I still have the green dress I wore when I first met Peter Beard. It was a crisp November evening in 2004. I was 21 and had just moved to New York City. My father invited me to join him at Beard’s book party at the Explorers Club. A photographer and an artist—he was sort of a big deal in the ’70s. I’d never heard of him.
I felt a jolt the moment we were introduced. Beard had a clear-cut, electric face. Sixty-six years old, he was a dominating presence. “Tell me about you,” he said. His focus on me was startling.
When my father left to drive home to Connecticut after the party, he assumed I’d join, offering to drop me at the apartment I shared with my friend Kristina in the Village. I told him I would stay. He questioned my choice and told me to be careful. I really believed myself when I said I would. It was already too late.
Peter Beard died in April 2020, and I have been haunted by his memory since—my own memories, but also the way the world remembers him. To most, he was a charismatic, larger-than-life womanizer whose bold, subversive art offered a degree of cover for the way he lived. Obituaries classified him as a playboy, a bad-boy bon vivant. I knew him as those things, but also so much more. A biography by Graham Boynton, released last fall,
