Anthony d’Offay

Anthony d’Offay was a London art dealer whose relationship with Andy Warhol’s work combined enthusiasm, close involvement in its presentation, and conspicuous reversals of opinion. In the diary, he is not simply a buyer or host: he helps shape a London exhibition, while Warhol’s account makes clear that the dealer’s preferences could conflict with the artist’s own.

A changing response to the portraits

On May 5, 1986, d’Offay came to Warhol’s office from London and, as Warhol reported it, had decided that he loved the Self-Portraits. Warhol had thought the reaction might be uncertain, so this enthusiasm mattered. When Keith Haring wanted to use images from the series on T-shirts for his Pop Shop, Warhol agreed; about 200 were made, and Warhol anticipated having to buy them all back. The episode places d’Offay’s approval amid other forms of circulation for the portraits, from gallery attention to merchandise.

That favorable response had changed by May 21. D’Offay flew to New York and told Warhol he did not like the Self-Portraits in which Warhol’s hair was arranged like Jean-Michel Basquiat’s. Warhol bristled at what he saw as a gallery owner acting like an art director, especially because Rupert Smith had been working hard on the pictures. The contrast between the two diary entries gives d’Offay’s judgment a visible volatility: his interest in the series remained important, but his approval was not settled.

The London exhibition

During Warhol’s 1986 trip to London, d’Offay met him on arrival and brought him to the Ritz Hotel. The exhibition there exposed a sharper disagreement over who controlled the artist’s public image. Warhol disliked the photographs on display, describing them as the worst pictures of himself, and stressed that they were not the ones he had chosen. He said d’Offay had directed the selection: the dealer requested particular images, while Warhol sometimes made a different choice, assuming d’Offay would not remember the instruction. On returning to New York, d’Offay would identify the mismatch. He also preferred the small camouflage pictures to the large one.

The diary records the disagreement without reducing it to a simple rupture. Warhol objected to d’Offay’s intervention, yet also noted that the dealer had class and had arrived at the hotel with his wife at 7:30 in the morning to say goodbye. Warhol had thought they might accompany him to the airport and was relieved when they did not. He estimated that d’Offay’s hotel bill for the group would come to about $10,000, an expense that underlines the dealer’s substantial practical role in the trip.

Support and professional standing

D’Offay’s involvement extended beyond Warhol’s own exhibition. Chris Makos secured five jobs in London, including one from Polaroid, and d’Offay offered to pay Makos’s hotel bill. Warhol recorded that Makos thanked him for the trip and reflected that Makos, in his own way, took care of him. In this account, d’Offay appears as a source of professional opportunity as well as a decision-maker in the presentation of Warhol’s work.

Across these episodes, d’Offay occupies a position between artistic production and public display. He could champion the Self-Portraits, reject a particular treatment of them, and select photographs for a show against Warhol’s preferences. The diary preserves that tension through changing judgments and specific choices rather than a settled assessment of the dealer: d’Offay’s influence was real, but Warhol’s approval of how that influence was used was conditional.