Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger enters the diary through two kinds of portraiture: Jamie Wyeth’s sustained work from life in 1977 and Andy Warhol’s later commissioned image of Maria Shriver, intended as a wedding present. Between them, the episodes place Schwarzenegger within a world where a public image was made through posing, filming, photographs, and carefully staged appearances. His body is first the subject of a painter’s attention; years later, his gift of a portrait helps turn a private family occasion into a public display of affection and celebrity.

A Model in the Studio

On January 12, 1977, a CBS crew was filming Jamie Wyeth with Schwarzenegger posing for a program called Who’s Who. The diary records them together at Elaine’s restaurant afterward, where they had lunch in connection with Schwarzenegger’s movie Pumping Iron. The entries offer no account of the painting’s eventual form or reception; instead, they capture the working circumstance itself: Schwarzenegger remained still for Wyeth while television cameras documented the encounter, then moved with the painter from the studio setting into a public restaurant.

The sitting continued for weeks. On March 7, the diary notes that Wyeth was still painting Schwarzenegger, who was still posing. Their lunch that day was again recorded as part of the workday, and Alex Heinrici came by to touch up something at the office. By this point the painting had become a recurring feature of the diary’s account of the studio, not a single celebrity visit. A model’s labor—returning, posing, and remaining available to the painter—sits alongside the ordinary business of meals and office work.

The pairing of a painter and a television crew also points to the overlapping media settings in which Schwarzenegger appeared. The program placed him before a camera as Wyeth painted him; the diary records the movie title in the context of lunch, without detailing his role in it. Rather than describing a private personality, these scenes show a public figure moving between forms of representation, with his likeness repeatedly made the subject of somebody else’s work.

Portraiture as a Made Image

The later Maria Shriver commission belongs to Warhol’s established portrait business. For most of the 1970s and until his death, portraits were a major source of his income. His process began with about sixty Polaroid photographs made with a Polaroid Big Shot camera. He selected four images for a screen printer to turn into positive images on eight-by-ten-inch acetates, then chose one, determined its crop, and altered the features to make the sitter appear more attractive. The selected image was enlarged to a forty-by-forty-inch acetate, from which the printer made a silkscreen.

Warhol’s assistants prepared canvas in advance, using one flesh-toned background for men’s portraits and a pinker shade for women’s. Warhol transferred the image onto the painted canvas, added colored areas such as hair, eyes, and lips, and then had the photographic details screened over them. Slight variations in how the screen aligned with the painted color produced the portraits’ characteristic shifting effect. The usual price was about $25,000 for the first canvas and $5,000 for each additional one. These details describe Warhol’s general method, not a documented step-by-step account of Maria’s specific portrait; they nevertheless show the commercial and technical system in which Schwarzenegger’s wedding-gift commission took shape.

A Wedding Gift, Delayed and Resumed

In February 1986, Schwarzenegger had not called back about having Maria’s portrait made as a wedding present. The proposed commission included portraits of her mother and cousins as well. On March 18, he called to say that the portraits were back on. The short entries preserve a small but telling reversal: a plan that seemed to have stalled returned to the artist’s schedule, and the intended gift expanded beyond the bride to include members of her family.

At the wedding, the portrait was no longer merely a proposed commission. The diary reports that, at a gathering the night before, Schwarzenegger gave Warhol’s portrait of Maria to the Shrivers, framing the exchange as a wedding gift: he was gaining a wife, while they were gaining a painting. The portrait thus connected the couple’s marriage to Warhol’s work and to the family receiving it. Its presence made the image both an artwork and a personal token exchanged between households.

Public Performance and Private Affection

The wedding drew an unusually conspicuous press presence. Helicopters hovered over the Malibu site, reporters tried to get close, and photographers were found concealed in the bushes. Against this attention, the diary describes Schwarzenegger and Maria as visibly in love and notes that they posed for photographers by rolling down their car window, smiling, and presenting themselves for the cameras. The account is an observer’s impression rather than a private record of the couple’s feelings, but it places their public manner alongside the intimate meaning attached to the portrait.

Schwarzenegger also spoke at the celebration about Kurt Waldheim. He acknowledged that friends did not want him to mention Waldheim because of the recent Nazi-related controversy and United Nations dispute, but said that he and Maria loved him and thanked him. The episode adds a public statement to the wedding’s carefully watched scenes: the same occasion that circulated a portrait as a family gift also gave Schwarzenegger a platform to express loyalty to a controversial figure.

Across these appearances, Schwarzenegger is less developed as a conventional biographical character than as a recurring presence within acts of image-making. In 1977, he posed over time for Wyeth while television recorded the session; in 1986, his renewed commission and presentation of Maria’s portrait joined an artwork to a marriage under intense public scrutiny. The diary’s concrete attention to sittings, calls, gifts, and cameras makes the likeness itself consequential: it is not simply a record of a person, but an object produced, exchanged, and displayed within celebrity life.