Arman

Arman is a figure in Andy Warhol’s diary whose brief appearances move from the social margins of the art world to a consequential dispute over forged paintings. The episode turns on eight Flower fakes that Arman said he had sold without knowing they were fake; Warhol believed otherwise and connected their sale to a loss of confidence in his work.

An Appearance in the Art-World Circle

On April 19, 1978, Warhol records seeing Corice Arman waiting while Arman parked the car. The encounter occurs during a rainy lunch outing with John Reinhold, who was teaching Warhol about gemstones. It places Arman within the diary’s surrounding network of artists and art-world acquaintances, but offers no further account of his conversation or role in the lunch.

The Flower Fakes Dispute

On May 6, Arman called Warhol and said he had sold eight fake Flower paintings, explaining that he had not known they were fakes. Warhol rejected that explanation: he reasoned that Arman must have known because the works had been hidden away for years, and speculated that Arman had bought them cheaply from Terry Ork or Soren Agenoux. These are Warhol’s accusations and suspicions as recorded in the diary, not an independently confirmed account of the paintings’ provenance or Arman’s knowledge.

The dispute also involved uncertainty over who had made the fakes. Warhol noted that Gerard was still emphatically denying responsibility. The diary does not resolve that denial or establish who produced the works, leaving the disputed authorship alongside the question of what Arman knew when he sold them.

Consequences for Warhol’s Market

Warhol considered the fakes damaging because, in his view, they had driven his prices down and made potential buyers wary of purchasing paintings for fear they might be counterfeit. Arman’s significance in these entries therefore rests less on a developed personal portrait than on his place in a conflict over authenticity: a sale that Arman described as unwitting became, for Warhol, part of a broader erosion of trust in the market for his work.