I was sitting in the aisle seat reading a book when two other passengers started talking about art. The guy in the window seat was pompous and opinionated and pretty much running down any artists after Michelangelo. The guy in the middle seat, looked a little older than us 20-somethings and was more reserved and measured in his comments. I looked up from my book and said that I liked a lot of modern art, even if I didn't understand it on a technical basis. And then I shut up and the two of them went on.
A little later, the guy in the middle seat who name was Marc, quietly asked me what sort of modern Art did I like? I said that Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol were among my favourites. Quietly, Marc said to me, " Would you like to meet Andy?"
Would I?!
Do you know him I asked? Marc told me that he had just completed his Masters in Fine Arts at the University of York, and had been spending summers in New York City for a couple of years, and he had met Andy many times. He was pretty sure that he was going to see him again; he just didn’t know when exactly. As I was going to be in New York for a week or so, he gave me his phone number, where he would be staying in Manhattan, and told me to call him.
I did call Marc, and he told me which day and what time he would be going to Andy Warhol's studio and I should join him there. I was beyond excited!
The studio was the famous 'Factory' where Andy did much of his creative work. The 'Factory' was located on the Fifth Floor of a building at 231 East 47th Street in Manhattan. It was a wonderfully bright sunny Saturday afternoon and the place was buzzing with people, clearly quite a few of them were hanger-ons, just like me.
That was how I got to spend an afternoon with Andy Warhol while he was editing, with a lot of enthusiasm, a film that he was working on.
The man I met on the plane was Marc Lancaster, that I have since discovered became a famous art critic in New York.
It was an amazing summer to be in America.
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