Grace Jones

Grace Jones emerges in Andy Warhol’s diaries as both an unmistakable public image and a vivid, sometimes unpredictable presence in everyday encounters. Her striking clothes and forceful manner draw attention, but the record also follows the work behind that image: magazine interviews, portrait sittings, film appearances, and repeated negotiations over how she should present herself. Across these episodes, she is not simply an object of Warhol’s celebrity-watching. She voices her own ideas about her audience, her appearance, her career, and the people close to her.

Public Image and Professional Presence

Jones repeatedly enters the diary through the world of image-making. In one early visit, she arrived wearing a masculine outfit with a very tall Swedish companion, Hans Lundgren. Warhol noted the contrast between the man’s imposing height and his unexpectedly weak handshake, while Jones herself made a strong visual impression. The entry establishes a recurring feature of her appearances: Warhol notices the details of dress and bearing, but his observations also record how a person’s public impact can differ from a first impression formed by a single gesture.

Her place in the magazine world became especially visible when she was photographed for Vogue and interviewed for the cover of Interview. On that occasion, she kept the office waiting for hours. Benjamin Liu made calls to locate her and eventually found her at Bergdorf Goodman collecting a fur coat from the Revillon cooler. Warhol recorded that she spent heavily on furs and cared more about them than money; he advised her that jewelry would be a better purchase because furs could not readily be resold. Yet the delay did not define the meeting. Once Jones arrived, the mood turned immediately warm: she greeted the group affectionately, after which the contrast between the staff’s long wait and her welcoming entrance became part of the episode’s comedy.

The scene also reveals how the magazine’s carefully managed glamour depended on unpredictable personal encounters. Interview had developed a sophisticated, self-mocking reputation and relied on a constant supply of celebrities and unfamiliar faces; the promise of appearing in the magazine was a recurring inducement. Jones’s cover interview placed her within that system, while her lateness and sudden sociability made the production itself part of the story. The magazine did not merely record an already settled public image: its interviews, photographs, and editorial presentation helped stage how that image reached readers.

Interviews, Photographs, and Audience

Warhol’s notes repeatedly set Jones’s own view of public behavior against his expectations. When she came by with her Swedish boyfriend, he advised her to look more conventionally attractive, warning that an unusual appearance might limit the parts she could be hired for. He connected this advice to a similar recommendation he had made to Debbie Harry after seeing Videodrome, suggesting that she retain her red hair and adopt a more ordinary look to pursue roles associated with Faye Dunaway. These comments document Warhol’s practical, sometimes prescriptive understanding of the entertainment business; they do not establish that Jones accepted his advice or changed her appearance because of it.

At a crowded show at Parsons, the difference between their approaches to the public became especially plain. Warhol was mobbed for autographs and signed for the people approaching him. Jones initially refused autograph requests, telling the young admirers to leave her alone. After noticing Warhol signing, she came over and explained that her public liked her better when she treated them that way. Her explanation shifts the moment from a simple contrast between an accommodating celebrity and a dismissive one: Jones presented her behavior as a deliberate relation with her audience, shaped by what she believed her public preferred. The diary preserves both the visible refusal and her account of its meaning.

Her photographic work also placed her in a network of artists and collaborators. For an Interview shoot at Robert Mapplethorpe’s Bond Street studio, Keith Haring did Jones’s makeup while Mapplethorpe photographed her. Warhol and his companions spent three hours there. The entry records the work as a collective process rather than attributing the resulting image to Jones alone: her appearance was prepared, photographed, and framed through the efforts of several people. On the way, Warhol described a separate Haring project on Avenue D and East Second Street, where Haring had painted a brownstone storefront in several colors. That detour situates the shoot among the artistic and social environments surrounding the magazine, without suggesting that Jones participated in the project.

Screen Work and Social Life

Jones’s screen presence receives both admiration and skeptical commentary. After she invited Warhol to a screening of Conan the Destroyer, the start was delayed because she arrived late. Warhol described her as a commanding presence, but found her scene involving a mouse foolish. The judgment is brief and personal rather than a general assessment of her acting; it places his interest in her charisma alongside his readiness to criticize a particular scene. The invitation and his attendance nevertheless show that their contact extended beyond magazine work into film and social events.

At dinner, Jones could be both a delayed arrival and an engaging companion. On one evening, she waited for Dolph, who had changed his name from Hans and was in town promoting Rocky IV. She described his recent weight loss and joked about how his thighs used to sound as he approached. When the bill came, she produced a large amount of cash to pay, but Warhol said he would cover the $280 dinner. The entry records a teasing familiarity between Jones and Dolph, as well as a small act of generosity from Warhol; it does not reduce their interaction to the earlier fashion and publicity settings.

Another appearance brought her to the office to collect a portrait. She wore Issey Miyake and a hat resembling Rasta hair, and greeted everyone with kisses. She was excited about going to Hollywood to play a woman Dracula and said the production had given her artistic control. Her talk of changing color as part of the role prompted Warhol to wonder whether that control extended chiefly to her appearance. The exchange captures the distance between Jones’s enthusiasm for the opportunity and his wry view of what artistic control might mean in a film role.

Relationships and Recurring Encounters

Warhol’s diary places Jones within an evolving circle of partners, friends, and colleagues, though its glimpses are selective. During a later meeting, she was waiting for Dolph, now identified by that name, and Warhol noted that he had lost weight and largely lost his accent. Jones’s humorous imitation of his former approach made the story an instance of intimate teasing, while her readiness to pay for dinner showed her at ease in the group. The entries connect this later episode with the earlier mention of Hans Lundgren by noting that Dolph had changed his name from Hans.

In a conversation about her personal life, Jones suggested that she and Warhol should become a couple and that she could make him happy. Warhol responded with comic skepticism about the prospect of sharing a household with her circle. In the same entry, he records her distress that Dolph had left her and her conviction that Dolph would not manage without her. She also complained that Jean-Paul Goude was not seeing their young child and said she had found a fairy to live with the child as a father figure. These remarks offer a brief view of Jones’s concerns about separation and parenting, as reported through Warhol’s diary, rather than a complete account of her private life.

Jones’s encounters with Warhol continue to combine professional business, social warmth, and missed timing. When she called while suffering from laryngitis, Warhol floated the idea of renting a plane together for the Schwarzenegger wedding. On another occasion, she was expected to join an early departure but did not appear: Peter arrived without her and explained that he had gone to wake her, only to be told to return an hour later. At a later event, she again arrived just before she was due to go onstage to accept an award for which her manager had asked Warhol to stand in. She wore a five-foot hat that extended far enough to strike people on either side. The hat turns the familiar problem of lateness into another public entrance, memorable for its scale as well as its timing.

The Diary’s Portrait of Jones

Taken together, these episodes make Jones legible through contrasts rather than a single settled description. She could refuse autographs and explain the choice as part of her relationship with her audience; keep magazine staff waiting and greet them affectionately on arrival; discuss expensive furs as a consuming interest and appear ready to pay for dinner; and approach a new acting role with excitement while Warhol responded with dry doubt. The diary does not resolve these differences into a verdict. It preserves them as features of a public life in which clothes, photographs, interviews, fans, and personal relationships continually meet.

Warhol’s record is also shaped by his own habits of attention. He notices the handshake, the delay, the coat, the outfit, the autograph exchange, and the oversized hat; his judgments can be admiring, practical, or dismissive. Jones, however, is not only observed. She explains her autograph policy, expresses preferences, makes invitations, discusses her child and relationships, and articulates excitement about a film role. The resulting portrait is of a celebrity whose image is negotiated in public but whose agency remains visible in the small decisions and explanations the diary happens to preserve.