Andy Warhol and Ron Feldman's gallery collaboration

Andy Warhol’s relationship with Ron Feldman Gallery was a working collaboration shaped as much by negotiation and dissatisfaction as by exhibitions and sales. Across dealings from 1981 into 1982, Warhol challenged the gallery’s agreements, payment arrangements, and choices about which works to show, even as he continued to make work for its programs and explore ways to market his portfolios. The diary records not a settled partnership but a recurring bargain over artistic control, commercial value, and who benefited from a show.

A disputed exhibition arrangement

On August 16, 1981, Warhol called Fred Hughes in East Hampton to criticize the deal Hughes had made with Ron Feldman. Warhol said that he was with Leo Castelli and should not have been scheduled for a show with Ron Feldman in the first place. He also objected that a large show of his work would make Feldman’s gallery famous, while the pictures themselves were too large and too awful. The show was reportedly listed for September 18, though Warhol’s recollection of the date was uncertain. His complaint therefore reached beyond the paintings: he questioned the arrangement, the benefit accruing to the gallery, and the choice of venue.

The dispute did not stop the work from proceeding. By August 20, Warhol was discussing the show with Feldman and trying to get him to provide money. Feldman eventually said he would pay when the paintings were finished. Warhol was working on subjects including the Wicked Witch and Howdy Doody; Rupert Smith had brought the Mickey Mouse and Greta Garbo works, which Warhol thought looked good. He nevertheless anticipated criticism that, decades later, he was repeating earlier material, and said he could not stand doing the show at Feldman’s because it amounted to publicity for the gallery. He also believed the payment should be substantially higher. The paintings thus moved forward under terms he regarded as both artistically exposed and financially inadequate.

Selection, authorship, and the Myths series

The friction sharpened in October, when Warhol and Feldman disagreed over the Myths series. On October 5, Warhol had a telephone fight with him after Feldman declined to take the series as a whole and wanted only the specific images that were selling best. Warhol reacted angrily and later regretted yelling on the phone. The issue was not simply whether the works could find buyers: the proposed selection would make sales performance determine which parts of a larger series the gallery represented. Warhol’s anger marks a limit to the collaboration, as the gallery’s commercial filtering collided with his expectation that the body of work be treated together.

The surrounding diary entries register the stakes without resolving the argument. Warhol noted that the New York Times still had not reviewed his Myths show and felt it was being ignored. In that setting, the disagreement over which images Feldman would take mattered both to the series’ presentation and to its prospects for attention. The diary does not say that the quarrel ended the relationship; instead, it shows a practical partnership continuing through disagreements over how Warhol’s work should be selected and promoted.

Auctions and the value of individual works

In the same period, the diary describes another episode in which artworks circulated through the market. Vincent Fremont went to a Sotheby’s auction that included some of Warhol’s portfolios and bought them back. The purchases included Campbell’s Soup Cans and Mao portfolios, but not the Marilyn works, whose prices had remained high at about $35,000 apiece. Warhol also noted that Mrs. Castelli was preparing a prints show, putting Fremont in competition with Castelli Graphics and apparently angering Leo Castelli. This was not described as a direct Feldman transaction, but it clarifies the commercial environment surrounding Warhol’s gallery dealings: portfolios could be bought back, prices varied by image, and gallery interests overlapped in the prints market.

That market context helps explain why disputes about selection and payment recur in the relationship. Warhol resisted having a series reduced to its best-selling images, while the auction episode makes the uneven valuation of particular portfolios explicit. The diary keeps artistic groupings and market categories in view at once, recording the practical pressures without suggesting that price alone settled the meaning or importance of a work.

A continuing marketing partnership

By July 1982, Warhol was again working with Ron Feldman Gallery, this time on the Endangered Species portfolios. He worked on the portfolios, spoke with Feldman by telephone, and sent Chris Makos down with them. Feldman was excited, and the next task was to work out how to market the series. The entry gives no account of the eventual marketing plan or its results, but it records a clear shift from the angry arguments over the Myths series: Feldman’s response was enthusiastic, and both sides were considering how to bring the work to an audience.

Taken together, these episodes define the relationship through repeated negotiation rather than simple harmony or rupture. Warhol objected when the gallery seemed to gain publicity without paying enough, challenged its preference for selected best sellers, and continued to involve it in exhibitions and portfolio marketing. The partnership persisted because it served concrete professional purposes, but its terms remained contested. In the diary, collaboration meant not agreement on every work, but an ongoing effort to make the gallery’s commercial role compatible with Warhol’s control over what his art comprised and how it was presented.