Joe Eula Decorative Art

From the 1950s to the 80s, Joe Eula cut quite a figure on the New York scene as a graphic, costume, fashion, stage-set, and film-set designer, as well as a stylist, party giver, and, briefly, a model agency macher. In addition, he was an artist. You could say that Eula was the art director extempore of Manhattan. And if you’ve never heard of Eula (or hadn’t before David Pittu played him in the recent Netflix Halston series), it’s because he was famous as an eminence grise, to employ a contradiction in terms. That’s why Andy Warhol called him, in typical Warholian hyperbole, “the most important man in New York.” Eula came from a hardscrabble background in South Norwalk, Connecticut. After serving in World War II, he took classes on the GI Bill at the Art Students League, and formed a partnership with photographer Milton Greene to produce features for Life and Look magazines, and a couple of films, with Greene behind the camera, and Eula painting backdrops and styling. On his own, Eula illustrated Eugenia Sheppard’s famous newspaper fashion column, did illustration work for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, designed ballet costumes and sets for Jerome Robbins, an album cover for Miles Davis, and a benefit invitation for Cesar...