WARHOL’S OTHER MASTERPIECES

As in the court of the Sun King, Andy Warhol’s acolytes sought constant affirmation from their iconoclast friend and benefactor. Working with him in New York in the 1980s, Marc Balet, art director of Warhol’s Interview magazine at the time, remembers trying to impress him by showing off the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso watch he had just bought on a trip to Switzerland. “I wore it to the Factory,” he tells Robb Report, referring to the artist’s famed studio, where his circle congregated. “I was so proud of it and wanted him to see my most prized possession and be jealous. He looked at it and shrugged: ‘Oh, yeah. I have some of those.’ ”

He certainly did. After his death in 1987 from complications following gallbladder surgery, 313 watches were found at Warhol’s East 66th Street townhouse and sold at Sotheby’s the following year in a landmark 10-day auction, along with over 10,000 other objects. It was the first time such a sizable cache of fine watches belonging to the same owner had come to market, and it captured the imagination of collectors worldwide. Value was no longer attached solely to the build of a timepiece; price could