A forgotten Andy Warhol work made up of handprints is poised to make waves in Austria.
In 1985, restaurateur Peter Herrero asked his regulars to paint their own tables at short-lived The Strand, and one habitué got her pal Warhol to help.
Now Page Six has learned that the table has shown up in Austria — valued at $8 million, and set to be displayed in a museum.
The West 46th Street eatery “was just this tiny little gloomy spot,” Dolly Fox tells Page Six. “You went downstairs, and it was itty bitty.”
“Nobody was allowed to take pictures, so there was no press,” she said, “It truly was a blip in history.”
But it was lively.
The restaurant didn’t have a cabaret license, but Fox — who went on to date Charlie Sheen — said they would lock the door at closing, shove the tables back and dance the rest of the night away.
She tells us that Herrero asked his friends to paint the tables.
“[Artist] Peter Max, Christopher Walken — whoever was around at the time… He would’ve asked all of his superstar friends, but it was spur of the moment,” she said.
And Fox, who was an editor at Warhol’s Interview magazine and shows up a number of times in the “Andy Warhol Diaries,” tell us she “called Andy and said, ‘Can you go [to the restaurant] with me tomorrow night?’”
The restaurant closed not long after.
But early this year, Vienna-based filmmaker and founder of Artdeluxe, Robert Hofferer, contacted Fox because her signature was on the table.
It seems the piece had passed hands for decades, we’re told. Its last owner, Reinhard Diethardt, purchased it for $2 million in 2005. He recently commissioned Hofferer for a museum project dedicated to his collection. “The table will play a central role,” Hofferer told us.
Fox will reunite with the table that is now believed to be worth around $8 million in October. “It’s found! I wasn’t lying. There’s proof,” she quipped.
“We did [the painting] in 10 minutes. It’s validating that it really exists, and it’s not in my head.”
She added, it was “just a day in the life of Dolly and Andy.”
Read the full article here
