Ken Heyman

Ken Heyman, "Manhattan, Andy Warhol" (1964 )

"Years before [taking this picture], I had gone to a party, and at the table I was sitting at was the woman who would later become my wife. She was a soap opera star and Andy was sitting there, just thrilled, asking her questions about what was going to happen on the show the next week. The next day, the woman who had thrown the party called me and asked if I had 'any work for that strange starving artist at your table.' I said, 'Why don’t you send him over?'

"So Andy came over, and he said, 'I could paint a room.' I had an extra bathroom, and the next day he came to paint it. When I got home at about 6:00, he had painted a tree going up the wall, and there he was putting leaves on the tree. He had a rubber stamp of leaves. He had another stamp of cherries, and he put cherries on the tree. And he had a butterfly stamp and put butterflies around the tree, and he swabbed them with orange or yellow or red paint, in his style of not really painting but just giving it a splash. He painted two calico cats on the wall, and one on the toilet seat. A couple of years later we left the building, and eventually it burned down. Later it occurred to me that I should have kept the toilet seat!"

Courtesy Sundaram Tagore Gallery