Francesco Scavullo, Andy Warhol Factory: Portrait of Jay Johnson, 1968

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Francesco Scavullo black & white photograph Jay & Jed Johnson. Photo on Board. From Scavullo Studio. 1968-1969. Large scale. 18.25 … Read more Francesco Scavullo black & white photograph Jay & Jed Johnson. Photo on Board. From Scavullo Studio. 1968-1969. Large scale. 18.25 x 12.25 inches.
Minnesota twins, Jay and Jed Johnson moved to NYC in 1967, where Jed (straight hair in photo above) landed a job sweeping floors at the Factory. Like many before him, Johnson quickly graduated from janitorial duties into the Factory’s creative echelons. Noting Jed’s eye for aesthetics and design, Warhol tapped him to edit Factory flicks including Heat and L’Amour, and to direct Bad in 1977. During their many collaborations, an intimate and complicated relationship, long-term emerged between the pair.
Despite over 12 years of companionship and cohabitation in Warhol’s E. 66th Street townhouse, the pair’s relationship deteriorated. After the infamous nightclub opened in 1977, Warhol’s taste for partying, and for mischievous characters like Victor Hugo, caused a rift in his relationship with Johnson. The romance fizzled, but friends and former Factory members have noted that the breakup with Jed was one of Warhol’s greatest life regrets.
After leaving Warhol, Jed became a massively successful interior designer with a client roster of glitterati jet-setters like Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger, Pierre Bergé, and Yves Saint Laurent, among many others and a style that bridged Pop and serene classicism. Jed pass away in 1996 (aboard the fatal TWA 800 flight) and his firm, Jed Johnson Home, has since been overseen by his twin brother, Jay.
Provenance: from archive of After Dark and Dance Magazine editor William Como.
Francesco Scavullo (1921-2004) was an American fashion photographer known for his celebrity portraits and magazine covers. He is perhaps best known for his controversial photos of Joe Dallesandro, Brooke Shields and his support of the model Gia Carangi. Born on January 16, 1921 in Staten Island, NY, he began photographing from a young age and started his career immediately after graduating high school in 1945. Working as Horst P. Horst’s assistant for three years, Scavullo had his own photography studio by 1948. Over the course of his long career, the artist produced images for Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Seventeen, Harper’s Bazaar, Newsweek, Time, Life, Glamour, Town and Country and Rolling Stone. He died on January 6, 2004 in New York, NY. Today, Scavullo’s works are held in the collections of the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, among others. See less