Artist, jewelry designer
(1943– )
I get so annoyed when people, even people I know, introduce me and say that I’m from Brooklyn. He’s from Brooklyn! I’ve been to Brooklyn three times in my life. Actually, I’m going there tonight for pizza, so that will be the fourth time in my life. At openings I’ve had or openings I’ve been to, people will sometimes come up to me and whisper, I’m from the Bronx. Whisper? Why are you whispering?
Bette Midler has a foundation that creates gardens in neglected parks and open spaces all over the city. I went back to the Bronx with her because I wanted to have a garden there to honor my mother. When we got there I saw that the space for the garden was on Fox Street, which was amazing. My mother grew up on Fox Street.
I went to Music and Art High School, where I felt I belonged and fit in because I was surrounded by an entire school full of kids with whom I had many things in common. There were kids who drew, who were really good. There were musicians who were outstanding. I guess by then I was already an arrogant little bastard. There was a wonderful teacher, Julia Winston, who taught our watercolor class. She’d walk around correcting this paper and that. Once she corrected something on my paper, and I said to her, “You’re the teacher. We’re here to learn, but don’t you ever draw on my paper again.” Total silence in the class. But she never did it again, and we became really good friends.
I don’t think I was spoiled except by love, but it was in high school that I started spoiling myself by realizing that I had the capacity to make beautiful things. I did pretty good watercolors and I was a pretty good draftsman so I knew how to get attention. That was not the goal, but when you do a beautiful drawing and someone looks at it, it makes you feel pretty good. I think that artists and musicians do whatever they do to get attention, consciously or not. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s inseparable from what we do.
I once said to my parents, “How did you know how to bring up a kid?” “Just instinct, that’s all.” I was an only child and I didn’t play baseball in the lots. I didn’t play stickball. I had no apologies to make, and my parents made me understand that I had no apologies to give. They encouraged me to express my opinions and not the opinions of others. They raised me to respect what I thought and not to waver from that. Taste and opinions. I got into many fights about those, and I still do.
I think I was the head of the yearbook in high school and somebody wanted to do a cover that I thought was too modern. Too ugly. If I’ve been given the power to decide what this yearbook looks like, I’m gonna fight for the cover. I prevailed. They were all annoyed with me, including Julia Winston, the watercolor teacher. And yet, and I know this sounds odd, I’m very shy. I was head of Arista, the honor society. There was a general meeting of the heads of Aristas from all the different schools. We were each supposed to make a speech and I said no. And I didn’t do it.
Recently, the head of Christie’s in Paris came to our office in Paris bringing all these guys I’ve known for years. Five of them along with François, who’s been a friend for five hundred years. He wanted me to explain something. I couldn’t. I couldn’t talk to them. I can talk to you alone. Maybe two of you. But I can’t expound in front of people. I wish I were Barbra Streisand, and then maybe? I just cannot do these things.
Eleven years ago we did an exhibition of my jewelry in London. Then friends gave us a ball for about four hundred people. At the last minute they told me I had to make a speech. The logistics were that two other people would make their speeches first and then I would be tapped on the shoulder and they would give me the microphone. I was sick. Absolutely sick at the idea. After agonizing over it, I decided that I would say, Thank you, Eugenie. Thank you, Nicola. Thank you all for coming. Period. I was numb even thinking about it.
When the time came, they gave me the microphone. I said the first thank you and then burst into tears. Lily Safra was at the table, and she said, “You’re always such a pain in the ass. Come outside with me.” She knew what she was doing. She saved me. I went outside with her and I sobbed for five minutes. It was then that I decided that I would never, never under any circumstances try to do that again. I never will.
Maybe this is my way of dealing with the public and my shyness, but when they asked us to do this current show at the Metropolitan Museum, and when I conceived of the exhibition, I didn’t think of myself as the person having the show. Instead, I thought of this little kid walking up the steps of the Met, being taken there by his parents. He was the one having the exhibition. That little kid, who was always very happy to go to the museum every time his parents took him. Who did drawings there when he was ten. Seeing the little kid there instead of me, the grown-up, keeps the experience away from me, even now.