My wife, Sarah Dalton was a shy and frightfully British schoolgirl when she sailed with her mother from Southampton to New York City. Standing on the bow of the ship, they saw the same astonishing view of Manhattan that countless emigrants had for centuries – a city of tall buildings seemingly rising out of the sea, touching the sky; a city both daunting and exciting. Once there and with plenty of free time, 13 year old Sarah and her older brother David prowled the art galleries. One favourite haunt was the Leo Castelli gallery which represented Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg; gallery manager Ivan Karp decided to take the two British kids under his wing and show them his New York. On their first outing they visited the lower east side and ended the day at a party at the apartment of Art Kane, a well known art director. Also present that evening was a pale young man, introduced to David and Sarah as Andy Warhol, who made his living as a commercial artist producing fanciful handbag, shoe and glove drawings. Warhol was cripplingly shy, and possibly because of this immediately took to the two wide-eyed children. Towards the end of the evening he hesitantly invited them to see his paintings. In the Brownstone house painted blue, where Andy lived with his Czech mother and a cat, David and Sarah saw for the first time Andy’s work – hand painted advertisements. They were stunned by what they saw. “Do you like them?” Andy nervously asked. “Oh yes, totally, they’re simply amazing.” And so began a life-long friendship. In POP, the newest book about Andy Warhol, written by Sarah’s brother with Tony Sherman, the authors credit her with changing the course of art. Sarah Dalton takes up the story: “At the time I certainly didn’t think I was helping create art history. If I did, it was totally by accident. I had taken some classes at Traphagen School of Fashion, thinking I might become a costume designer. I arrived at Andy’s one day and he was bemoaning the fact that his paintings of news photos looked messy. I asked him why he didn’t use a silk screen, as we did at school. He seemed pleased with the idea and I offered to show him the technique. Nat Finkelstein, who became a kind of house photographer, credits me in his book with showing Andy how to do silk screening but Andy must have studied silk screening at art school, although maybe not from photos. Perhaps that accidental conversation did cause a change in direction for Andy, and hence modern art. But let’s face it, much of what happened to Andy was by accident. My brother wanted to call his book Accidental Genius, which I think would have been very appropriate. Later on, Andy, David and I would silkscreen clothes for me to wear, a dress ‘Fragile Handle With Care’ for Andy’s opening exhibition, when guests mistook me for one of his art works. After that I was enlisted by Andy to edit his first film, Sleep. It’s funny, I have ended up being a film editor when I thought I would become a costume designer. Andy had shot lots of footage of John Giorno, a New York poet, sleeping and he asked me to edit it, taking out bits where John moved too much – he wanted the movie to be without movement. I protested that I hadn’t a clue how to edit but he fished out an old moviola editing machine, showed me how it operated and so to work I went. Andy was a chameleon. Different with different people; the Andy you knew reflected who you were. Because I was an English schoolgirl, the Andy I knew was sweet and protective. Perhaps the best story to illustrate the person I knew is that many years later I returned briefly to New York to visit my mother. The day before I was to leave, she began sentimentalising about Andy and how she missed him and really wanted to visit him at his studio. By now, Andy had become an iconic celebrity and I groaned at the thought of making a call but Andy picked up the phone immediately and I told him that Mama would like to come and visit him at his studio. “That would be wonderful,” he exclaimed. “Why doesn’t she come for brunch on Sunday? Who would she enjoy meeting? Would she like Elizabeth Taylor to come along too?” I’m sure she’d like that, I laughed. And so Mama went to brunch and had a fabulous time with the typically generous and sweet Andy. And Elizabeth Taylor. The Andy I knew as a young girl and later as a fellow artist, was obsessed with the magical aspect of art: he used to say that anything an artist does becomes in itself a work of art. Picasso, drawing street directions on a paper napkin, Rauschenberg erasing a de Kooning drawing; anything the artist conceived of – was art. Andy Warhol was the man who re-invented art”.

POP – the genius of Andy Warhol by Tony Scherman and David Dalton is reviewed on page 45.

Andy Warhol: the Factory Years 1964 – 1967 by Nat Finkelstein, 2000 (available through Amazon).