John McWhinnie

Portrait by Terry Richardson

interview by BIL POWERS 
portrait by TERRY RICHARDSON 

 

In the last three years alone this tiny imprint has produced artist books by Richard Prince, Matthew Barney, Terry Richardson, Elizabeth Peyton, and Christopher Wool, and a book of Adam McEwen’s text messages is on its way now. John McWhinnie’s headquarters, located across the way from the Plaza Athénée on 64^th Street, features a neatly cluttered front office that visitors must enter through a fake bookcase in the parlor-floor library of the Brownstone at number 50-and-a-half. It’s all very Charlie Kaufman-esque. Though McWhinnie’s client list is highly confidential, it is known to include people like Marc Jacobs, Ronald Lauder, Bruce Weber, and Peter Brant. The firm has handled the sales of the libraries of Norman Mailer and Cormac McCarthy, among illustrious others, and has essentially created a system whereby…