A Lens on the Glitterati: Jim Hedges on the Photography of Jean Pigozzi and Andy Warhol

When the art collector and curator Jim Hedges was growing up in
the South, New York was a “bright shining star” to which
Interview Magazine was his “gateway drug.” 


“You know, as a 12 year old little boy in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
dreaming about the big city and Studio 54 and the New York City
art world…Warhol and his cult of personality, his cult of
celebrity, the landscape that he was a part of, were all very,
very enticing to me,” Hedges tells host Lyn Winter on Episode 2
of the latest season of Rodeo Drive - The Podcast.


Now Hedges is the owner of one of the largest collections of Andy
Warhol photographs in the world, and he is the new Curator of the
Arts for the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air, where his
show Jean Pigozzi - The Photographs: Beverly Hills to Cap
d’Antibes, is currently on display until May 31, 2023.


Hedges reflects on how a career in investment banking turned into
pursuit of another hot commodity: art, especially Warhol’s
photography: “For Warhol, it was really the source material for
99% of all the artwork that he ever made. In other words, he
would take a picture of Marilyn Monroe… and use that as source
material to make the painting… And then I found that this work
was actually rather undervalued… and I started to think of it as
an investment and ultimately a business.”


From Warhol he turned his attention to Jean Pigozzi, another
photographer with, “incredible access to celebrity and the movers
and shakers. And they both documented these worlds in a very
compelling and sort of singular voice.”


Now some of Pigozzi’s seductive images, taken in hotspots from
Beverly Hills to Cap D’Antibes, are on display, some for the
first time, at the Beverly Hills Hotel: a nighttime shot of
Muhammad Ali framed perfectly in the window of a limousine; Yves
Saint Laurent and his muse Loulou de La Falaise in Paris; Mick
Jagger with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the South of France.


Not only are the images stunningly glamorous, but so is the
classic Hollywood hotel setting, says Hedges. “The experience of
going to a white cube kind of art gallery that is austere and
unwelcoming is not as great as sitting in the lobby of the
Beverly Hills Hotel and looking at Johnny Pigozzi’s photos or
walking through the gardens of the Hotel Bel-Air…That's a better
way to experience art.”


Season Four of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the
Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of The Hayman Family,
Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, and the Beverly Hills
Conference & Visitors Bureau.


Season Four Credits:


Executive Producer and Host: Lyn Winter


On behalf of the Rodeo Drive Committee: Kathy Gohari


Scriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances Anderton


Editor and Videographer: Hans Fjellestad


Theme music by Brian Banks


Production Assistant: Isabelle Alfonso


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