Andy Warhol & Bob Colacello: The Lost Fashion Interview

In 1979 soon after the publication of their book Exposures, Andy Warhol and Bob Colacello spoke with Charles Ruas about photography and cameras, their strategy and philosophy behind Interview magazine, their new cable TV show called Fashion, Andy's bad memory, and his portrait of his mother. But listen closely, the subtext is an invaluable historic treasure revealing a tectonic shift in the role of the artist in society that is now part of the zeitgeist.

This recording, restored by Clocktower Radio from a deteriorating cassette tape never heard before, is a remarkable document of Warhol's merging of opacity and transparency and Colacello's pragmatic promotionalism. Ruas's futile efforts to direct the conversation toward the emerging cult of personality and celebrity and its impact on art and culture (a brutally controversial subject at the time) is routinely rebuffed and redirected by Warhol who appears to toggle between a rude buffoon and a humble seeker after truth.

Bob Colacello (see Holy Terror, Photographs From Inside Warhol's World) was editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview from 1971 to 1983. His monthly "Out” column documented a social life that took him from cocktail parties to art openings, from charity balls to after-hours clubs, often across one glittering New York evening.

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