One of the items from Truman Capote’s literary archive, which was presented to the New York Public Library after the author’s death in 1984, is an oil painting by Andy Warhol of an invitation to the storied nightclub Studio 54. It's an article that perhaps best represents the enduring friendship between the author and artist.
An oil painting on canvas, it's a small and perfect example of Warhol’s pop art – it reproduces a sleek, jet black, printed VIP ticket (with comp drinks) to Studio 54, where they often partied together in the 1970s. With its 1970s typography, it evokes the decade of disco. On a strip of green tape fastened to the back of the painting Warhol wrote, probably with a black Sharpie pen: "To Truman Love Andy ’78."
Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli and Andy Warhol at Studio 54.
Truman Capote and Yul Brynner at Studio 54.
Capote’s papers at the Library, comprising over 17 linear feet of materials stored in 39 boxes, include handwritten and typescript manuscripts of his works, both published and unpublished. The collection also includes the writer’s notebooks, correspondence, printed matter, photographs, artwork, sound recordings, transcripts, and personal miscellany. The Library continues to add to the collection: last year it acquired the handwritten manuscript and related typescript of “Mrs. Willows’ Dinner Party,” working drafts that represent a unique stage of composition not otherwise present in the archive. The collection spans Capote’s entire career, from his juvenilia to the book that he struggled to complete in his final years, eventually published posthumously as Answered Prayers (1986).
Capote’s books were bestsellers and with literary fame came celebrity and, finally, notoriety. Always gregarious, he became a partygoer, and famously threw a party at New York’s Plaza Hotel on November 28th, 1966, the so-called Black and White Ball, in honor of Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post. It was a masquerade ball (or bal masqué), a grand party at which the attendees wear a costume and mask (completely different from those mandated for large indoor gatherings in the city today). The stellar guest list was a “Who’s Who” of New York’s glitterati, although Capote later boasted of the event that he’d invited 500 friends but made 15,000 enemies among those he did not invite!
One of the guests at the Plaza Hotel that night was Andy Warhol, who attended the ball unmasked. Despite deliberately subverting Capote’s strict dress code, the two men remained friends. While Capote’s archive does not include any correspondence between them, there are six Polaroid photographs of Capote taken by Warhol: two in which the author appears in a white hat with a red or white background; one with supermodel Cheryl Tiegs; and three Polaroids with some unidentified friends.
Polaroids shot by Andy Warhol at Studio 54.
The painting is now on view in the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures, which opened last week and has a section focusing on New York City. It's a great example of the kind of unexpected artifacts that sometimes comprise a writer’s archive—a work that is resonant of the period in which it was created, and what it materially represents, a bond of friendship between two very different artists who found themselves living, working, and playing in 1960s and '70s New York City.
This story is part of our partnership with the NYPL around the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures, which showcases items spanning 4,000 years from the Library's research collections—we've been publishing one NYC-related object a day throughout September, and you can see everything at gothamist.com/treasures. The Treasures exhibition is now open at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Free timed tickets are now available here.
