Ron Feldman Gallery

Ron Feldman Gallery appears in Andy Warhol’s diary as the prospective and eventual venue for his 1981 Myths exhibition—and as a source of friction over who benefited from the show. Warhol regarded the exhibition as valuable publicity for the gallery, but objected to its terms and to Feldman’s later insistence on selecting only the images most likely to sell.

The planned exhibition

On August 16, Warhol told Fred Hughes that he objected to a deal Hughes had made with Ron Feldman. Warhol said he was already with Leo Castelli, that he was not supposed to have a show with Feldman, and that a large exhibition of his work would make Feldman’s gallery famous. He also disparaged the pictures as too large and too awful. At that point, Feldman had Warhol down for a show around September 18, though Warhol’s diary treated the date as uncertain.

The preparations tied the gallery commitment to a substantial body of work. Warhol said he was making backgrounds for Superman and Dracula and needed to complete at least four a day to catch up. A few days later, as Rupert Smith brought in the Mickey Mouse and Greta Garbo works, Warhol worried that critics would ask how he could be doing the same kind of work again twenty years later. The prospect of critical repetition shadowed the exhibition before it opened.

Financing and control of the work

Warhol’s frustration also concerned payment. He and his associates had to press Feldman for money; Feldman eventually said he would pay when the paintings were finished. Warhol disliked working on the show at the gallery, describing it as publicity for Feldman and arguing that he should be paid more. The arrangement therefore joined the gallery’s promotional interest to Warhol’s labor and cash-flow concerns, without resolving the imbalance to his satisfaction.

After the exhibition, the dispute sharpened over what the gallery would accept. On October 5, Warhol recorded a phone fight with Feldman: Feldman did not want the complete Myths series, but only the individual images that were selling best. Warhol found this objectionable and ended up yelling, something he said he hated doing on the phone. The disagreement was not simply about whether the work could sell; it concerned whether the exhibition would be presented as a coherent series or reduced to its strongest commercial selections.

Opening and reception

Warhol recorded the opening on September 15. Feldman arranged a limousine to take him to the gallery, where he found a crowd he described as very young, with nobody over twenty-one. Rupert Smith arrived dressed much like Warhol—bow tie, white shirt, blue blazer, blue jeans, and cowboy boots—and changed his bow tie after Warhol stared at him. The opening brought the planned exhibition into public view, but the diary’s attention to its young crowd sits alongside Warhol’s unease about the show’s commercial and critical reception.

The gallery’s role remained unsettled after the opening. Warhol noted that The New York Times had still not reviewed his Myths show and felt it was being ignored. In his account, then, the venue delivered an opening and an audience but did not settle the larger questions of recognition, representation, or value: Feldman wanted the marketable images, while Warhol resisted allowing the series to be defined by those choices.