Told she'd be ‘done by 30', at 71, Christie Brinkley is still going strong
How different might the histories of fashion photography and pop music – never mind Billy Joel's love life – have been if Bianca the dog had not been unwell in the spring of 1974? Bianca belonged to a 20-year-old American woman who had moved to Paris to get over a cheating boyfriend. When the puppy fell ill, the woman left her apartment to phone the vet. She was looking down at Bianca, who was curled up in her bag, and accidentally walked into a tall man wearing a faded green US Army jacket. He had a camera hanging around his neck. He told her he was a photographer who had a client looking for a California girl for a modelling job.
'If you're not a model, you should be,' the man said. 'You could earn a lot of money.'
He asked the woman her name. She told him it was Christie Brinkley.
Fast-forward to today and Brinkley is beaming in from the kitchen in her Hamptons home. In the days leading up to the interview, it was made clear that she would not be turning on her camera during our Zoom call. This made me annoyed with her before we had even started talking, but apparently there had been some misunderstanding because her camera is very much on.
In conversation, Brinkley is, and I cannot stress this enough, a total hoot: funny, unaffected, open and a joy to spend 90 minutes with. We are talking about the publication of her memoir. Somewhat inevitably, it is titled Uptown Girl because if there is anything Christie Brinkley is known for, it is the song her former husband Billy Joel wrote about her and the video in which she makes a small but unforgettable appearance.
'I love the song,' she says. 'I think it's so fun that I get to have a theme song.' It's great, but there is so much more to Brinkley than being a muse. She became the world's first supermodel before the word even existed, appearing on more than 500 magazine covers, and is the only person to appear on three consecutive Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue covers. She had a record 25-year contract with the cosmetics brand CoverGirl – one of the longest modelling contracts in history. She is also a hugely successful businesswoman. As well as her fashion line, TWRHLL, she has an organic wine label called Bellissima.
'I have always wanted to try to do as many things as possible,' she says, 'have all these different experiences and fill up my life with adventures.' It's been an extraordinary journey but, alongside the private jets and exotic locations, there has been heartbreak and pain, stretching all the way back to her childhood.
Brinkley was born in Monroe, Michigan, on February 2, 1954, but moved to Los Angeles when she was a young girl. Her biological father, Herbert Hudson, was, she recalls, 'unhappy, unkind and often cruel'. Hudson, who worked as a milkman, subjected his young daughter to regular whippings with his belt.
Her parents divorced when she was eight and her mother married the TV writer Donald Brinkley. 'My mum just wanted to pretend that whole part of our life didn't exist,' she says. 'We never talked about it.'
Even though she was living in Malibu, Brinkley fell in love with all things French. Her parents sent her to the elite private school Le Lycée Français de Los Angeles and at 18 she moved to Paris to study art. She remembers seeing Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir having dinner in Montparnasse, and she fell in love with Jean-François Allaux, who would soon become the first of her four husbands. When Allaux was drafted into the French military she got herself a dog for company – the same Bianca who would go on to change her life.
After being discovered, Brinkley's life turned into a 'succession of go-sees, shoots, commercials and covers'. She and Allaux moved to New York where she would run into John Lennon and Yoko Ono holding hands in their neighbourhood. 'I made the cover of 11 magazines all published about the same time,' she remembers, 'my face was splashed across the front of Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Vogue France, Vogue Patterns, Italian and American Harper's Bazaar and several different issues of Glamour.'
Alongside the modelling came other opportunities. She missed out on a role in the film Raging Bull but ended up having a side career as a boxing photographer. 'One day I was sitting in the Plaza Hotel's Edwardian Room, which looks over 59th Street and Central Park,' she says. 'I saw Muhammad Ali crossing the street. I shot up from the table and ran through the dining room, through the lobby, to the steps. I said, 'Muhammad Ali, I love you,' and he said, 'Christie Brinkley, I love you, too.' ' Brinkley asked him for ringside tickets for his upcoming fight with Larry Holmes so she could take photographs. She would later cover other boxing fights and her work was published in The Ring and Sports Illustrated magazines.
With Brinkley's career having gone stratospheric – Harper's Bazaar named her one of the most beautiful women in the world – her marriage to Allaux came under strain. 'The more successful I became, the more I understood what I was missing by speeding home to keep him company.' I feel somewhat sorry for Allaux, not least because he seemed pretty much the only person Christie dated or married who did not cheat on her. 'Unfortunately, I think models do attract some of the wrong types,' she says. They divorced in 1981.
Brinkley started seeing the racing driver and French champagne heir Olivier Chandon de Brailles, but she ended the relationship after he admitted cheating on her. She flew to St. Barts to get over the break-up (Chandon would later die in a car crash) and that was where she met Billy Joel. He won her over by accompanying her in a hotel bar as she sang The Girl from Ipanema. (After she had sung, another young guest approached Joel and announced she could also sing. 'I know Billy was thinking, 'Go away, kid. I'm trying to work my magic here,' but he started playing what she wanted him to, which was Respect by Aretha Franklin.' The moment she started singing, the bar fell silent, stunned by her voice. That 19-year-old woman was Whitney Houston. One month later, she would sign a worldwide record deal.)
Joel and Brinkley soon started dating when they both returned to New York. It was pretty obvious what he saw in her, I say, but what did she see in him? 'First and foremost, he was so funny,' she says. 'He made me laugh so hard and it was mixed with this real sweetness, like a vulnerability. He was a very old-fashioned kind of guy – very old school, very New York, which is so different from California.'
The couple were at Joel's home on Long Island when he told her about a song he had been working on. 'He suddenly said, 'I just realised something. You're who I've been writing about,' ' she recalls. 'He said he was writing this song about a fantasy girl. He had called it Uptown Girl and then had stopped working on it because it wasn't going anywhere. He said, 'I'm looking at you and I realise there you are – you're my uptown girl.' ' Joel went away to complete the song and Brinkley was with him in the studio when it was recorded.
Joel and Brinkley married in March 1985 and their daughter, Alexa Ray, was born that December, but the marriage became strained after Joel started drinking heavily. In her book, Brinkley describes one incident where Joel, under the influence, picks up a chaise longue and throws it through the doors of her parents' patio, shattering the glass. 'His drinking was bigger than the both of us – booze was the other woman and it was beginning to seem that he preferred to be with 'her' rather than with me.'
Brinkley divorced Joel in 1994 but they are now friends again. ('How close we can be depends on who he's married to,' she says.) Then followed two disastrous marriages. She met Richard Taubman while on a trip to Telluride in Colorado in early 1994. They married after they were both in a helicopter crash in the Colorado mountains. In their divorce proceedings just a year later, Brinkley sued him for $US2 million she said he owed her, while he fought for joint custody of their son, Jack.
'I'm not sure what led me into such a whirlwind relationship. A psychologist later diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder, which often causes people to make impulsive, irrational decisions.' But Taubman was a positive catch compared with husband number four, an architect named Peter Cook. They married in autumn 1996 and had a daughter, Sailor, but the marriage unravelled when it emerged that Cook had been having an affair with a teenager he met in a toyshop. 'How did I not see all this? How did I not know?' she says.
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It was later revealed that Cook had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars visiting internet pornography sites. He had also shared explicit videos and images of himself on the internet while searching for more girls. 'How did I ever get involved with this person?' Brinkley says. 'You really feel stupid and then you try to learn from it, so you're not quite as stupid next time.'
Brinkley turned 71 this year. 'When I started out, 30 was a number to fear,' she says. 'They said to me, 'You'll be chewed up and spat out by the time you're 30. It will all be over.'' They were, needless to say, completely wrong.
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Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
These daring artists shocked the world. A new show reveals why
When Annie Leibovitz shot a naked, heavily pregnant Demi Moore for the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, it caused an uproar. Some retailers in the United States, including supermarket chains Giant and Safeway, refused to stock the magazine, while others wrapped it in brown paper. 'We are a family-oriented business,' huffed a spokesperson for Giant in the Washington Post at the time. 'Very young children go to the magazine section while waiting for their parents to finish shopping. We did what we thought was right.' Supporters, though, saw the image as a refreshingly empowering depiction of pregnancy; the magazine's sales and subscriptions rose in the aftermath. Remarkably, more than 50 years earlier, Australian photographer Max Dupain had taken a similarly provocative photograph in Sydney. His 1939 Birth of Venus features the silhouette of a naked pregnant woman flanked by two sculptures, all reminiscent of Botticelli's Venus. It's a stunning image, says Emmanuelle de l'Ecotais, co-curator of Man Ray and Max Dupain, a new show at Heide Museum of Modern Art that, for the first time, pairs the pioneering photographers who worked on opposite sides of the world. The show includes more than 200 photographs, many of which are vintage prints. They speak to each artist's willingness to reject tradition, convention and expectation, while celebrating beauty and the female body. De l'Ecotais says the pairing – the brainchild of Heide's artistic director Lesley Harding – is inspired. Twenty years older than Dupain, the American photographer shared a fascination for depicting beauty, the body and pleasure. 'There's something about beauty and the beauty of women, and the body, that is an ongoing thing for Man Ray,' she says. Dupain, she adds, shared this fascination; the exhibition 'is all about beauty and pleasure'. Both artists were also deliberately provocative, de l'Ecotais says. 'For me, it's really obvious that they are looking to push the limits all the time. Being controversial is really important.' Another Dupain image in the show – Nude 1934 – would have courted similar controversy to that of his pregnant subject, says Harding. 'She's a bride, but she's inverted, so she's a negative,' she says, adding that the photograph is mesmerising. 'The deliberate inversion of time and the way that he's doing what Man Ray liked to do, being disruptive, presenting a woman in a veil with no clothes on ...' Dupain, born in New South Wales in 1911, received his first camera at 13, and, like Man Ray, was swept up in the global movements that upended art in the early 20th century. Both adopted pioneering techniques that helped shift perceptions of photography away from mere documentary record and into the realm of art. De l'Ecotais has made a study of Man Ray's work since she was an intern specialising in photography at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In 1994, when the gallery received the work that remained in Man Ray's studio after his death in 1976 – some 12,000 negatives and 5000 prints – she was given the task of cataloguing it. Her efforts became the basis for the landmark show Man Ray: Photography Inside Out in 1998. Born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia in 1890, Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921 (his Jewish-Russian family changed their name to Ray in 1912 in response to antisemitism in the US). He arrived in Paris at a time when Surrealism and Dadaism were in full swing. His portraits include a who's who of the art world: Andre Breton, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali and Virginia Woolf. Marcel Duchamp, one of his closest friends, was an inspiration for Man Ray, who embraced 'an approach [that says] all methods and all mediums are interesting: the point is not the technique, it's what you want to say, what you want to express,' says de l'Ecotais. The same was true for Dupain, who is best known for Sunbaker, the iconic image of a swimmer fresh from the ocean, lying on the sand. Taken in 1937, it came to represent an idealised vision of the sun-bronzed Aussie, and remains Australia's most recognisable image. (Ironically, the subject is actually a Brit, Harold Salvage.) But Dupain's lesser-known early work is remarkable and pioneering, says Harding, co-curator of the current show. She says that, like Man Ray, Dupain played with technique and used innovations such as solarisation and superimposition, as well as cropping, framing and playing with angles and subject matter. 'The idea of them being contemporaries is probably not immediately apparent, but they were both at the peak of their powers in the 1930s,' says Harding. 'They both had this capacity to synthesise things, to take them back to their essential element ... [they saw] this enlightened or more inventive possibility.' Dupain's interest in Man Ray was already evident in 1935 when, aged just 24, he showed insight and maturity in his review of the book Man Ray Photographs 1920-1934 for The Home magazine. Embracing what he learnt about his Paris-based counterpart and other international photographers, the Sydneysider adapted some of their techniques and made them his own, as well as carving out his own approach. 'Man Ray appealed to me because he was radical,' Dupain later told his biographer, Helen Ennis. 'He didn't give a stuff for his contemporaries or his peers … he went ahead and did what he wanted to do.' Clearly, Dupain recognised a kindred spirit. Loading Both artists worked with women who were artists and photographers in their own right: Lee Miller worked with Man Ray in Paris and also became his lover, and Olive Cotton met Dupain at photography school and went on to work with him; the pair later married. Stunning images of and by both women are showcased in the exhibition in a section called 'Collaborators'. Another synergy was that the work of both men featured in fashion magazines, which was often how they made a living. Dupain's photographs, influenced by Hollywood and modernism, appeared in advertisements for David Jones and in several publications, particularly The Home. Man Ray worked for French Vogue from 1924, as well as for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, but started developing his reputation through images published in Harper's Bazaar. His photographs of Parisienne women were more about people than fashion, says de l'Ecotais. In the 1930s, his use of solarisation and superimposition made his name. 'It's only a few years of success but it's a big success,' she says. The pairing of their work celebrates not only the impact they had in their lifetimes, but also the legacy of their innovations. '[Both artists'] work feels incredibly fresh, it feels thoughtful and it has this energy about it,' says Harding. De l'Ecotais says the legacy of both artists is ongoing and very significant. 'When you look at these images, they are very modern and contemporary; they haven't aged at all.'
The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
These daring artists shocked the world. A new show reveals why
When Annie Leibovitz shot a naked, heavily pregnant Demi Moore for the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, it caused an uproar. Some retailers in the United States, including supermarket chains Giant and Safeway, refused to stock the magazine, while others wrapped it in brown paper. 'We are a family-oriented business,' huffed a spokesperson for Giant in the Washington Post at the time. 'Very young children go to the magazine section while waiting for their parents to finish shopping. We did what we thought was right.' Supporters, though, saw the image as a refreshingly empowering depiction of pregnancy; the magazine's sales and subscriptions rose in the aftermath. Remarkably, more than 50 years earlier, Australian photographer Max Dupain had taken a similarly provocative photograph in Sydney. His 1939 Birth of Venus features the silhouette of a naked pregnant woman flanked by two sculptures, all reminiscent of Botticelli's Venus. It's a stunning image, says Emmanuelle de l'Ecotais, co-curator of Man Ray and Max Dupain, a new show at Heide Museum of Modern Art that, for the first time, pairs the pioneering photographers who worked on opposite sides of the world. The show includes more than 200 photographs, many of which are vintage prints. They speak to each artist's willingness to reject tradition, convention and expectation, while celebrating beauty and the female body. De l'Ecotais says the pairing – the brainchild of Heide's artistic director Lesley Harding – is inspired. Twenty years older than Dupain, the American photographer shared a fascination for depicting beauty, the body and pleasure. 'There's something about beauty and the beauty of women, and the body, that is an ongoing thing for Man Ray,' she says. Dupain, she adds, shared this fascination; the exhibition 'is all about beauty and pleasure'. Both artists were also deliberately provocative, de l'Ecotais says. 'For me, it's really obvious that they are looking to push the limits all the time. Being controversial is really important.' Another Dupain image in the show – Nude 1934 – would have courted similar controversy to that of his pregnant subject, says Harding. 'She's a bride, but she's inverted, so she's a negative,' she says, adding that the photograph is mesmerising. 'The deliberate inversion of time and the way that he's doing what Man Ray liked to do, being disruptive, presenting a woman in a veil with no clothes on ...' Dupain, born in New South Wales in 1911, received his first camera at 13, and, like Man Ray, was swept up in the global movements that upended art in the early 20th century. Both adopted pioneering techniques that helped shift perceptions of photography away from mere documentary record and into the realm of art. De l'Ecotais has made a study of Man Ray's work since she was an intern specialising in photography at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In 1994, when the gallery received the work that remained in Man Ray's studio after his death in 1976 – some 12,000 negatives and 5000 prints – she was given the task of cataloguing it. Her efforts became the basis for the landmark show Man Ray: Photography Inside Out in 1998. Born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia in 1890, Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921 (his Jewish-Russian family changed their name to Ray in 1912 in response to antisemitism in the US). He arrived in Paris at a time when Surrealism and Dadaism were in full swing. His portraits include a who's who of the art world: Andre Breton, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali and Virginia Woolf. Marcel Duchamp, one of his closest friends, was an inspiration for Man Ray, who embraced 'an approach [that says] all methods and all mediums are interesting: the point is not the technique, it's what you want to say, what you want to express,' says de l'Ecotais. The same was true for Dupain, who is best known for Sunbaker, the iconic image of a swimmer fresh from the ocean, lying on the sand. Taken in 1937, it came to represent an idealised vision of the sun-bronzed Aussie, and remains Australia's most recognisable image. (Ironically, the subject is actually a Brit, Harold Salvage.) But Dupain's lesser-known early work is remarkable and pioneering, says Harding, co-curator of the current show. She says that, like Man Ray, Dupain played with technique and used innovations such as solarisation and superimposition, as well as cropping, framing and playing with angles and subject matter. 'The idea of them being contemporaries is probably not immediately apparent, but they were both at the peak of their powers in the 1930s,' says Harding. 'They both had this capacity to synthesise things, to take them back to their essential element ... [they saw] this enlightened or more inventive possibility.' Dupain's interest in Man Ray was already evident in 1935 when, aged just 24, he showed insight and maturity in his review of the book Man Ray Photographs 1920-1934 for The Home magazine. Embracing what he learnt about his Paris-based counterpart and other international photographers, the Sydneysider adapted some of their techniques and made them his own, as well as carving out his own approach. 'Man Ray appealed to me because he was radical,' Dupain later told his biographer, Helen Ennis. 'He didn't give a stuff for his contemporaries or his peers … he went ahead and did what he wanted to do.' Clearly, Dupain recognised a kindred spirit. Loading Both artists worked with women who were artists and photographers in their own right: Lee Miller worked with Man Ray in Paris and also became his lover, and Olive Cotton met Dupain at photography school and went on to work with him; the pair later married. Stunning images of and by both women are showcased in the exhibition in a section called 'Collaborators'. Another synergy was that the work of both men featured in fashion magazines, which was often how they made a living. Dupain's photographs, influenced by Hollywood and modernism, appeared in advertisements for David Jones and in several publications, particularly The Home. Man Ray worked for French Vogue from 1924, as well as for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, but started developing his reputation through images published in Harper's Bazaar. His photographs of Parisienne women were more about people than fashion, says de l'Ecotais. In the 1930s, his use of solarisation and superimposition made his name. 'It's only a few years of success but it's a big success,' she says. The pairing of their work celebrates not only the impact they had in their lifetimes, but also the legacy of their innovations. '[Both artists'] work feels incredibly fresh, it feels thoughtful and it has this energy about it,' says Harding. De l'Ecotais says the legacy of both artists is ongoing and very significant. 'When you look at these images, they are very modern and contemporary; they haven't aged at all.'
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
‘Changed the language of what art is': Huge balloon sculpture for national gallery
A playful balloon sculpture, part of an iconic series created by controversial pop artist Jeff Koons, has officially joined Jackson Pollock's Blue poles in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Balloon Venus Dolni Vestonice (Yellow) is a 2.7-metre high yellow stainless-steel sculpture that reimagines a prehistoric fertility figure as a mirror-polished balloon. It's the first of the American artist's balloon series to enter the collection of an Australian cultural institution and gallery director Nick Mitzevich says he's more than ready for a public debate over whether the sculpture qualifies as art. 'There are artists in each generation that revolutionises what art is, that challenges people,' Mitzevich said. 'Jackson Pollock re-thought what painting was. In the '60s and '70s, Andy Warhol re-thought what art could be, that everyday objects could be art. 'Louise Bourgeois revolutionised the way she made work with her gigantic amazing spiders, for example. What Jeff Koons has done from the 1980s, he has changed the language of what art is. History shows these revolutionaries become the middle ground and the reference points for each generation and I believe that of Jeff Koons.' Koons melds pop art, conceptual art and minimalism, employing modern materials and highly polished surfaces to riff on everything from household appliances such as the vacuum cleaner to inflatable animals. He is best known in Australia as the creator of Puppy, a 12-metre-high terrier made from 60,000 flowering plants and 55,000 tonnes of soil which was installed in the forecourt of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
