Forget a picture’s worth a thousand words. Richard Avedon’s 30-by-40 single signed picture of a beekeeper sold recently at Art Basel for $1 million. His 1967 Beatles folio brought $750,000.
Once small value, photography’s now affordable art. The world has changed.
From 1964 to 1980, photographer Gideon Lewin managed Avedon’s studio, did his prints, organized clients, prepped lighting for the sittings. Around 1969, Avedon agreed to 60 percent of Gideon’s own clients’ fees to cover studio expenses. In 1975, the Gideon-produced Avedon exhibition realized for the first time that photography had come into its own.
In 2004, Avedon passed away. Then, in 2011 Gideon wrote the as-yet-unpublished book “Gideon Lewin’s Avedon Behind the Scenes 1964-1980.” The Richard Avedon Foundation sued for copyright infringement.
Lewin and his lady, designer Joanna Mastroianni, are my friends 25 years. Dinners at my home. Dinners at theirs. The story I’ve monitored four years is just now concluding.
The Foundation claimed Gideon, who retains the negatives and the copyrights for the images he wants, was “work for hire.” He says, “It’s about power. About them controlling the art market.”
Sensing he could not afford protracted wrangling, they pushed. Many lawyers later, the case was now scheduled before Judge Kimba Wood.
This week the Foundation agreed to settle.
Hell hath no fury like a Foundation scorned.
Listen, here’s what they’re telling me
High Line hotel courtyard. Alta Linea eatery. R. De Niro and A. Wintour. Separate tables . . .
Georges and Christopher Briguet’s classical superelegant Le Périgord. A tableful, seeing Jackie Mason, said hi. Jackie: “Please. I’m too high-priced to talk to just four people” . . .
Peter Chimos’ famous steakery, 90-year-old ex-speakeasy Frankie & Johnnie’s, whose West 45th building is no more, relocated one block away to West 46th . . .
More: Hamptonites schlepping home always did Chinese food. Now, 7:30 Sunday, TBar, Third Ave in the 70s, was mobbed three-deep.
Jailed athlete lawyers up
Aaaron Hernandez, 26. Ex hot-shot big-shot Patriot. Tight end footballer. Now in the clink. Allegedly for life, no chance of parole. The grand jury charge against him? First-degree murder of his friend Odin Lloyd.
Raps about Hernandez say troubled kid. Involved with bad guys. Tumultuous lifestyle. Maybe drugs. Maybe psychiatric problems. Maybe, as he’s claimed, he was drunk when it happened.
His salary? Once $1.3 mil a year. Net worth? Once $8 mil. That may shrink to a piggy bank because he’s hired expensive New York lawyer Linda Kenney Baden. In HBO’s biopic on LA’s jailed record producer Phil Spector, who was convicted of killing a blond lady, Baden was portrayed by Helen Mirren.
Dining at Tocqueville before off to Boston, friends asked was Patriots owner Robert Kraft paying her. Sipping ginger ale, Baden said, “No.”
Bits & pieces
Tom Ford: “Most elegant creature and less expensive than Kate Moss is my dog. He’s my favorite model” . . .
This mightn’t interest the masses but: Ralph Fiennes’ brother, actor Joe Fiennes, has eyelashes longer than Liza’s . . .
Her Maj Queen Elizabeth, stickler for hierarchy even with feeding her corgis at Buckingham Palace, makes them queue in order of age before getting their din-dins.
Brexit has even changed panhandlers. An NYC gent looking for a handout said London types now say: “Got spare change? We haven’t euronated in days.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.