Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono is a recurring presence in Andy Warhol’s diaries, appearing not through a continuous biography but in encounters that move between celebrity, friendship, family life, and the private world of The Dakota. Warhol’s accounts register the striking changes in how he sees her, his fascination with her household and social circle, and the ease with which small objects and conversations become records of connection. His perspective remains partial: he is sometimes confident in his impressions, sometimes openly unsure what a relationship means, and often most attentive to the people and details around her.

Encounters and Changing Impressions

A photograph captioned from February 1978 records Warhol kissing John Lennon. The image places Ono within the social and photographic history that the diaries later revisit, but the entries do not turn that moment into a fuller account of their relationship. In a separate encounter, Warhol and Rupert Smith have lunch after a disappointing bookstore appearance with Debbie Harry. Drinking aquavit and eating caviar, they fail at first to notice a man beside them on the floor asking for an autograph. It is John Lennon, accompanied by Ono and her mother. Warhol regrets that he did not recognize him sooner and imagines the encounter would have been more fun if he had. His attention shifts quickly from the missed opportunity to Lennon’s changed appearance and the family’s residence at The Dakota.

By October 1980, Ono is also present through the account of a young man who shops for her and Lennon. Warhol asks whether the couple ever return clothes, whether they wear what they buy, and how the employee came to work for them. The answers depict a couple who rarely go out but are keeping clothes for a possible return to public life, and an employee bound by a written promise not to write a book about them. Warhol admires that arrangement and the employee’s evident satisfaction with the job, then turns the exchange toward his own wish for someone to guide his shopping. Ono and Lennon are thus seen indirectly, through the routines and confidences surrounding their household.

In March 1981, Warhol and Bob Colacello unexpectedly hear Ono call out to him while they are at Quo Vadis. He is astonished by her appearance: hair drawn back, dark wraparound glasses, carefully done makeup, furs, jewelry, and an emerald ring set with a large ruby. He compares the overall elegance to the Duchess of Windsor and describes her as a whole new Yoko. The suddenness of the encounter matters as much as the clothes: the familiar public figure seems newly composed, and Warhol responds by asking to arrange lunch and receiving her phone number. The entry records a change in his impression without explaining what produced it.

The Dakota as a Social and Family Setting

At a black-tie birthday dinner hosted by Ono for Vasarely, Warhol and John Reinhold go to The Dakota and leave their shoes in the hallway, where waiters serve a meal of vegetables, pasta, and perhaps veal. Warhol cannot identify most of the guests, though he recognizes the sense that everyone present is someone. John Cage and Merce Cunningham are among them. Sam Havadtoy, whom Warhol understands to be Ono’s live-in love and a decorator, is difficult for him to pick out among the waiters. The diary’s attention to shoes, food, and familiar names makes the apartment both a private home and a meeting place for an unusually prominent circle.

Sean Lennon becomes the center of Warhol’s most playful exchange at that dinner. The child asks about Warhol’s hair and name; Warhol answers by giving him the name Adam, then later signs an autograph when Sean learns who he is. Warhol redirects Sean toward John Cage, whose signature he admires. Sean asks Cage to write a single letter, tears it in half, and gives one half to Warhol, inadvertently damaging the beautiful signature beneath it. Warhol treats the episode as comic and affectionate, while noticing how the child moves among adults and makes the gathering his own.

The dinner also brings back a much earlier connection. While cleaning at home, Warhol has found photographs of John and Ono taken in the 1960s or early 1970s, including double exposures that blend their faces. He gives Ono the photograph in which the pair can still be distinguished and keeps the more merged image. The photographs lead him to recall a possible plan to buy three Greene Street buildings: Ono, Lennon, and Warhol were each to take one, until, in his recollection, Ono wanted all three and the purchase fell through. He says he was pushed out of the picture and reflects that the buildings would be worth millions. His account is explicitly uncertain about the date and some surrounding details, but the surviving image and the failed property plan connect personal memory to an unrealized shared venture.

At the dinner, Warhol also sits beside Walter Cronkite and Sean, has Sean photograph the shoes lined up in the hallway, and talks with Francis Ford Coppola about films and actors. He remembers Coppola’s daughters from a meeting in Colorado and praises the young casts of The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. The sequence shows how Ono’s home draws together family life, artistic acquaintances, and Warhol’s own professional and social network. When Sean praises Warhol’s jeans and calls him cool, Warhol records the compliment with the same pleasure he gives the child’s jokes and acts of hospitality.

Gifts, Parties, and the Work of Remembering

For Sean’s birthday in October 1984, Warhol brings handmade presents: a still-wet painting of a heart-shaped candy box bearing a declaration of affection, a playful brush made from strips of red paper, and a bracelet made from pennies. Outside The Dakota, fans are keeping a vigil because the date is shared by Sean and his father. Inside, guests have removed their shoes. Warhol refuses to do so, and asks Pat Hackett not to leave him alone in his socks; a broken glass then gives them a practical reason to stay shod. Sean remembers the torn dollar Warhol gave him at an earlier gathering and asks for its other half. Warhol has brought a collection of torn bills, and Sean tries to match them with the piece he kept.

The party gives Warhol further chances to observe Sean’s personality. Sean signs napkins using a misspelling Warhol had deliberately put on some of his gifts, wears gloves given to him by a friend, and talks about favorite singers. He and Keith Haring get along; the birthday cake is shaped like a grand piano, an idea Sean supplied, and he cuts it himself. After Harry Nilsson leads a song, Sean makes a speech that acknowledges his absent father. The entries do not dwell on grief at length, but the birthday’s shared date, the vigil outside, and Sean’s remark make Lennon’s absence an unmistakable part of the occasion.

After dinner, Ono and Sean leave for a planned WNEW broadcast that The Dakota will not allow inside at the last minute. Warhol remains with other guests and goes into Sean’s bedroom, where a young man is setting up the Apple Macintosh Sean has received. The man turns out to be Steve Jobs, who offers to send Warhol a computer and demonstrates its black-and-white drawing functions. Keith and Kenny Scharf try it as well. The room’s mattresses, Beatles pictures, presents, and robot toys establish it as a child’s space; the new computer brings Warhol’s art-world circle into contact with a technology he feels he has not kept up with.

At another point, photographs of Ono and Lennon prompt Warhol to give her one of the double exposures. Years later, an image captioned with Ono, Sean, and Sam Havadtoy again presents them as a family group. Across these moments, photography and gifts serve as more than decoration: they are objects through which Warhol revisits old acquaintances, marks a child’s attachment, and makes a personal gesture that the diaries can preserve.

Sam Havadtoy, Care, and Uncertainty

Warhol’s descriptions of Havadtoy shift according to the occasion and what Warhol can establish for himself. At the birthday dinner, he identifies him as Ono’s live-in love but cannot tell which waiter he is. At a later lunch with Ono, Sean, Kenny Scharf, and others, Warhol calls Havadtoy her boyfriend while admitting that he cannot quite figure out the relationship. Ono wants to pay for the meal, but Warhol does. He worries that if anything happened to Sean it would devastate her, and praises Sean’s skill as a host. He also recalls Ono saying that Sean once hid under a couch when he had to host a party. The account links her public composure to Warhol’s impression of a mother attentive to her son, without claiming access to her private feelings beyond what he observes and is told.

An account passed to Warhol by Eizo, his shiatsu masseur, adds a different kind of domestic information: Ono wants frequent appointments, though Eizo says the body needs time to rest; he also tells Warhol that she has been ill and has a bad back. These are secondhand remarks, and the diary presents them as gossip arriving through a network of personal services rather than as medical knowledge. The entry is revealing less as a reliable health report than as evidence of the many routes by which Ono’s household and daily life become visible to Warhol.

In 1985, Warhol runs into Ono and Havadtoy and returns with them to The Dakota. He learns that Havadtoy is Hungarian and plans to buy a large house there. Warhol describes him as independent in his habits and as taking a fatherly interest in Sean, including expressing the view that the boy should not become an actor. A tour of the apartment shows Warhol rooms he had not seen before. He infers that Ono and Havadtoy share a bedroom, but immediately complicates that impression by noting Havadtoy is also looking for an apartment of his own. The uncertainty is part of the entry’s substance: Warhol reports what he sees, offers an interpretation, and leaves the household’s arrangements unresolved.

He also records Ono’s recollection that the cats had not spoken since Lennon died until she put on a record. The detail joins the apartment’s present-day life to the loss that continues to shape it, without Warhol attempting to explain the cats’ behavior. At the same time, Sean is away at camp and enjoying it. The family is not frozen in mourning: the diary holds the memory of Lennon beside a child growing older and a household continuing to change.

Public Life and Recurring Contact

Ono appears in the diaries not only at home but as a host and organizer whose invitations bring Warhol into different kinds of gatherings. In November 1985, she invites him to an impromptu dinner for Bob Dylan. Warhol arrives with Sam Bolton and describes a formal group arranged in a circle, with store-bought food and champagne that few guests drink. He has missed a Dylan event at the Whitney but feels, after watching Entertainment Tonight, as though he has attended. At Ono’s gathering he encounters David Bowie and Madonna among others, and records the evening through the contrasts between its serious, deliberate atmosphere and his own judgments about the guests’ clothes and conversation.

In January 1986, an invitation from Ono’s secretary brings Warhol to a screening of a film she and Lennon made in 1972, followed by a dinner and benefit. Warhol admires Lennon’s ease and comic timing onstage, while describing Ono’s early performance as vocally forceful. The screening places their shared artistic history before a later audience and gives Warhol a view of Lennon’s stage presence that differs from his brief, chance encounter at lunch years before. Ono’s work and her work with Lennon remain part of her public identity in the diary, alongside her hosting and family life.

In June 1986, Warhol and Paige walk to a benefit at The Plaza involving Ono and Sean, intended to help Harlem children find adoptive families. The evening includes guests and a medal presentation to Cab Calloway. Warhol’s response shifts toward the children, whose presence makes him express a willingness to support anyone who will raise one. Ono is part of the event’s public and charitable setting, while Sean’s presence again connects that role to the family scenes that recur throughout the diaries.

A later invitation takes Warhol and Jay to a Japanese production of Medea in the park. The trip is delayed by traffic to The Dakota, and the performance proceeds in pouring rain. Warhol records chewing gum to keep warm, the weather clearing, and the interest Japanese reporters show in him and Ono backstage. Afterward, the party returns to Ono’s apartment, where store-bought food and a conversation with Sean lead to a playful sequence involving a telephone book and calls made for amusement. Warhol’s account ends not with a formal portrait of Ono but with shared time in her home: Sean is friendly but bored, and the adults turn the boredom into a game. Such scenes define the diary’s recurring portrait of her—an artist and host whose household, history, and family repeatedly bring people together, while Warhol’s keen but limited point of view leaves some things deliberately unsettled.