This is how Grace Jones and Dolph Lundgren partied. “Sometimes she brought up to five women for us in the morning”

This place was completely transformed every six weeks. – The whole point of the Area was the Area’s impermanence – 10 years ago club co-owner Eric Goode. Sometimes elements of film sets appeared in the club, there was always a leitmotif. Those who managed to get to the club had to dress in reference to the slogans such as: “Food”, “Fashion” or “Faith”. One of the photos by Volker Hinz shows Dolph Lundgren bare-chested and Grace Jones during an “Incarceration” event.

Sometimes Grace Jones brought in as many as five women

In the 1970s, Grace Jones was associated with the French artist Jean-Paul Goude, with whom she has a son, Paulo. In 1983, however, the artist became involved with Lundgren, whom she spotted in a nightclub. First he was supposed to be her bodyguard, then he became her lover. They were together in 1983-86. They also co-starred in A View to a Kill with Roger Moore as James Bond. It was she who persuaded the scholarship holder of the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to take part in the audition. As he recalled in one of the interviews, dad was not happy that he would become a starving actor, but a month later he was already involved in the fourth part of “Rocky”.

Speaking to the Irish Times, Lundgren recalls that he often partied with Jones, although he was also “on the other side” – he used to work as a bouncer. When she went out alone, she often brought up to five women in the morning, which the Swede described as “exhausting”. “I’m glad I was part of that scene. It was just before AIDS and the club scene was hardcore. My girlfriend Grace was a huge gay icon, so we went to a lot of clubs. We knew Andy [Warhola – red.] and all the designers, plus Michael Jackson and David Bowie. It was a bit simpler back then, he recalled. “Many of the people I met then are no longer alive. You know, AIDS or drugs or a combination of both. It’s a bittersweet look back. Even with Andy. At the time, I thought he was an old man, but he died in his fifties – said the 61-year-old actor in 2018.

“We broke the door between the men’s and women’s restrooms and just walked out”

Frequent guests of the Area club were also, for example, Andy Warhol, Madonna, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Bianka Jagger and Sting. It was here that the first co-ed restroom in New York City was created. “At one point we broke the door between the men’s and women’s restrooms and just walked out,” the club’s art director, Serge Becker, told the New York Times. There was an eternal party in the club, but there was also a creative ferment. Many people mention that Warhol and Basquiat were still creating something even in their spare time. Vernissages were also held here. One day, for example, a living painting “The Birth of Venus” by Botticelli was created (you can see the installation in the photo in the gallery). Here you could admire Warhol’s “Invisible Sculpture”.

– The criterion for entry was not wealth. If you came in a limousine, it was a disadvantage,” Goode recalled in an interview with The New York Times. Large-format, dynamic and bold Hinza shots showing what was happening in the Area club will be shown at the International Festival of Photography in Łódź, which will be held for the 22nd time on June 15-25 in post-industrial spaces throughout the city (programme ).

This is where Grace Jones can be seen posing with a stuffed lion on her birthday at a Natural History event. Stuffed bears, live lizards, a tank with live sharks or … enemas appeared in the club. You could drink water from a “living fountain”, a painted naked man who held a tube so that it looked as if the liquid was peeing, and at other times you could eat straight from the naked body of the artist Magdalen Pierrako, when the leitmotif was Fellini.

It was expensive to run such a club, and there was competition. Times have also changed, and although only four years have passed since the opening, the Area was closed in 1987.