . full of West Indians. And it got . . . full of white people.
COLACELLO: They said the address at the last minute and it was too late to get a limousine.
JAGGER: It was under the bridge in . . .
COLACELLO: Bedford-Stuyvesant.
WARHOL: It was? Oooo . . . I was reading that Mick married you because he saw you in your eyes.
JAGGER: Oh, my God! Something nasty?
WARHOL: No, no, it was really good.
JAGGER: I marry him because I saw him in . . . ?
WARHOL: No, he married you because you saw him in your eyes. Or something.
JAGGER: Who says that he married me?
WARHOL: Or he fell in love with you.
JAGGER: How about if I marry him?
WARHOL: What did it say? It got confused.
JAGGER: Where is my eye-shadow?
WARHOL: Mick stole your make-up?
JAGGER: I love “Rona Barrett’s Hollywood”. It’s so funny.
WARHOL: I think when you’ve been in one of those magazines like Rona’s or “Photoplay”, you’re really famous.
Jackie
Liz
Cher
JAGGER: You think that’s classy?
WARHOL: Cher was really good tonight. She was on with Carol Burnett and Carol was so good. They were imitating each other.
JAGGER: Did you see that photograph of her with Carol Burnett which looks like they are two transvestites? Don’t they?
WARHOL: You look very beautiful without make-up.
JAGGER: I don’t know why I put it on anymore. But I put it on less and less than before. But I look sick, today, Andy.
WARHOL: No, you don’t
JAGGER: I feel . . . sick . . . so much tension . . . in the last few days . . . just about to break.
COLACELLO: The tension of doing an interview?
JAGGER: No. The tension of all the people calling. I have to put the phones off the hook. People calling for . . . tickets . . . for this . . . for God know’s what else . . . everything.
…
WARHOL: That’s a new look-just half a lip done. It’s very different. I’m always thinking of trying new—that’s a beautiful idea.
JAGGER: But you should do the top lip, not the bottom lip. You can do different colors lip. And it changed for the lip.
WARHOL: You looked great at the shooting.
COLACELLO: Well, it took three hours of making-up.
JAGGER: No, it wasn’t the make-up that took three hours. It was the hair!
The hairdresser
The make-up man
WARHOL: Now, dip your toe in the tub . . .
JAGGER: She took all my towels!
[WARHOL and COLACELLO leave Bianca so she can take her bath.]
[Bianca comes out of the bathroom, wearing a pink and white striped jumpsuit.]
JAGGER: You know what Romanticism is? They used it in literature and music as well. The people that used to be called the Romantics. That was, I think, the original definition of Romanticism. The people who used to praise Romance.
WARHOL: I thought it came from Vivian Romance’s name. Do you know Vivian?
COLACELLO: It was a French work, wasn’t it?
JAGGER: “Romantique”? Ouis. C’est bien “de Romance”.
COLACELLO: It was courtly love, right? Wasn’t it something invented in France in the Middle Ages?
JAGGER: That’s what I meant. I meant, the people who believed in Romance were called “Romantiques”.
COLACELLO: That’s also where the idea of virginity started—that the bride was supposed to be virgin and the knight was supposed to go through incredible . . .
JAGGER: But there has been change so much. If you went into a dictionary, if you went into the litre, which is the old dictionary in France, you would probably have a completely different definition. It’s one of those words . . .
COLACELLO: It has changed. But I think it started in France in the Middle Ages with courtly love-the whole idea of courtship …
JAGGER: That’s what I’m trying to say. Courtship, yes. Romance. Is what it is. Is the same in English, no?
COLACELLO: Yes. The whole idea of this princess in the castle and all the knights going and doing amazing things to win her.
JAGGER: I think that’s wonderful. I love men that court.
WARHOL: Did Mick court you?
JAGGER: Yes he did.
WARHOL: He swept her off her feet.
COLACELLO: That’s not courtship.
Serenades
Scented flowers
The rise of nation-states
Kings and queens
Arranged marriages
No more Romance
JAGGER: Alright?
WARHOL: Alright.
JAGGER: Do you have a pencil?
WARHOL: No.
JAGGER: I’m going to leave a message for Mick in lipstick then.
WARHOL: How glamorous
[Bianca writes: MICK DARLING—I AM AT ELAINES WHIT ANDY AND NUREYEV. LOVE-BIANCA, in lipstick on the mirror.]
WARHOL: “Whit”
JAGGER: How do you spell with?
WARHOL: No, leave it that way.
COLACELLO: “The real you.”
WARHOL: And if he doesn’t show up tonight, tomorrow it’ll be broken, right?
[Tape picks up at “Pearl’s,” 38 West 48th Street.]
…
JAGGER: And chopsticks! Andy, who is for you the most typical . . . the image of Romanticism . . . the most Romantic girl . . . for you . . . of the 20th Century?
WARHOL: Ah, you.
JAGGER: Really? No, no . . . without saying . . . anything . . . to be nice.
WARHOL: No, you.
THIS INTERVIEW INTIALLY APPEARED IN THE JULY 1975 ISSUE OF INTERVIEW.
