Green Plastic Tie with Shamrock

Andy Warhol gave Ellen Johnson this plastic tie at a dinner party in New York, several days before St. Patrick’s Day, 1963. As Johnson recalls in her memoir, “After the opening of that second major Pop artist show [‘Six Painters and the Object’ at the Guggenheim Museum]..., Leo Castelli invited me to a supper party at I forget which good restaurant. I sat between Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol and had a lovely time. Andy gave me the green plastic tie he was wearing for an early St. Patrick’s Day, and at some time during the meal he and Jasper were talking about a bet, I think it was. Anyway, for some reason or other, Andy tore up a one or five dollar bill and Ethel Scull [a famed collector of contemporary art], who was sitting across the table, gasped, ‘But, Andy, it’s money!’”