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Lot Essay
Monday, October 27, 1980
"I had to meet Marjorie Copley, who was having her picture taken for a portrait. Rupert was the makeup person. She's light, her hair was in pigtails and she took them out and it went down to her ass, she'd just washed it and it smelled good. We had lunch. She's going to school. She was a science major but she wasn't smart enough and now she wants to do social sciences and I told her oh no. Bill looks great. The only thing that we're still worried about is that she did fire all the people who worked for him. She didn't seem pushy or tough like I expected, though. She just did whatever I asked her to. She was nice."
(Andy Warhol, The Warhol Diaries, New York, 1989, p. 339)
Marjorie Copley was the wife of the American Pop/Surrealist painter William (Bill) Copley. William Copley was a talented surrealist who began his professional life as a dealer of classic Surrealist work by artists such as Max Ernst and Rene Magritte; his second career as a painter started later in his early thirties. Early on it was apparent to Copley that his style was at odds with the styles that held court in New York in the 1950's prompting the artist to leave for France where his patterning and surrealist imagery would be better understood and appreciated. He returned to America in 1961 to find his work newly appreciated in the realm of Pop-Art whose ideas and influences were beginning to solidify at that time and found himself enjoying the company of Andy Warhol and his contemporaries. Warhol's observations and opinions of William and Marjorie Copley can be found in the pages of The Warhol Diaries.
"I had to meet Marjorie Copley, who was having her picture taken for a portrait. Rupert was the makeup person. She's light, her hair was in pigtails and she took them out and it went down to her ass, she'd just washed it and it smelled good. We had lunch. She's going to school. She was a science major but she wasn't smart enough and now she wants to do social sciences and I told her oh no. Bill looks great. The only thing that we're still worried about is that she did fire all the people who worked for him. She didn't seem pushy or tough like I expected, though. She just did whatever I asked her to. She was nice."
(Andy Warhol, The Warhol Diaries, New York, 1989, p. 339)
Marjorie Copley was the wife of the American Pop/Surrealist painter William (Bill) Copley. William Copley was a talented surrealist who began his professional life as a dealer of classic Surrealist work by artists such as Max Ernst and Rene Magritte; his second career as a painter started later in his early thirties. Early on it was apparent to Copley that his style was at odds with the styles that held court in New York in the 1950's prompting the artist to leave for France where his patterning and surrealist imagery would be better understood and appreciated. He returned to America in 1961 to find his work newly appreciated in the realm of Pop-Art whose ideas and influences were beginning to solidify at that time and found himself enjoying the company of Andy Warhol and his contemporaries. Warhol's observations and opinions of William and Marjorie Copley can be found in the pages of The Warhol Diaries.