By Invitation Only
In a city that loves its parties, there’s perhaps none so aesthetically significant as Two x Two for AIDS and Art, Dallas’s most cutting-edge fundraiser—and one hell of a good time.
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Such a feat wasn’t always a given. When the Rachofskys began hosting Two x Two, in 1999, it seemed like a quixotic effort, persuading Dallas society to show up and buy mostly head-scratching art. But Howard and Cindy knew how to throw a party. They brought in celebrities to emcee or perform each year—Sharon Stone, Liza Minnelli, Patti LaBelle, and Dita Von Teese, to name a few—and honored high-profile artists such as Julian Schnabel and Robert Rauschenberg. Before long, stories about the glamorous shindig, and the money being spent at the auction, were the talk of Dallas. Take the 2011 affair: After one of his geometric pieces sold for a staggering $1 million, Los Angeles artist Mark Grotjahn celebrated by drinking way too much Dom Pérignon. He stumbled out of the house, shouting uproariously before collapsing into some greenery next to a parked Rolls-Royce. Alan Peppard, the Dallas Morning News society columnist, pulled out his phone, snapped a shot of the passed-out Grotjahn, and published it on his blog. Almost immediately, Peppard began receiving calls from people asking how they could get into next year’s party.
Those lucky enough to get tickets to 2012’s Two x Two began pulling up to the Rachofskys’ just as the sun was setting. As millionaires and gallery owners, socialites and artists walked up the fake-petal carpet, waiters dressed all in black passed out flutes of Dom and photographers snapped pictures. Young assistants handed out catalogs of the art for sale, which was on display on every wall and table in the house. Guests perused the pieces murmuring phrases such as “stunning” and “timeless” and “that’s really, really interesting.” Deedie Rose scampered about like a frisky teenager, checking on several works she wanted to buy. The silver-haired car dealer John Eagle pondered a sculpture by Dutch artist Mark Manders, Unfired Clay Head. Several women lingered over a display of ten crocodile-skin tote bags that had been painted by ten different artists.
When they weren’t admiring the art, the Two x Two patrons admired one another. To prepare for her first visit, Karla Black, a sculptor from Scotland, had watched reality television shows shot in Dallas, including Most Eligible Dallas and Donna Decorates Dallas. “I thought I’d see more big hair and really red lipstick,” she said in a slightly bewildered voice. “Everyone here is so . . . beautiful.” More than a few men introduced themselves to Maxwell Anderson, the new head of the Dallas Museum of Art, not to say hello to him so much as to ogle his wife, Jacqueline, who was wearing a heroically stretchy silver lamé gown with a Ferragamo fur shrug that, in the words of one observer, did “not come close, thank God, to hiding her cleavage.”
Others wanted to meet Amy Phelan, a curvy former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader who, after leaving the sidelines in the early nineties, had married an investment fund manager, moved to New York, and become a serious art collector. (The Rachofskys named her the event chair of the gala.) She stood in the foyer next to Phillips’s gigantic painting of Lohan, listening intently as Phillips, who looks like a tall version of the actor Hugh Grant, spent five minutes comparing Lohan’s face to that of Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann in an Ingmar Bergman film. “Fantastic,” exclaimed Phelan. “Who would have thought of that?” When someone asked why Phillips had named his painting Lindsay V, he nodded solemnly and replied, “Because I’ve done four paintings of Lindsay already.”
The art was selling fast. Covering one wall was South African photographer Robin Rhode’s series of 21 photographs, hung upside down, of a man playing pool in a run-down pool hall. On a bid sheet, someone had written down $78,000 for them. Someone else had bid $25,000 on a small sculpture by Matt Johnson of a woman bathing in half a watermelon. The woman, oddly, was the same pinkish color as the watermelon flesh. “We could have sold three of those,” said Howard with a shrug. The Lee Ufan drawing of squiggly lines? Someone had bid $34,000 for it. Da Cunha’s green bottle in the concrete block had drawn $8,500. The only thing that had no bid was Kyack’s plastic chair holding the jar with urine-colored liquid. “It’s still early,” said Howard.
Up on the second floor, Suzanne Droese, who runs a PR business, and Blake Stephenson, the publisher of the Dallas edition of Modern Luxury, spent a few minutes discussing the unique challenges of their new hobby as contemporary-art collectors. “My housekeeper mistakenly plucked off a wire hanging from a small mixed-media piece that we bought at another art auction,” said Droese. “Almost ruined the whole thing.”
“We had to place a Lucite case over a sculpture that we bought here last year because our dog did nothing but lick it all day long,” sighed Stephenson.
Soon Houston philanthropist and socialite Becca Cason Thrash arrived, wearing Givenchy and three nearly identical cocktail rings on her right hand—one from an ex-husband, another from an ex-boyfriend, and the third from her present husband. (“I wanted all three of them to feel included!” she declared.) Although Thrash travels the world going to parties, she almost never comes to Dallas except to attend Two x Two. “There’s just no event like this anywhere else,” she said, turning to air-kiss Cerón, the celebrity hairstylist, and his boyfriend, party planner Todd Fiscus. (It is Fiscus who has organized the Two x Two gala for the past twelve years.) “Todd! Cerón! Onward to the tent, you beautiful men!”
Inside the tent, more Dom was poured. As waiters served the food with military precision, actor and singer Alan Cumming, the evening’s performer, took the stage to sing a few bawdy songs he had written, one about the excesses of plastic surgery (“Don’t go to the plastic surgeon anymore. He won’t tell you you look like Zsa Zsa Gabor”). The guests roared with laughter, except for maybe those with face-lifts, who strained to crack a smile. During a break before the auction, everyone flooded the patio outside, where guests air-kissed and gossiped some more as waiters passed around fresh beignets. Heading back to the tent, Cindy was walking by Jacqueline Anderson and socialite Ana Pettus when, suddenly, her heel caught on an acorn. The blond-haired hostess fell back, her ostrich-feather skirt pitching forward. A few men from Neiman Marcus gasped. Women turned politely away. Luckily, Cindy fell into New York actor John Benjamin Hickey, who quickly caught her around the waist. “My boyfriend!” Cindy screamed with a laugh.
“That would not have been good!” Pettus called out to Cindy, as the latter preened her feathers. “You’ve got a lot of work left to do.” Then Pettus slapped Anderson’s yoga-toned behind, cracking the awkward silence with a loud thwack. “Let’s get some art, girl.”
They went back into the tent, where Sotheby’s auctioneer Jamie Niven took the stage to sell the top works of art. The bidding was fast and furious. Hands went up as Niven discussed the significance of Schutz’s woman taking off her bra. Several people—some from out of town, others from Dallas who wanted to remain anonymous—called in their bids over the phone. It was a phone bidder from Philadelphia who won the Schutz piece, for $120,000. A painting by Michaël Borremans of a woman contemplating an egg in her hand went for $180,000. Manders’s head sculpture went for $95,000. The most intense bidding was over a specialty item: a first-class trip to Paris for a photo session with Karl Lagerfeld at his studio. It sold for $125,000 to an older woman who was later overheard explaining that she’d be giving the trip to her daughter as a birthday present.
The opening bid for the Lohan painting, the prized work of the evening, was $200,000, but it quickly became apparent that there weren’t many people ready to commit to having the face of a self-destructive B-movie actress on their wall. A Dallas man calling in by phone—he was at a wedding in another part of the city and had stepped away for a few minutes to listen in on the auction—got the painting for $300,000. Still, one woman in the tent was convinced the man had landed the deal of a lifetime. “If Lindsay Lohan dies anytime soon—car wreck or drug overdose or something—she’s going to be the next Marilyn Monroe, and that painting is going to be worth a ton of money,” she announced to her tablemates.
“Hear, hear!” replied someone at the table. “To Lindsay’s potential demise!”
By the end of the evening, proceeds from the night topped $4.6 million, the second-highest revenue ever for Two x Two (over the years the party has raised more than $40 million). Just about every piece of art had sold except for a few stray items, including, yes, Kyack’s plastic chair and urine jar. “Oh well, you never know,” said Howard. “But I bet no one will ever forget that piece. I always like to stick in something that gives people a little jolt.”
Two x Two’s guests sipped their last drinks and began their goodbyes. As people trickled toward the valet, Phelan, Pettus, and Thrash discussed where to go next. “Oh, the night isn’t over,” Phelan informed her compatriots. “This was just the pre-party.”
Right then, an acorn hit Pettus’s head and rolled off her shiny ponytail. Phelan smiled. “No, the night is not over.” 
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