Shadows

Shadows is documented not through a description of what the paintings depict, but through their passage between people, exhibition spaces, and decisions about size. The diary follows a Shadow painting delivered to John Curry, the installation and uneven reception of a large gallery show, and a later dispute over measurements that left the stretchers needing adjustment. Together, these episodes make the series visible as both artwork and material object: it had to be carried, hung, judged, and made to fit.

A Painting in Circulation

On January 5, 1979, Warhol went backstage at the Minskoff Theatre after seeing John Curry’s ice-ballet show with Bianca Jagger. The next day, Walter Steding called to ask about freelance work, and Warhol had him deliver a Shadow painting to Curry. The diary records the delivery plainly, including its $10 cab fare. It does not explain whether the painting was a gift, a commission, or part of another arrangement, so its significance rests on what is clear: a work from Shadows left Warhol’s immediate orbit and was sent to a performer he had just visited backstage.

That small transaction gives the series a life beyond the gallery without supplying an account of its subject or appearance. The work is identified by its relation to Shadows, then by the practical action required to get it to Curry. The diary’s attention to the taxi fare is characteristic of its account of the art world: an artistic object and the cost of moving it occupy the same record. Rather than separating creation from logistics, this brief entry makes transport part of the work’s documented history.

Gallery, Installation, and Scale

On January 23, Warhol went to Heiner Friedrich Gallery on West Broadway. Ronnie and Stephen Mueller were hanging pictures; Fred Hughes had not arrived yet. Warhol said the show looked good and noted that the gallery was so large. The installation scene is spare, but it places the paintings among the labor and coordination that make an exhibition possible. The pictures were not simply present: people were still putting them on the walls, and the scale of the room was already shaping Warhol’s assessment.

Two days later, preparation continued through the day. A limousine arrived at five, and Warhol glued and took some of the younger people with him. Snow was falling lightly. At first the gathering was small; it seemed more like a business event than a social triumph. Barbara Colacello had secured champagne, Seagram’s, Evian, and other drinks by telling suppliers that society figures would be coming. The preparations thus carried an expectation of a substantial audience, along with the practical work of assembling refreshments and getting people to the venue.

The diary also records a second opening on the following Saturday, describing it as a preview and judging that the show looked good only because it was so large. That remark makes scale both an exhibition condition and a qualification. The gallery’s size could give the presentation force, but Warhol’s assessment does not credit the paintings alone with producing that effect. The record supplies no visual account of the works; instead, it preserves a judgment in which the room’s dimensions become inseparable from the show’s success.

Reception and Confrontation

The opening’s social promise did not translate into the attendance Warhol and Bob Colacello had anticipated. Of the 400 people Bob had invited, only six came: Truman Capote, the Eberstadts, Fereydoun Hoveyda, and the Gilmans. The diary reduces the shortfall to a sharp count—six out of 400—and calls the absent guests their best friends. The show’s public occasion therefore appears in two contrasting forms: considerable preparation and an invitation list of hundreds, followed by a notably small gathering.

A separate encounter around the opening brought a more direct judgment of Warhol’s work. At 65 Irving, René Ricard called it decorative. Warhol became angry, blushed, and shouted back; Ricard, in turn, made a personal taunt about John Fairchild Jr. Warhol described the exchange as resembling earlier fights with Ondine and noted that people were startled to see him so visibly furious. The dispute moves the diary from the scale of attendance to the stakes of criticism: a dismissive aesthetic label provoked a confrontation that exposed an unusually uncontrolled response in public.

The episode does not establish that Ricard’s remark represented the audience’s general view, nor does the diary offer a sustained critical account of the paintings. Its importance lies in the collision of an aesthetic verdict with the opening’s social setting. Against the sparse attendance and Warhol’s own qualified praise of the show’s size, Ricard’s word made the question of how the work should be valued impossible to keep abstract. The diary records the anger and embarrassment of the exchange, but no resolution between the two men.

Dimensions and Control

In January 1980, the physical specifications of Shadows became the focus of another conflict. Rupert Smith had made the works two inches smaller than Warhol had instructed. Warhol objected that Rupert had decided on the change without authority; the immediate consequence was that the stretchers now had to be smaller. The entry does not explain why Rupert altered the measurements or describe the paintings’ construction. It does show that a difference of two inches was consequential enough to trigger an argument and require further work on their supports.

This later dispute gives the earlier references to a large gallery and pictures being hung a material counterpoint. Shadows depended not only on display space and attendance but on dimensions that had to be communicated, followed, and accommodated. The diary presents the paintings through these acts of handling and correction rather than through a description of their imagery. Across delivery, installation, reception, and resizing, the series emerges as something at once exhibited and managed: its public presence depended on practical decisions, while Warhol’s anger at the unauthorized alteration asserted his control over how the works were made ready to show.