Sandinista National Liberation Front and supporters

The Sandinista National Liberation Front and supporters appear in the diary through a New York lunch that connects Nicaragua’s revolutionary cultural campaign with the city’s art world. The encounter centers on a cultural minister’s account of artists making work amid conflict, and on an invitation to travel to Nicaragua in support of that cause; it ends with a pointed contrast between the art-filled studio of Francesco Clemente and the empty office where Andy Warhol was asked to show his work.

A New York meeting

Bianca Jagger invited Warhol to a lunch at Da Silvano for Nicaragua’s cultural minister, a woman who arrived late. Among the other guests were Peter Davis, identified as an American with left-wing politics and the filmmaker behind Hearts and Minds; Francesco Clemente, the Italian artist; and a man described as a former political prisoner in South America who now worked for François Mitterrand. The gathering brought together political advocates, artists, and cultural figures, though the diary does not establish that every guest belonged to or formally represented the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Art amid revolution

The cultural minister argued that art continued even as bombs fell and bullets flew: Nicaragua had dancers, painters, and photographers, and artists were becoming unionized. She presented the people’s growing influence as the substance of revolution. Warhol found the account abstract, but placed it beside his recent experience at a party for wealthy Republicans. Both settings left him uneasy about people who had power resisting its transfer to others. His comparison widened the lunch’s political argument beyond Nicaragua, while also showing the limits of his response: he registered the struggle over power through an analogy drawn from social life.

Invitation and contrast

The guests invited Warhol and the others to visit Nicaragua and support its arts. Francesco Clemente responded that he would not risk losing the green card he had worked so hard to obtain, making the costs of political solidarity concrete within the conversation. After lunch, the group visited his loft beside Tower Records. Warhol admired the large paintings filling the space, but when the visitors asked to see his own studio, he took them to the office, where there was nothing to show: no art and no films, though they had asked to see both. The contrast sharpened his sense that he and his circle had become so involved with fashion that they had lost touch with wars and governments. The invitation remained an invitation; the diary records no journey to Nicaragua.