Warhol’s self-financing business principle

Warhol’s self-financing business principle joined frugality to ownership: start on a small budget, build gradually, and fund the early stages yourself so that later success leaves more of the business in your hands. Interview offers the clearest example in the evidence, moving from a low-budget magazine project to a publication that helped keep Warhol connected to new people and public attention.

The Principle and Interview’s Lean Start

When Warhol conceived Interview in 1969, he wanted a magazine oriented toward movies, where stars could speak in their own words, without editing, and, when possible, interview one another. Its format was presented as new to magazine publishing, but its finances began modestly. The governing idea was not simply to spend less: early self-financing was meant to reduce the share surrendered to outside backers if the enterprise later grew in value.

The low budget was evident in the work required to correct the first issue after it had gone to press. A lawyer advised that a description of a movie critic as a drag queen could be libelous, while queen alone would be acceptable. Warhol, Paul Morrissey, Fred Hughes, Jed Johnson, Gerard Malanga, the diarist, and whoever happened to come through the door spent about six hours in the loft crossing out the offending word with black felt-tip pens. The episode makes the principle tangible as improvised labor: a legal problem was handled by the people on hand rather than by an elaborate production process. It also shows the limits of thrift; the correction still had to be made after printing, at the cost of a long, collective hand-editing session.

From Independent Financing to Ownership

In 1975, Warhol bought out Peter Brant and became Interview’s full owner and publisher; Fred Hughes assumed the title of president. The change brought Warhol closer to the magazine’s daily operation. He began looking at art director Marc Balet’s layouts and arranging conference-room lunches to pitch the publication to prospective advertisers. The move from initial financing to full ownership gave the principle a concrete institutional outcome, while the advertising work shows the continuing effort required to sustain the enterprise.

Interview also supplied a new reason for people to come to Warhol’s office. By 1976 its circulation had grown year after year, and its mix of glamour and self-mocking silliness made celebrities want to appear in it. Warhol often conducted cover interviews himself, sometimes with a staff member, and the steady flow of interviewees brought fresh faces into the office. The magazine’s promise of inclusion replaced the earlier prospect of appearing in one of his films: the publication had become an ongoing offer of visibility at a time when commercially exhibitable movies were increasingly expensive and less certain to be made.

The appeal depended on the magazine’s machinery as well as its reputation. Its pages gave space to newly seen male and female models under headings including Interman, Viewgirl, Upfront, and First Impression. A 1978 interview with Shaun Cassidy illustrates the tension between a carefully managed public image and the person encountered during the work: Cassidy gave clean, stock answers because his fans were young, but his demeanor changed as he passed through a lobby of screaming fans and later entered a photographic session. In 1981, David Hockney came to lunch, was videotaped by Vincent Fremont, and then went into another room to do the Interview. These episodes show the publication repeatedly converting celebrity encounters into interview and image-making opportunities.

Portraiture and the Commercial Practice

The evidence also places Interview within a wider commercial working life, though it does not establish that portrait fees directly financed the magazine. From the 1970s until Warhol’s death, commissioned portraits were a major activity and supplied a large share of his annual income. Gallery dealers, friends, or employees who brought in a commission received a commission themselves. This was a practical business system in which the work generated income while rewarding the people who helped secure it.

Portrait production combined repeatable steps with choices tailored to each sitter. Warhol took about sixty Polaroids with a Polaroid Big Shot camera, selected four images for a screen printer, and chose one resulting image to crop and cosmetically alter. The image was enlarged from an 8-by-10-inch acetate to a 40-by-40-inch acetate for silkscreening. Assistants prepared canvas rolls in different flesh-tone backgrounds for men’s and women’s portraits; Warhol transferred the image, painted selected areas, and aligned the silkscreen over them. Small shifts in alignment produced the portraits’ characteristic shifting effect. The stated price was about $25,000 for the first canvas and $5,000 for each additional one. The process shows an artistic practice organized through specialized labor, repeatable production, and clearly differentiated prices.

Significance and Limits

The principle was therefore more than a preference for economy. In Interview, starting small and financing the beginning were tied to retaining ownership; later, ownership supported a larger operational role in layouts, advertising, and the magazine’s continuing supply of celebrity material. Its growth also gave Warhol a durable way to meet new people and remain culturally present when filmmaking offered fewer reliable roles for them.

The related portrait business shows another side of this world: commissions, referral fees, standardized production stages, and substantial prices. It is evidence of Warhol’s broader commercial practice, not proof that every enterprise followed one identical financing plan. Taken together, the magazine’s lean beginnings, later ownership, and sustained content-making clarify the principle’s central logic: build a business with limited early resources, then preserve the benefits of its growth rather than handing them away at the outset.