Peter Max

Peter Max emerges in the diary less through a developed biography than as a measure against which Andy Warhol considers artistic recognition and commercial success. In Warhol’s account, Max occupies an uneasy position: commercially prominent, yet associated with the boundary between making art and making a business of art.

A Point of Comparison

In September 1984, Warhol heard that Keith Haring had rented a store for $1,500 across from the Puck Building and intended to sell his work only through that shop. Warhol compared Haring to Max, but immediately marked a difference: Max, he observed, had never entered the distinguished art collections that included Haring. The comparison made Max a shorthand for a particular kind of visibility, while Haring’s collections signaled a different degree of institutional and collector recognition.

An Appearance in Warhol’s Social World

On Election Day, Warhol encountered Max in Washington, where a group went by limousine to the Sequoia, the presidential yacht. Warhol described the outing as cold, miserable, and growing dark, and noted Max’s presence with a girlfriend he remembered as tall, beautiful, and Texan. He also associated her with appearances at the beginning and end of Heaven’s Gate. The brief entry places Max among the recognizable figures moving through Warhol’s social circuit, without suggesting a closer relationship between the two men.

Reputation, Prices, and the Art Market

By April 1985, Warhol’s comparison had sharpened into an explicit judgment. He characterized Max as a businessman trying to be an artist, said Max had copied him, and noted that Max was receiving $100,000 for a portrait. Warhol then described a mechanism through which an artist’s price could be established: meeting wealthy people, gaining their interest, and relying on them to recommend the work to their friends. He connected the process to the example of Julian Schnabel seated with Philip Niarchos. In this account, Max’s portrait fee is both a marker of commercial success and evidence for Warhol’s broader view that social endorsement could build an art-market price. The diary records that view as Warhol’s assessment, not as an independent account of Max’s career.