In 1981, budding real estate developer Donald Trump was still building the first project that would bear his name: Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue. Years later, he would shoot “The Apprentice” and headquarter his first political campaign there. He still maintains a residence on the penthouse floors.
But more than 40 years ago, to commemorate his new skyscraper, Trump wanted only the very best and most beautiful artwork for its lobby. So he commissioned a series of portraits of the building from perhaps the most iconic living American artist of the time: Andy Warhol.
One of the eight portraits in Warhol’s “New York Skyscrapers” series will be sold at auction at Phillips on Tuesday, and may blow past its estimated sale price of $500,000 to $700,000, according to Robert Manley, deputy chairman and co-head of the modern and contemporary art department at Phillips. Artnet first reported the auction.
The auction house settled on that range after looking at comparable sales of Warhol images of cars and buildings, Manley said. As for how accurate the estimate will prove?
“I was speaking to a collector two weeks ago and his opinion was that if Trump lost, this would fail to sell and nobody would buy it, and if Trump would win, it would sell for a huge price,” Manley said. “It remains to be seen what will happen, but we do have some initial interest.”
The backstory of the painting provides a glimpse into the New York City society world of the 1980s, as well as what the two figures made of each other.
“Had to meet Donald Trump at the office,” Warhol wrote in his diary in April, 1981. “Donald Trump is really good looking.”
The artist and the mogul had been introduced by Marc Balet, a former architect who, at the suggestion of their mutual acquaintance Fran Lebowitz, became the art director of Warhol’s “Interview” magazine.
Balet was working on a catalog for the stores in the Trump Tower atrium, and Trump’s then-wife Ivana asked if he could get Warhol to make portraits of the building to flank the entrance to the residence floors, Balet said in an interview from his home in Connecticut.
“It was so strange, these people are so rich,” Warhol wrote of Trump and his entourage after that first meeting. “They talked about buying a building yesterday for $500 million or something. They raved about the Balducci’s lunch, but they just picked at it. I guess because they go around to so many things where there’s food. And they didn’t have drinks, they all just had Tabs. He’s a butch guy. Nothing was settled, but I’m going to do some paintings, anyway, and show them to them.”
After being hired in the spring of 1981, Warhol visited Trump’s office to photograph the architectural model of the rising Trump Tower, and showed Balet early versions of the paintings – four in silver and four in gold, each sold as a set of images for $100,000 per set, Balet said.
Warhol worked gold glitter and ground glass “diamond dust” into the paintings to make the tower sparkle and shine in the light, according to Manley, channeling what he thought the aesthetics of the building would be.
But when the Trumps finally saw the paintings that August, the real estate mogul didn’t like them and never paid for them, Warhol wrote.
“The Trumps came down. … I showed them the paintings of the Trump Tower that I’d done. … [I]t was a mistake to do so many, I think it confused them,” Warhol wrote, adding that Trump was upset the series wasn’t color-coordinated with the planned interior decoration.
“I think Trump’s sort of cheap, though, I get that feeling,” Warhol wrote. “And Marc Balet who set up the whole thing was sort of shocked.”
Balet recalled the event a little differently.
“They rejected the paintings because they thought that Andy’s work wasn’t up to the Trump standards,” Balet said. “So then Andy took it out on me. He was furious that he did work for nothing and was super angry with me, and then he got over it.”
The artist consigned the paintings to a dealer in Switzerland who later sold them on to private collections, Manley said. Two of the works are now in the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Warhol seemed to carry the sting of that rejection throughout his life, according to the diary. At Roy Cohn’s birthday party in February 1983, Warhol ran into Ivana Trump.
“She came over and when she saw me she was embarrassed and she said, ‘Oh, whatever happened to those pictures?’ and I had this speech in my mind of telling her off, and I was undecided whether to let her have it or not, and she was trying to get away and she did,” Warhol wrote.
A year later, Warhol was a judge for cheerleader tryouts for the New Jersey Generals, a football team that Trump had purchased.
“I was supposed to be there at 12:00 but I took my time and went to church and finally moseyed over there around 2:00. This is because I still hate the Trumps because they never bought the paintings I did of the Trump Tower,” Warhol wrote.
“I didn’t know how to score. The girls didn’t look special because there was no spotlight on them,” he wrote. “Ivana voted for any of the girls who looked like her.”
Months later, he reiterated the sentiment: “I just hate the Trumps because they never bought my Trump Tower portraits,” Warhol wrote in May 1984. “And I also hate them because the cabs on the upper level of their ugly Hyatt Hotel just back up traffic so badly around Grand Central now and it takes me so long to get home.”
Balet called Warhol a canny businessman and was surprised that the artist didn’t get money for the paintings up front.
“Andy was pretty cheap also,” Balet said. “So it was two cheapsters going at it with each other.”
Balet was surprised to learn that one of the Trump Tower paintings was going up for sale Tuesday, and even more surprised to hear the estimated sale price.
“I should look around at my Warhols and see if I want to sell anything,” Balet said. “Maybe the prices are all going up again.”
