The American Society of Magazine Editors recently announced the top 40 magazine covers of the past 40 years. Coming in at number 24 was an Interview cover designed by former Hotel Chelsea resident Richard Bernstein. Richard died at the Chelsea on October 18, 2002.
These links take you to more of Richard's work.
Warhol's favorite covers
The Kennedy Memorial
Cabaret in the Sky
Below is an excerpt from the November 4, 2002 issue of The New York Observer.
Richard Bernstein, 1939-2002
BYLINE: Frank DiGiacomo
"Quiet please," reads a black sticker on the tall red door to the ground-floor apartment that artist Richard Bernstein kept at the Chelsea Hotel. And for almost two weeks, this city seemed all too willing to oblige.
On Oct. 18, Bernstein's body was found on the other side of that door, in his high-ceilinged studio apartment that once was part of the Chelsea's grand ballroom. Bernstein, whose 63rd birthday would have fallen on Halloween, had been suffering from AIDS and an ailing heart and, according to friends, a note found in his apartment that said simply "Do not resuscitate" left some with the suspicion that he had taken his own life.
Eleven days later, after Bernstein's body had been claimed by his family and buried at Mount Ararat Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, those who had worked and played with the Bronx-born, Long Island-raised artist were still learning of his death, and his passing had yet to be noted by the paper of record, The New York Times.
The quiet of Bernstein's death was ironic in light of the fact that his artwork had amplified the celebrity of so many. For 15 years, beginning in 1972, Bernstein's signature artwork graced the monthly covers of Interview magazine, that seminal celebrity chronicle of the social, fashion and art crowd that had met in Andy Warhol's Factory and the back room of Max's Kansas City in the 60's and catalyzed in the sybaritic heat of Studio 54 in the late 70's.
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