Tennis legend John McEnroe is known for speaking his mind. But McEnroe’s interactions with the art world are probably less known to tennis fans.
McEnroe sheds light on those and more in a forthcoming memoir “But Seriously”. Per the New York Post’s Page Six, McEnroe rips apart famed artist Andy Warhol who apparently didn’t help McEnroe’s love life during the late 1970’s.
“He was always there at every party I was ever at, taking your picture late at night,” McEnroe recounts about Warhol. “I remember thinking, ‘Who is this weirdo with the fake hair? Why is he waving his camera around when we’re here at three in the morning? Isn’t there a place that could be off-limits?”
McEnroe also laments that whenever he tried to get to know a model or other glamourous woman at a party, “(Warhol) always seemed to be up in everyone’s face with his camera, being a pain in the ass.”
The former No. 1 immediately didn’t care of Warhol’s artwork either but later came to appreciate his work after Warhol died in 1987.
“…Everyone all of a sudden is going, ‘He’s one of the world’s greatest, unbelievable. . .’ I’m like, ‘He is?’ ”
McEnroe paid $30,000 at a charity auction back in 1986 to have Warhol create custom portraits of himself and then wife Tatum O’Neal. Warhol came to their house to photograph McEnroe and O’Neal first before painting the portraits.
McEnroe, now a tennis broadcaster, later sold the portraits for a profit of $400,000 at a charity auction held by Sotheby’s in 2008.
McEnroe’s new book goes on sale next week.