Miles Davis

Miles Davis enters the diary as a musician and conspicuous dresser whose brief encounter with Andy Warhol becomes a small negotiation between music and portraiture. At a fashion show, Warhol admires Davis’s delicate fingers, recalls seeing him perform and meeting him years earlier, and proposes an exchange: ten minutes of music for a portrait. The episode also turns on an imbalance in how the show treats its guests, contrasting Davis’s expensive, personalized outfit with Warhol’s sense that he has been overlooked.

Earlier Encounters

Warhol connects the meeting to two earlier points of contact. The previous year, he had gone with Jean-Michel Basquiat to see Davis perform at the Beacon. He also reminds Davis that they had met in the 1960s at Hernando’s, a Christopher Street store where Warhol and his circle went for leather pants. Davis says he remembers the earlier meeting, linking the present exchange to Warhol’s recollection of New York’s downtown scene.

The Portrait-for-Music Exchange

At the Tunnel, Warhol notices Davis’s hands, describing his fingers as the same length as his own but half as wide. He calls Davis a clothes horse and learns that Davis draws while having his hair done. Davis gives Warhol his address and a drawing; they agree that Davis will play music for ten minutes in exchange for Warhol making his portrait. The arrangement brings Davis’s drawing into the encounter as well as his music and public image, though the diary records the agreement rather than whether the exchange was later carried out.

The Show and Its Unequal Attention

The fashion show has commissioned a custom outfit for Davis costing $5,000, decorated with gold musical notes. Warhol, by contrast, complains that the organizers did nothing for him and says they could at least have made him a gold palette. He feels like the poor stepchild, and the insult is sharpened when he is told that he walks too slowly. The clothes themselves also disappoint him: he dismisses the show’s alligator, fur, and lace, despite having worked hard on the event.

A Brief Portrait in the Diary

The Japanese crew, Warhol observes, seemed more interested in him than in Davis. That inversion gives the encounter its particular social edge: Davis receives the costly costume, while Warhol feels neglected yet attracts the crew’s attention. The diary preserves Davis through sharply selected details—the hands, the drawing, the hair extensions, the gold-note outfit, and the proposed trade—rather than through a full account of his life or music. He appears as a vivid presence in Warhol’s working world, where artistic exchange and the uneven distribution of attention unfold in the same scene.