Artist Jamie Wyeth's glimpse of Truman Capote at New York restaurant is tied to 'Feud'
When celebrity writer Truman Capote blabbed the humiliating secrets of a glamorous group of high-society women known as "the swans" in a vicious and thinly cloaked fictional 1975 magazine story, the literary darling's act of betrayal turned him into an ostracized outcast.
The scandal and the exacting revenge from the less-than-amused ladies who lunch, featured in Capote's "Esquire" story "La C?te Basque 1965", are reexamined in "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans," a limited, eight-episode series that will premiere on FX and Hulu on Jan. 31.
But, if you visited the Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, about 10 years ago, you already saw artist Jamie Wyeth's glimpse into the catty, gossipy world of Capote and one of his "swans," who were considered the "Real Housewives" of their time.
Wyeth's fascinating La C?te Basque diorama, which he created in 2013 — consider it a dollhouse for pop-culture-loving adults — depicts Capote dining at a corner table at the famed New York restaurant with his longtime friend and "swan" Joanne Carson, the former wife of talk show host Johnny Carson.
Across the restaurant's dining room, in Wyeth's piece, sits a miniature version of the very regal ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who is eating oysters, tiny oysters, while wearing a bright red scarf and what looks to be an ushanka, or furry Russian hat.
The mixed-media assemblage of painting and sculpture that the artist calls a "tableaux vivant," and another diorama depicting Andy Warhol's "The Factory Dining Room," were unveiled to the public for the first time in Boston and then at the Chadds Ford Museum during a 2015 retrospective exhibition of Wyeth's work.
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"Feud: Capote vs. The Swans" has an all-star cast of "swans" with Molly Ringwald playing Joanne Carson, Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, Chlo? Sevigny as C.Z. Guest, Demi Moore as Ann Woodward, Diane Lane as Nancy "Slim" Keith and Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill. Actor Tom Hollander from films like "Gosford Park" and "Pride & Prejudice" and HBO's "The White Lotus" stars as Capote.
The series is produced by Ryan Murphy, known for such programs as "Glee," "American Horror Story," and 2017's "Feud: Bette and Joan," which centered on the famous fights between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
For this second "Feud" installment, Murphy examines Capote, who earned his way into the inner circle of New York's upper echelon with the success of his true-crime novel "In Cold Blood." He sealed the deal on Nov. 28, 1966, when he hosted what some called "the most celebrated party of modern times," the Black and White masked ball.
The party at New York's Plaza Hotel was thrown for Washington Post owner Katharine Graham and the guest list "read like an international list for the guillotine," according to author Gerald Clarke in "Capote, a Biography."
"He wanted to see every notable in the world, people of importance from every walk of life, absolutely dying to attend a party given by a funny-looking, strange little man — himself," Clarke wrote.
While Capote became the confidante of the wives of wealthy men, his career had stalled due to writer's block. A growing drug and alcohol addiction didn't help.
The first episode of the new "Feud" series centers on Capote's infamous short story published in Esquire in November 1975 titled "La C?te Basque, 1965." It is taken from his unpublished, unfinished novel "Answered Prayers."
The piece focused on a gossipy, fictional lunch in the real-life posh Manhattan restaurant La C?te Basque once known as a temple of French cuisine for New York's high society. It closed permanently in 2004.
"People go to La C?te Basque because they know that if they want to make an entrance, attention will be paid," Ruth Reichl, the former New York Times restaurant critic, wrote in a 1995 review. "If Edith Wharton were around, she would want to dine in this elegant setting filled with well-dressed people."
Capote used secrets he had been privy to while hobnobbing with the "swans" and the Esquire story was so shocking, that New York magazine wrote a follow-up piece with a cartoon of a poodle bearing its teeth and the headline "Capote Bites The Hands That Fed Him."
Wyeth, 77, has said he recreated the dining room of La C?te Basque as a reminder of his experiences in New York in the 1970s. The Wilmington-born Wyeth spent time with pop artist Andy Warhol at Warhol’s Factory and painted portraits of Warhol, sometimes with his beloved pet Dachshund, Archie.
Warhol also created portraits of Wyeth. Warhol once joked: “I think it’s because Jamie looks like a soup can.”
The two artists exhibited together in the summer of 1976, including at the Brandywine Museum, and Warhol mentioned visits to Wyeth's home near Chadds Ford in his diaries. Wyeth appeared in Ryan Murphy's six-episode Netflix docuseries "The Andy Warhol Diaries."
Warhol was acquainted with Capote so, it's quite possible, that the writer and Wyeth might have crossed paths.
While the Wyeth family, including Jamie's father Andrew and grandfather N.C., is known as a dynasty in the revival of realism in American art, Jamie is the first of the three Wyeth men to venture into sculpture, art conservator Joyce Hill Stoner told Delaware Online/The News Journal in 2015.
Elliot Bostwick Davis, who was curator of Jamie Wyeth's 2015 retrospective, told Delaware Online/The News Journal that when she heard about Wyeth's tableaux, she asked if they could be part of the exhibition. Wyeth said no, according to Davis, because he built them so he could paint and draw from them, not to exhibit them.
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But Davis told Delaware Online/The News Journal that she insisted the miniature versions of the La C?te Basque restaurant and "Warhol's The Factory Dining Room" be in the show. The pieces show a side of Wyeth's artistry some might not be familiar with and introduce yet another dimension of his creative process.
The two miniature compositions –– painted and sculpted at one-sixth to life scale — connect Wyeth’s vision to a long tradition of surrealist and realist assemblage.
The La C?te Basque diorama also features ballet star Nureyev, a frequent Wyeth subject, who performed at The Playhouse Theatre in Wilmington in a 1989 production of "The King and I."
Wyeth's attention to detail from the table settings to the chandeliers is amazing, though some have viewed the scene as an almost bizarro-world. According to the blog Art F City, Wyeth's La C?te Basque, features "a Dr. Frankenstein version of Truman Capote, with little black sunglasses stuck on his pasty globular face."
The Wyeth family has a long history of interest in miniatures. Andrew Wyeth had a castle that has been on display at the Brandywine River Museum during the holidays, complete with toy soldiers.
Jamie's aunt Ann Wyeth McCoy also is known for an extensive dollhouse. She decorated the rooms and furnished them with doll-sized furniture, rugs and other accessories. Most of the furniture was hand-crafted by her husband and by Nathaniel Wyeth, Ann's older brother, although many members of the extended Wyeth family contributed special pieces to the house.
Jamie Wyeth's dioramas are in his personal collection and are not in Jamie Wyeth: Unsettled, a new exhibition that opens March 17 at the Brandywine Museum of Art and runs through June 9. The Capote/Basque diorama is not on view anywhere to the museum's knowledge, however, one of Wyeth's tableaux vivants, called "Butcher Shop," will be part of the Unsettled exhibition. (It has nothing having to do with the Capote ones.).
According to the museum, the new exhibition traces a persistent vein of intriguing, often disconcerting imagery over the career of the renowned artist.
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"Wyeth is at home with uneasy subjects and a master of the unsettled mood," according to the museum.
Some might say the mercurial Truman Capote certainly fits that description.
Contact Patricia Talorico at [email protected] or 302-324-2861 and follow her on X (Twitter) @pattytalorico Sign up for her Delaware Eats newsletter.
More on the Wyeths
Abstract Wyeth: Near Wilmington, a trove of never-seen, abstract Andrew Wyeth paintings are 'a revelation'
Tale of three Wyeths: An exhibit highlighting three generations of Wyeths debuts in Delaware at Biggs
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Wyeth depicts meal with Truman Capote & a 'swan,' inspiration for Feud
