Tales From the Warhol Factory

Andy drew me, a shy Army brat from El Paso, to New York like a moth to a flame in 1971. I'd devoured Viva Superstar: A Novel and seen his art and films reviewed in Time magazine, my cultural lifeline (along with the New York Times "Arts & Leisure" section which only intermittently made it to the Post Exchange). During my freshman year in college, I listened to "Walk on the Wild Side" obsessively and went to the Village to see "Women in Revolt." The latter satirized women's liberation AND provided an early primer in transsexualism. Somehow, my boyfriend and I eventually managed to get an invite to the publication party for "Popism" at Studio 54 where, uncharacteristically, he opened the bar at midnight. It was as close as I ever got to Drella physically which is probably just as well given the recollections gathered here. Four decades of worship-from-afar later, I made a pilgrimage to his grave in Pittsburgh and found a live video feed to the Andy Warhol Museum. Predictably, somebody had left behind a platinum wig and a Campbell's Soup Can. I happily signed the register, marveling that even in death, he managed to remain the consummate voyeur. There has never been anyone like him. Read The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B (And Back Again) and the Diaries. Interpersonal relations may not have been his thing, but he allowed his acolytes to get closer than any other artist has. I love Andy and I love the Times and the Whitney for giving him his due!

A college friend of mine, Chip Dungan, using the stage name of Julian Burroughs and pretending to be William Burrough's son, was in two of Warhol's films, The Nude Restaurant and Lonesome Cowboys. He invited me to visit the Factory where I met Warhol who hearing that I had studied art and art history showed me a couple versions of the flowers which he pulled from a stack. I was not impressed by these works which I felt lacked the bite and topicality of earlier works I had seen, especially the Electric Chairs, the Car Crashes, and the Race Riots--works which I found far more relevant to the fraught time of the mid to late 1960's than these, or for that matter much other work then celebrated in the NY art world. I recall also that I joined Warhol and his circle for dinner at Max's Kansas City where, save for a few muffled private asides, few at the gathering said much other than 'Pope' Ondine. It struck me how self-encapsulated most of the group was except for the obvious need most of them had to summon Warhol's attention, however momentary it might be.

I met Andy by chance walking down the street in New York. It was Halloween Day as I recall and I had just come up from Washington and the March on the Pentagon- 1967. I was 22 and a deserter from the Army. Andy and Paul Morrissey were I think intrigued by me and my anti-war buttons and engaged me in a conversation. I vaguely knew who Andy was from some article in Time magazine and I was curious but wary that I was getting hit on by a gay man. But they offerred me a role in a movie they were making that evening and I said yes. They asked my name and I saw Julian Burroughs which was the name I had chosen as my nom de plume. They asked if I was related to William Burroughts and I said yes, again, and they were impressed. Thus began a six month sojourn hanging out and making movies, even though they were aware of my deception. Andy enjoyed being the center of attention and had a good sense of humor. He enjoyed his fame. For me it was too intense to remain in the United States and I left in April 1968 for Paris. A month or so later I read he had been shot and then several years later I did a cameo in a film he made in Paris. We were standing around and pulled a few hundred dollar bills from his pocket and gave them to me. He was a sweet man.

It’s good to see Warhol through Fran Lebowitz’s eyes. Reflection requires at least some distance. It also requires at least some common sense.

Suggest reading Edie: An American Life by Jean Stein. The book interviews the people who were involved with Edie and Warhol, his world and movies. The interviews here are very much in the style of her book but naturally in limited format. Through memories, and great editing, Warhol and those who were part of his scene are exposed. It's worth a read if you are interested in his work and may change a few opinions of his legacy.

Favorite (and legendary) Warhol story: In 1965, Bob Dylan visited The Factory and agreed to sit for a 'screen test.' When it was over, Dylan reportedly grabbed one of the silver "Double Elvis" paintings and said it was his payment for the screen test. He and a friend took the painting downstairs in the freight elevator, put it on the roof of their station wagon and drove away. After keeping it in a closet for awhile Dylan traded the painting to his manager Albert Grossman for a couch. Years later, Grossman's widow Sally sold the painting at auction for $750,000. In 2012, one of the "Double Elvis" paintings sold at auction at Christies for $37 million. Warhol was like Duchamp and Picasso. He could see what other people couldn't see. That was his genius.

The Halston of the art world. And like Halston, we've seen better since. Can we focus on the here and now and the artists that are creating great work (and a little affordable) currently? Yes, we love the art history behind Warhol but why always feature an artist whose work only the super-rich can afford?

If you're in Pittsburgh, visiting the Andy Warhol Museum is a must. The museum building has seven floors with a decade of art per floor, early work at the top and the decades roll onward as you work your way down. Delicious.

Rupert Smith, one of Andy's most interesting and infamous print makers, was a dear friend of mine, and Rupert lived at our home on Perry Street for a while in the mid 1980's. We "socialized" with Andy aka "Pops" a bit. He was amused by me because I could talk "sing for my supper," I was young, pretty, and a gay man with money and a powerful job in the media. He was never a true friend with anyone at that point, not even with Fred who held a lot of the power. So very many of our group died in the 1980's of AIDS, drugs, or other things, that it seems like ancient history. Of our close group there are only three of us left. But, that is another story that also is still being told .........

Worth getting a ticket on the Peterpan bus for this one. I appreciate the strong graphic quality and presence of color in especially his early silksrceens from the 60s. As insinuated by his lighthearted advertising drawings, those silkscreens also deceptively underplay it, but remind me what a perfect quality of line he actually had. The Brillo Boxes are still, simply genius. As I get older I have more and more sympathy for him in the stories told about him. Most importantly, I admire him because he did the work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CId2GPpIge0

A WarholFest organza! ... nine NY Times Warhol articles since Oct 7th ... just a tip of the iceberg I suppose. Now Playing: Songs For Drella - Lou Reed & John Cale

Brilliant piece.

I stare and stare but it still just looks like a soup can.

Art historian Kurt von Meier wrote one of the first major articles about Warhol in Art International Magazine in 1966...here's the link: https://www.kurtvonmeier.com/los-angeles-letter

Is this where "Famous for being Famous" began? It would be nice to know who some of the people in the photographs are/ were.

Hey, Museum Establishment! Hey, New York Times! We don’t need a Warhol retrospective or more coverage of this great artist. Stop being so lazy and find more new artists to cover and give them that valuable museum and media space. Same goes for yet more excavations all the other greats who get coverage whenever someone writes a book about them. Exception: When new events - like #MeToo - shed new light on an old subject - like the execrable JD Salinger. Or when a biographer unearths actual new info. You have a huge staff and great reputation, but are apparently insecure about your cultural discernment, so you constantly rely on the canon developed and worshiped by the blue chip art collectors. How much space did you devote to Warhol in the last few days? Oy. You’ll reply, “But on Sunday we did an article about artists of color he influenced.” Yeah, buried in the section. Why not flip the script and make that the main story … and do a sidebar on the big retrospective? Worried about your web presence because “people love Warhol?” Put “Warhol retrospective” in the headline and you’ll get just as many hits! Make it “The world doesn’t need a Warhol Retrospective” and you’ll get even more. Did the rest of the paper miss the memo that admirably led to the new obits about women you neglected in the past? So this only goes for dead people? I’m sure that can’t be true. News is your mission. As in New. Tell us about new greats. Please. Thank you

"He wanted that kind of fame. ...." Well, he got it. Conventional wisdom views the first half of the 2oth century as belonging to Picasso; the second half belonged to Warhol. Warhol was undoubtedly a genius, but he also left art in a terrible conundrum, the field full of booby traps.

I have read that Dylan is referring to Warhol in Queen Jane Approximately and to Edie in Like a Rolling Stone. Great songs no matter what they are about.

When in Pittsburgh, I visited the Andy Warhol Museum. My friends asked me how I liked it, I said, "I liked it for 15 minutes."

There's the art Andy Warhol made, and there's all the *scenes* he made. Social scenes/ social worlds whirled around him in a vortex. He was the still center. Most famously he had the "scene' of the Factory in the 60s. Later he had the disco-aristo scene in the Studio 54 70s, where he was doing all those decadent and expensive portraits. But even before all THAT, in the late 1950s when Andy was a successful commercial artist, a friend noted he was constantly surrounded by handsome guys in suits and ties. It was the 1950s, but Andy Warhol who was plain himself, he really had a talent for attracting "beauties", men and women, he somehow drew people to him, with immense favor for the good-looking ones. Way before his art world fame in the early 60s, he already had a crowd around him. He was charismatic, his creation of social scenes and spaces are an additional aspect of his art. Wherever Andy was, from the 50s to his unfortunate death in 1987, that was the place to be. Andy created social worlds and scenes in an amazing way, he was the calm center of the social whirl of the city, For decades. That's what's really fascinating about him. But there really isn't a word for creating such social scenes like Andy did in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. To him I suppose it was just life in the big-time sphere. But he went home every night to his mother and faithful maids to look after him. He went to Mass every Sunday.

When I think back to how ny used to be i get very sentimental. Artists today would have to be very wealthy or already famous to be able to afford a studio around Union Square. I moved to NY after high school in the late 80s. Ny then was so much more fun and interesting. Today those creative types are more likely to move to Berlin than NYC.

The Warhol scene was kind of like the Beat Generation in that the lives and lifestyles of the people involved were of more interest than the actual artistic products.

I spent an afternoon with Warhol, Jon Gould and others, at the Museum of Natural History. Warhol was pleasant to spend time with, but off in a world of his own. Whatever you would call what was wrong with him, he lacked a "normal" capacity for separating people from objects, couldn't tell what had a beating heart from just a thing to be collected. He was gracious with autograph seekers. It's great to hear from Viva here, a nice lady I met when I was a kid, and smart. Warhol was indisputably influential, but a lot of his conceptual clout came from recycling perceptions lifted from Marcel Duchamp and other of Warhol's elders. And there's a big hole in his work, because he lacked the humor and wit of a Duchamp or an Erik Satie. Let's give those guys the credit they deserve for a change!

This Nina Castro: The sense of emotional insecurity described by the "Factory workers" who were dependent for their own fame, is interestly offset by the comments of the physically beautiful, and/or wealthy who may have had much higher personal self esteem. A Lord of the Flies type of situation, maybe. Or a version of the Manson family in psychological make-up only. He was a golden idol to people who need such things. Now....I love Andy the Artist, the instant reminder of why I loved the 60s and 70s so much, imperfect and ephemeral as they may have been, a great period of free thinking for good or ill. And I get a sharp twinge of understanding when I hear about his Depression Era childhood, (and those of the British Invasion rock stars, actually). But I don't doubt the truth of any of what I've read here, even if I wonder about the motivations or the hints of payback cruelty - too close to the flame. This I know, because I was in attendance at a party where he arrived, as was rumored, and I was excited and curious. For me, he had an unapproachable demeanor. If I were writing fiction, I would say the room turned cold. But in reality there was only one way to approach him, I suspect: his way, and some drew closer in, and some backed away.

Not one of these people have mentioned his snake! In the late 1970s, Andy and I were on the same schedule almost every weekday morning. We would pass each other on a then relatively lonely 15th Street (NYC), he walking with his snake resting around his neck, east to west, and I walking west to the Union Square Subway Station to go to my day job. As a young working artist, I always wanted to ask him to come see my paintings but the snake around his neck intimidated me. So I never did. I have often wondered happened if I had.

These less varnished takes are fascinating to read through. I feel like it gives me a better understanding than wall texts in museums or books and articles, since they’re always so academic and polished. If the factory was shared production, who better to share the story than the workers(?)

It’s kinda time to let Warhol go. Just not all that relevant any longer.

interesting perspectives, or opinions, from people in his orbit regardless of what the true Warhol really was, the fact that Warhol is still relevant enough to warrant this amount of attention decades after the Factory days is a testament to his stature and influence in culture

When in Pittsburgh, visit the Andy Warhol Museum. Sandusky Street, on the North Shore (of the Allegheny River). For the true devotee, you'll find his grave at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery, Library Road (Rt. 88), Bethel Park, PA.

There's only one world that's worst than Sex, Drugs & Rock n Roll and that's is Sex, Drugs and Andy Warhol.

Funny to see the club Salvation mentioned after all this time. It was "Top Club" in NYC for a while. My friends and I did the lighting for it. We built a control panel with a keyboard, like a piano keyboard, but with only about twenty keys. It was mounted on a pipe, so the wiring ran through that, and the operator sat on a high stool and played lights all around the room, flashing with the music. Just for fun, we mounted an automobile cigarette lighter in it (it worked); we bought a fancy one, Mercedes I think. After opening we were invited a few times, so I danced in the sunken "dance pit." Once I danced very fast with a cute girl for half an hour; she said "I'm surprised you kept up; I used to do this professionally."