“I’m 15 months away from being 100, so listen carefully,” said Joan Kron, now 98 years young. “Apparently you’re all here because you’ve heard about my latest book, ‘The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art: A Memoir of the 1960s’ which Suzy Slesin forced me to write. So far as I’m concerned, it’s the book of the year.”
Over 100 friends and admirers came to see Joan, crowding into the art-filled triplex of LaVon Kellner in New York City on Friday, October 9. The event was hosted by her son, Daniel Kron, and stepson, Jonathan Marder, as well as Pointed Leaf Press publisher Suzanne Slesin.
Kron returned to her native New York for the opening of the Whitney Museum’s Roy Lichtenstein exhibition, which features “Super Sunset,” a billboard she commissioned from the artist in 1967.
In the 1960s, Joan Kron and Audrey Sabol made history, collaborating with an emerging group of artists — Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, George Segal, Jean Tinguely, and Andy Warhol, to name a few. In 1962, Kron and Sabol presented the first group show of Pop Art on the East Coast. They also went into business, producing multiples with Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, and Marisol Escobar. Sabol and Kron’s swan song was the Museum of Merchandise; it had a storefront by an unknown named Christo and a trouble-making product for sale by rising star Andy Warhol.
Joan Kron was born and raised in New York City. She graduated from the Yale School of Drama with a degree in costume design before moving to Philadelphia. As a founding member and head of the YM/YWHA Arts Council, she co-produced several Pop Art exhibitions. In her 40s, she wrote for Philadelphia magazine, New York Magazine, and The New York Times, later joining The Wall Street Journal, where she initiated the fashion beat.
She served as editor-in-chief of Avenue magazine before joining Condé Nast’s Allure, where she created the plastic-surgery beat. She went on to produce and direct the prize-winning documentary film “Take My Nose Please! Comediennes and Plastic Surgery.” She is the author of books including “High-Tech: the Industrial Style and Source Book for the Home,” with Suzanne Slesin and “Home-Psych: The Social Psychology of Home and Decoration.” Currently she lives in Miami and is at work on her second film, “Weapon of Beauty: The Cloak and Dagger History of Botox.”
At her book party Joan’s friends included Teri Agins and J. Paul Hands, Steven M.L. Aronson, Jeffrey Banks, Bina and Walter Bernard, Myrna Blyth, Michele Oka and Fred Doner, RoseLee Goldberg and Dakota Jackson, Andrew Hawkins, Phoebe Hoban, Jackie Hoffman, Michele Gerber Klein and Leigh Seippel, W. Wilder Knight II, Helen Little, Fern Mallis, Gillian McCain and Jim Marshall, Liane Pei, Virginia and Steve Postrel, Pascale Richard, Jeff Roth, Susan Roy, Dan Shaw, Barbara Tober, Désirée von la Valette, and Saundra Whitney.
“The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art,” published by Pointed Leaf Press, can be pre-ordered here.
