Andy Warhol and Fred's business relationship

Andy Warhol and Fred Hughes’s business relationship combined practical reliance with growing irritation over Fred’s time away. Warhol expected Fred to stay in New York and attend to business; his repeated complaints about Fred’s European trips reveal the strain that absence placed on that expectation, even as the two continued to weigh major business decisions together.

Expectations and Absence

Warhol objected to Fred going to Europe because he believed Fred should be in town, seeing to business. He suspected Fred imagined himself part of the London scene and identified with the young English people around him, whom Warhol considered dependent on Fred. Warhol’s frustration was sharpened by his view that none of them brought work from England. The complaint was not a one-off: on June 17, 1981, he questioned Fred’s decision to go, and on June 20 he again insisted that Fred ought to be around to take care of things.

On the second occasion, Warhol connected Fred’s identification with English society to his drinking, saying that Fred acted as though he were English royalty when he drank. The diary records Warhol’s interpretation, not Fred’s account of the trip or his reasons for going. What emerges clearly is Warhol’s sense that Fred’s attention belonged at home, where business needed oversight.

Shared Business Decisions

Despite that irritation, Fred appears in Warhol’s account as a participant in substantial business deliberations. On August 26, Warhol was undecided between the Madison Avenue Con Ed building at 32nd–33rd Streets and 895 Broadway, and noted that Fred faced the same dilemma. The Madison property appealed because it was large and artistic and might prove a gold mine, but its renovation would be expensive and difficult to plan. A 12 percent mortgage could make the purchase more attractive.

The alternative, 895 Broadway, seemed more practical: Warhol put its price at $1.8 million, compared with $2 million for the Madison building, and saw the prospect of rental income from its floors. The diary does not say what either man ultimately chose. Its account instead captures them weighing artistic potential, renovation costs, financing, and income—the different demands that made the decision difficult for both.

Business Continuity and Warhol’s Standard

A separate staffing dispute from this period illustrates how sharply Warhol reacted when absences threatened production. With Rupert Smith away in Jamaica and several assistants also taking vacations, Warhol warned that he might find another silkscreener. He recalled that Rupert Smith had originally received the job when Alex Heinrici took a long vacation. This was not a threat directed at Fred, but it clarifies the business standard behind Warhol’s complaints: prolonged absence could, in his view, leave work unattended and prompt him to seek a replacement.

Taken together, the entries show a relationship in which Fred’s business involvement was important enough for Warhol to resent his absence, while shared property deliberations placed Fred alongside him in weighing risk and opportunity. The diary preserves the tension without resolving it: Warhol voices his dissatisfaction, but the surviving entries offer no account of Fred’s response or of how the partnership changed afterward.