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Home , Andy Warhol, Bike Boy, Billy Name, Blue Movie, Brigid Berlin, Chelsea Girls

Factory-Andy--EN-7274-Interior.indd 1 14/06/2016 11:49 factory

Text by Lynne Tillman

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Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 2 14/06/2016 11:49 Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 3 14/06/2016 11:49 LIKE ROCKETS AND TELEVISION 006

STEPHEN SHORE 012

GORDON BALDWIN 024

BILLY NAME 030

GERARD MALANGA 036

PAT HARTLEY 050

JOHN CALE 060

MAUREEN TUCKER 070

DONALD LYONS 076

STERLING MORRISON 090

SUSAN BOTTOMLY / INTERNATIONAL VELVET 108

DANNY FIELDS 114

PAUL MORRISSEY 128

HENRY GELDZAHLER 136

MARY WORONOV 160

JONAS MEKAS 166

SAM GREEN 182

INDEX 189

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 190

Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 4 14/06/2016 11:49 Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 5 14/06/2016 11:49 studio, as perceived and experienced by Shore: his point of view. This yet considered or gallery-worthy. Shore’s emphasizing the common- body of work is critical to Shore’s artistic career, to his way of thinking place, elevating the ordinary, seeing the extraordinary—art—in it, was a LIKE ROCKETS AND TELEVISION about art. For one, Warhol was the first artist he saw in action, his unof- Warholian gesture, for sure. ficial mentor. It’s fair to say that Shore apprenticed himself to Warhol. After Shore’s time in , he drove around the US and photo- “[What] I also derived from Warhol was a delight in our culture, a kind graphed American culture—drive-in movie screens; a breakfast meal of ambiguous delight. He was fascinated by it.” —Stephen Shore [2] in a diner; the crossroads in small towns—which became his series Shore’s Factory photographs coincide in time with Warhol’s emergence “American Surfaces.” He photographed common objects, uncommonly. as a prominent artist. They also mark the middle to near-end of Warhol’s In 1971, Shore was the first living photographer to have a one-person active filmmaking career. In 1965, Warhol formally resigned from paint- show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ing to concentrate on filmmaking. Several of Shore’s photographs show Warhol working on a film, and behind the camera. Warhol was always In the , Andy Warhol was a defiant, uncomfortable public presence. working on something. Everyone in the Factory, including Shore, was His art discomforted from early in its initial phases—defamiliarizing aware of his near-puritanical work ethic. and reframing cultural objects and social facts: electric chairs, Marilyn, Jackie, car crashes, Elvis, Campbell’s Soup cans, Liz Taylor, black people In 1968, Warhol informally resigned from filmmaking, though not until being attacked by police dogs in the South. In making a mark on different he finished , a tremulous, exhausting because exhaustive, things American, Warhol chose . This seeming lack of “taste” beautifully shot portrait of a sexual relationship—skin; bodies; tender, or “discrimination” between so-called high and low culture, between playful talk—a romantic and wry afternoon-into-evening celluloid. Blue serious and trivial, has been designated “,” his scavenging of every- Movie’s first screening in was shut down by . That day objects and signs, “pop.” his movie was called “obscene” also affected Warhol’s decision to quit making movies. He handed over the directorial reins to , “Dean of Poppycock Art, he of the Brillo Boxes and Campbell’s Soup Cans . . .” whose movies were artless imitations of Warhol’s. “his own oozing degeneracy . . .” Shore’s pictures represent the “Old Factory,” as it came to be called, the fertile period before ’ assassination attempt on “this Warhol type is vulgar, meaningless, obscene, and an unmitigated, Warhol. In a weird coincidence, Warhol was shot the day before Robert outrageous bore . . .”[4] F. Kennedy was assassinated—the 1960s were also infamous for political assassinations. But after Warhol almost died, the Factory changed With Warhol’s kind of destruction, or reconsideration; with his bad dramatically. The Old Factory, once considered a “permissive” space— attitude, Warhol danced the Twist with the sanctity of art and artist. apropos the 1960s—was gone. He may never entirely be forgiven, as if he were one of the Manson family, another 1960s phenomenon. Since the , Shore’s photographs have regularly been compared with, or said to be influenced by, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, and But his ecumenicism, his range—that catholic appetite—was anything Robert Frank, to cite three of photography’s major figures. They were but lacking. His scavenging was emphatic, his “lacks” not absences but great influences, but there’s a bigger story. Photography—the disci- presences in his work, a thoroughgoing strategy, a point of view, a way pline—applied its conventional wisdoms to Shore’s project. And, too, of seeing and thinking. by the early 1970s, Shore had put away his Factory photographs. He also turned away from black and white photography to color, for which he If anyone showed how weird the idea of taste was, it was Warhol. His quickly gained fame. various desires, or tastes, often seemed in conflict with each other. He collected everything, had shopping bags full of unopened packages in his In choosing the pictures for this book, This book is possible, not because Until the mid-2000s, critics and art historians had not associated house at his death. He wanted things, just to have them; he liked to look— Shore’s aesthetic with the genius of Andy Warhol. But having once seen long and longingly. I asked myself: if you didn’t know who the people are interesting, but Shore in Warhol’s company and having written the text for The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965-67, I was aware of Shore’s early He was a cultural omnivore, a culture vulture, who went forth and multi- any of these people were, would that because the photographs are. artistic provenance. In a conversation with him for Uncommon Places plied. He produced serial images instead of pristine objects whose value (Aperture, 2005), my initial comment to Shore was: “Hardly any atten- was in their one-of-a-kindness. Seriality changed art; the way one looked still be an interesting picture? — [1] tion—none, actually—is paid to Warhol’s influence on you. You spent at art: simultaneously it interacted with changing social ideas, as the time in the Factory from 1965 to 1967.” I wanted to give him the opportu- world turned, to title it, “soap opera.” —Stephen Shore nity to reveal this unknown association: While he ripped up the social carpet, his work proposed a different “It had an incredible effect on me . . . The photography world was very social/art contract. He broke hallowed aesthetic ground. He replaced different then. What I had been exposed to was largely what I think of one kind of image with another, with others. His replacement images as ‘camera club’ mentality . . . I’d already started to be educated in a may now even appear to be “natural,” expected outcomes of our mediated different way. A neighbor . . . gave me a copy of Walker Evans’ American lives; the way things are, or are meant to be; always around, second Photographs for my tenth or eleventh birthday. A seed of something nature, second sight. His work is difficult, though, if one lets it be, just more aesthetically oriented . . . then [through] a family friend Lee because it can easily be taken at face value. It questions what one is Many people were drawn to Andy Warhol and the Factory. For some, Stephen Shore was drawn to the Factory. He wasn’t a typical disaffected Lockwood, who edited Contemporary Photographer . . . I saw the work looking at merely by being on the wall, being looked at by you. The work he and it were the New York scene of the 1960s. The cast of characters youth: he knew what he wanted, and already had a grand passion for of Lee Friedlander . . . Then I came to Warhol . . . Every day I watched is also beautiful, ugly, ambiguous, perverse, uncanny. “Uncanny,” a in Shore’s photographs from the Factory—who acted in Warhol’s films, photography. From the age of six, he was taking and printing pictures. an artist working . . . I started to become aware of decision-making. pun on his soup cans maybe. Even if they no longer shock, they still may worked with him, hung around his second studio on East At fourteen, he contacted Edward Steichen, the first head of photogra- That’s the most important thing. The second was, Warhol worked in a surprise. Though perhaps there’s no way that a stack of Brillo boxes or —was diverse. , , , , Paul phy at the Museum of , and set up an appointment to show serial vein, and I began to think about images, about serial projects.”[3] a dollar sign, even on the wall of a gallery or museum, certainly a film Morrissey. —discovered and showcased by Steichen his photographs. Steichen bought three. A few years later, of a still thing like the , will ever be art for some Warhol as part of the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” at the Dom on when he was seventeen, Shore started hanging out at the Factory. He Warhol’s daring, his knowledge of art, along with his disregard of artistic people—and that may contribute to their power as images. St. Marks Place: , Sterling Morrison, , Maureen had met Warhol at an screening; they shared an in- convention, mightily influenced the young Shore. Warhol had questioned Tucker, and singer , legends in their own time. The other Factory terest in , Jack Smith’s work, for one. In 1965, Warhol what was valuable; what had quality; what art could be. Early in his Not completely assimilable in the world they were meant to intervene band, not a rock group, originated from Cambridge/Harvard: Edie invited Shore to visit the Factory. Shore went along, and didn’t stop career, Shore self-published Greetings from Amarillo: Tall in Texas, a set in or fit into, not wholesome—not yet—they still hang in museums and Sedgwick, Donald Lyons, , Gordon Baldwin, Dorothy Dean, going for two years. He was a precocious kid, who then dropped out of of ten postcards (1971). He distributed the postcards randomly in drug- now have a museum to themselves in , where Warhol himself Edmund Hennessy, Ed Hood, . (It’s possible, not probable, high school. Or, let’s say, the Factory turned into both his high school store postcard displays. In 1971, he was also the curator of “All the Meat didn’t want to hang. One day, maybe, he’ll be like Renoir, a father of that years from now three twentieth-century Cambridges will be cited and graduate art program. You Can Eat,” an exhibition at the 98 Greene Street Loft. He showed “popular art.” Already he and his work are pieces of the built environ- —Wittgenstein’s, Blunt’s, the Factory’s.) There were also Mary (Might) vernacular photography: postcards, police pictures, , ment—the wallpaper around us—that he helped design. Ironically it may Woronov, Ultra Violet, Pat Hartley, Susan Bottomly/International Velvet, These photographs show whom and what Shore looked at, and more photography, press photos, etc. Using vernacular photo- be the reason why he’s a little lost; he’s so much in it, one can’t see him , , Sam Green. significantly, how he saw them. They are pictures of a place, Warhol’s graphs, Shore went against the grain; that kind of photography wasn’t and his influence; he’s too much around.

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Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 6 14/06/2016 11:49 Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior_070116.indd 7 01/07/2016 21:57 Andy Warhol in front of acetate proof for the silk screen for his painting of himself; ; Williams’s agent, Lester Persky Factory couch (not the couch of Couch, 1963) Warhol and Lou Reed, lead singer, guitarist, songwriter, the Velvet Underground

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Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 8 14/06/2016 11:49 Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 9 14/06/2016 11:49 Is Warhol the twentieth century Caravaggio? Like Caravaggio, Warhol’s Irreverence depends for meaning on reverence. Warhol’s insistence on never really disguised his wants. Sexual desire flares in his art and his He also appears to have been fascinated with the people and objects he shocking, dirty past needs remembering; not enshrining, not sanitizing. using one roll of film for a scene or his use of the same image again and films. He queered things in lots of ways. There’s no universal Ameri- saw in the Factory. It’s curious what one finds fascinating and why. In the 1960s, Warhol was considered a freak, dangerous to the commun- again shows a reverence for his material, that roll of film, that particular can, though Warhol was, as much as anyone could be, an American art- A viewer brings her own point of view to an artwork: it’s a kind of desire ity. Some recognized early the importance of his work; most didn’t. pose. Or reverence for the formal ideas he adhered to and employed. ist. By now, he’s even an American artifact. Emphasize queer, and he’s or interest that precedes the image. For instance, the photograph of He was an artist provocateur, an early warning to the system of things Within the different contexts he worked, he played with his medium. a hyphenated American. Hyphens upset universality, the idea we’re all Andy in a Chinese restaurant, the clock reading 1:35 (a.m., I suppose), to come. That was his appeal, in part, to the people who spent time He shot “sexploitation” movies for porn houses that were not about cum the same, or that art is a universal medium that everyone everywhere and the one of Andy, looking up, a strong light illuminating his face, Paul with him in the Factory: his difference, his indifference, his queerness, shots, not particularly “sexploitative.” He filled an with silver can understand. Hyphens punctuate the universe with specificity, and Morrissey and another man on either side of him, like —I’m his conformity, his contrariness, his charisma, his passivity, his activity. helium pillows, making art ephemera—or ephemeral—inflated, a joke, in the specific, in the detail, is another detail. Flaubert wrote, “Life is fascinated by these. The first represents an event in a familiar place; word “conformity” is dated, except when talking about the Army. a game, a hoax, or just as likely an idea about space. Openly homosexual, in the details.” other a moment out of time, dark and strange, which makes unfamiliar Did Warhol have a part in that? Did his work signify that everyone was even flamboyant when the closet was shut, Warhol was one of the first, what is very familiar, the entrance to the lobby of a building. a little conformist, that there was no escape from the system? Did he if not the first—excluding television’s Uncle Millie Berle—to bring trans- The Factory was a frame, including and excluding, and Shore landed revel in conformity, his own version—success, beauty, money, social vestites, queens, into mainstream culture in the US. inside it, a very unusual context, its space and ambience different from A picture of a couch or of the studio, absent people, is even less up for status—as he rebelled against it, parodied it? Isn’t parody one part anything he might have known: interpretation. Anyway, I don’t project feelings onto a couch. But the love, the other hate? Two actions especially represent an anarchic, defiant Warhol. In 1956, picture might provoke ideas or questions, different kinds of speculation Warhol tried to join the Tanager Gallery, an artists’ cooperative that “I use the frame as a way of deciding what I want to include in the from what a person might have been feeling or thinking, entirely un- Warhol’s own system relied on making a lot of a little. Making a faux included , the painter, an old friend from Pittsburgh, picture.” —Stephen Shore [6] knowable. I might consider the style of the couch, or who had sex there. studio in a loft. Using a repeated repertoire of images and a where Warhol was born. Warhol submitted a painting of a group of boys I might rebuke myself: It’s a silent picture that rejects any narrative. repertory company that didn’t act. Or didn’t act right. Making a film of kissing. He—it—was rejected. Habituated by people from the upper, middle, and lower classes, for a man sleeping, a film of a young woman talking to an off-screen voice, one thing, the Factory subculture was unique. In the 1960s, Jonas Mekas Warhol claimed that Edison and silent movies had influenced his film- or showing a haircut in process, men staring at the camera. He was “The other members of the gallery hated and refused to show [it],” believed it would be the model for things to come, but it has never making most. It doesn’t sound far-fetched. Because pictures are silent, erotically invested in looking; ambivalent about being looked at. Serial Pearlstein said. “He felt hurt and he didn’t understand. I told him I been duplicated. they allow for a multiplicity of interpretations, identifications and imagery allows a longer look; it makes a lot out of one image. Warhol thought the subject matter was treated too aggressively, too impor- dis-identifications. Shore has been called a “quiet photographer” [7]. thought the viewer wanted to be able—or forced—to look longer, too. tantly” and that was “probably the last time we were in touch.” [5] How did Shore, a young stranger in a stranger new world, “picture” Though some of his Factory photographs, of parties and horsing around, He directed a twenty-five-hour-long film **** (Four Stars) and projected it? He was a witness to a cast of characters, and a stage, the Factory, might indicate “noise,” I imagine Shore must have gone about his work it on two screens with superimpositions, so it was actually fifty hours Did Warhol expect acceptance? Was he naive? Was his disappointment where they posed or “acted like themselves” in front of his camera. quietly. He must not have interrupted people, he must have wordlessly of film. He wanted to film The Warhol Bible; each page of the Bible at being rejected or in discovering that artists were, like everyone else, He set the Factory and its denizens inside all kinds of scenes—on film witnessed scenes, and then shot them. It is why his Factory elegant would be projected on the screen long enough to be read by the audi- limited? Was his action an unconscious statement, an aesthetic one? shoots, in individual portraits, in clusters, working in films, kidding photographs seem timelessly aware of their time. ence. A thirty-day movie. None of the above? Calculatedly or unconsciously he followed his desire, around, at concerts, dancing at parties. There are many candid shots, put it in his work, strutted his stuff, showed agency. but more often the pictures have a sense of formality. People stopped “… There’s so much that’s arbitrary in what a photographer does. His desire to do and have it all was grand; his need to encompass and for Shore’s camera. ‘Arbitrary’ may be the wrong word. Maybe it is artifice. I can stand in [a] compass big. Great. If he’s a great artist, it has to do with this and In 1964, Philip Johnson, the architect, asked Warhol to decorate the spot, and take a picture of a geyser basin in Yellowstone Park. If I find with how many meanings and values—qualities—one can find or dis- New York State Pavilion for the World’s Fair building, which Johnson had The Velvet Underground developed its act, with Warhol’s support, the exact margin to stand on, I can move back a foot and it’s a picture card in his work. He didn’t want to discard anything, though; he want- designed. Warhol produced , meant to grace during the time Shore was hanging out. Some pictures record the group of the parking in lot in front of a geyser basin in Yellowstone Park. That ed to use everything. “Waste not, want not,” applies nicely to him— the outside of the building—thirteen criminals in profile and full face. practicing in the Factory, or show them performing at the Dom, on difference so changes the meaning of the photograph, and that’s in the a Catholic/Puritan. Decoration for a state building. The image was rejected, as might have St. Marks Place. Nico might have sung a few songs in front of the band. photographer’s control: do I want the picture to mean this … or that?” been expected and intended; then Warhol proposed a replacement— Regularly, Gerard Malanga and performed their version —Stephen Shore [8] No wastrel, he appropriated pictures from an image-heavy world. Warhol cover the building with images of Robert Moses, the World’s Fair direc- of an apache dance. mocked categories, high and low, and deified both; he flattened, flat- tor. This sweetly perverse reversal of positions was also rejected. In the It’s usual to say about pictures, which appear to “show history,” that tered, teased, ironed out, or ironized both sides of an argument. He did end, Warhol painted over Thirteen Most Wanted Men in his signature Shore shot few tight close-ups. Mostly, he positioned himself in a they are documents. Any picture can be and is a document of some- it in such a dialectical manner, one wonders what makes something one aluminum/silver paint. The wanted men obscured, made obscene, they middle distance, focusing on small groupings, two’s, three’s and thing. It is a fact in itself. I don’t think Shore set out to document the or the other. Work/play, art/commerce, gay/straight, candid/posed, were set against the state, or under it, as a palimpsest. They were the four’s, and also on individuals or an object, like Warhol’s couch and Factory, but wanted to use his camera in an experiment, observing the male/female, sexual/asexual, moral/amoral, masculine/feminine, script- literal underworld of the state, a physical layer residing in the state. a silver mannequin’s torso. There’s one of , talking on new, teaching himself more about what a camera can do. He wanted to ed/unscripted, boring/exciting, upper/lower, progressive/reactionary, the Factory’s only telephone (a pay phone). His portraits of individ- learn more about how what he looked at through the viewfinder turned political/apolitical, traditional/modern, individual genius/historical It’s an uncanny rebellion. Max Weber defined the state as the sole uals, Susan Bottomley, Warhol, Nico, the Velvets, Gerard Malanga, into a picture, or didn’t. moment, original/influenced, art/politics, form/content—simple oppo- institution legitimated to kill. Some of the “most wanted men” must have are tighter shots, but don’t seem intimate. Instead, Shore seemed to sitions are disturbed in Warhol’s world. His work can be viewed through committed murder, a practice reserved for the state. So the preserve have kept his distance and respected their positions in Warhol’s court, What a frame does is urgent in Shore’s work; what a decision is. Indeed, any, if not all, of these frames and claims. Meaning: there’s something of art and the preserve of the state met on the surface of a building their poses. Most of them appear serene, unruffled; some looked tired if Shore had waited another moment in many of the pictures he shot of to argue about. and had a silvered fate; were a turn of events, like that which the flip or glum. Shore didn’t focus on a gritty Factory; no one is shooting Edie Sedgwick, she might have dropped her smile. If he “[moved] back of a coin might produce; as flip as a coin flip, those changed positions up, which happened there—speed, mostly. His Factory portraits a foot,” the picture would have changed. Then, what does “recording It wasn’t his queerness alone that set him apart, though his queerness or fates. Thirteen Most Wanted Men’s other provocation is sexual, chal- are elegant: he permitted Warhol’s superstars to project the images history” mean? absolutely affected his practice. It wasn’t his reading comics in bed and lenging the state with an outlaw, unspeakable love, , to they wanted. listening to the radio when he was a sickly child, lying there, cutting haunt it as underbelly. Warhol, queer-American, gives new meaning History has always been “framed,” selected, because a historian out pictures and daydreaming; it wasn’t just this that determined him. to the phrase “self-made man.” A self made into any man, bad, good, In some portraits of Edie Sedgwick, maybe best known of the Warhol includes and excludes events, and writes with a point of view. A pho- But it was a part of what set him on his way. It wasn’t only having been as random an end as the flip of that coin. superstars, Shore moved in closer. In many she’s smiling broadly. Some- tograph—pre-digitization, pre-Photoshop—is an object, which, like all a commercial artist, but it was part of how he went. It wasn’t only that times, in candid shots, Edie and others are at a club or in a restaurant. “facts,” requires interpretation and knowledge of its context. Shore’s his mother adored him, encouraged him; but it was a big part of it. It He courted fame, visibility. On the face of it, he was shameless. Lou The pose appears to drop: or his subjects are not so much posing as Factory pictures provide “reasons” to think about that period, Warhol’s wasn’t only that the 1960s were fraught, convulsive; but he was a part Reed might say Warhol walked on the wild side. But his embodiment knowing they are on view; that they are being celebrated. They expect work, what this scene was, and more. In a sense, they have become still of that, and it a part of him. Insecure and arrogant, a prolific worker, of artist was also strategic, effective. An art star/art businessman, to be photographed. lives—they are still (only) lives, but intimate active lives. They are, a heavy-duty shopper, a hard worker who partied hard—or so it’s said Warhol’s image was not that of a bohemian or an isolated, tortured I believe, analogues to the life and times of the Old Factory, and exist in by some, disclaimed by others—what’s left of Andy Warhol is his work. painter. He bedevilled the picture of the artist as much as he did art. Shore sometimes caught people unawares—Sterling Morrison’s eyes a specular and speculative relationship to it. Paintings, prints, photographs, films, books. Famous, he’s different; Maybe this will stand as the most outrageous of his services/disservices nearly closed; Malanga sleeping on the famous couch of Couch, and but like everybody else, it’s hard to know who he really was. Still, it —his threat to that order of things. Chuck Wein watching Warhol work, prints spread out on the Factory A photographer, as Shore has said, is always making choices, based on would be a strange myopia not to recognize his shape in and on things floor. The “before, during, and after” of a photograph can be completely his or her aesthetic. Shore’s fascinating Factory photographs act like —his effect. Some critics and the public might never find or see anything—no qual- at odds with so-called reality. It can be different from the subjects’ memory palaces, devices to remember or to conjure another time and ities—in his art, and none at all in him. Any argument over “quality” “realities.” Looking at a Shore Factory picture, I never forget: these place—Warhol’s Factory. They let viewers wonder what it was, what it “Subversive,” “transgressive,” these words are tossed like salad— names the debate on meaning and values, social and aesthetic value. photographs are spaces for imagining Warhol’s studio. might have meant, and—more—what it means now, in the present. hyperbolic and sexy window dressing. Warhol was a mixer; he mixed Assert something’s value, its supposedly high quality, and one is insist- it up and contributed to the cultural brew and cultural critique. A social ing that an object has achieved the condition of meaningfulness. In Warhol’s —each a three-minute 16mm roll of film—he artist, a social climber, a working-class boy, his Factory (no worker’s aimed his Bolex at his subjects, in one continuous shot, daring—even paradise but better than most factories), his paintings and films paraded Warhol was a canny artist; extreme, not a con artist. (His work may pushing—his subjects to drop their poses; to let go, visually, even psy- differences, even class differences in a country that prides itself on not promote confidence in anything, but that’s a different matter.) chologically. Consciously or unconsciously, the young Shore respected being classless. In films such as , Warhol irreverently exposed He knew what he was doing, was self-conscious, no doubt counter- the Factory people, even honored or protected their egos—some very the contradiction in a big way. phobic. He had a nose job, wore a wig, went out in open disguise, fragile. And, too, as a young man, Shore probably was starstruck.

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Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 10 14/06/2016 11:49 Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 11 14/06/2016 11:49 When I was five, I was interested in chemistry, the first time I went to L’Avventura. Or the I remember another conversation. During or just stephen shore and an uncle who was an engineer gave me a Factory. The space was oblong; it was painted after the filming of The , some- darkroom set for my sixth birthday. I wasn’t silver. Some areas were covered in foil, which time in 1966, Andy started talking about, “My interested in taking pictures then. I got my was the work of Billy Linich, later to be known films are so boring.” What Jonas Mekas was first 35mm camera later, when I was eight or as Billy Name. really first promoting were films like Sleep, Eat, nine. First I developed and printed my family’s Empire—Empire was eight hours of the Empire snapshots—Kodak Brownie pictures. I remem- Andy would work all the time. There’d be some State Building, which I’d seen and actually sat ber one of those early prints, of my cousin and people helping him, like Gerard Malanga, who through most of. At the time, people were writ- Photographer myself. I printed it inside a heart shape. I’d cut would be actively involved in silk-screening ing about the nature of boredom in his films. The a mask out, I assume from shirt cardboard. the project was. There’d be other films were kind of moving paintings or paintings A heart shape. people who would just come and hang out. in time, in a way. Eat was a camera held steady I remember being very impressed, or unfavor- as eats a mushroom. Films like I became very involved in photography early. ably impressed, with some of these people The Chelsea Girls were more narrative, dealing By the time I was fourteen, I called up Edward who’d sit on a chair or couch, sit there for with personalities. Coming from a knowledge Steichen at the hours, doing nothing, waiting for the evening of his earlier films, I was impressed, interest- and asked for an appointment, and got one. when we went to parties. ed, that he was complaining about how boring I remember going in, meeting the man; he look- those earlier films were. Then Andy said, “But I ed at my pictures. I had a copy of a book the I’d be taking pictures. I would socialize with don’t know how to make them more interesting, Modern published, Steichen the Photographer, some of the people. I became especially friendly and that’s why I want to have two screens”— and he autographed it for me. I still have it. with Billy Name. He had a kind of a workstation The Chelsea Girls has two screens. He said, He was already very old. He bought three of where he sat, kept his records, did his speed, “I don’t know how to edit. So I thought if I had my prints for the Modern—one was of three which was the prevalent drug at the Factory. two screens, there’d just be more to look at and boys pointing at something; one was of an ice- He had a turntable and played opera. We shared people wouldn’t be so bored.” He’d never edited. man delivering ice, with a barrel; and the third a love of classical music. The way he would do scenes—each scene of a was a picture of a boy sitting on a bench in the longer film, like My , was a reel of film. Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the people just hanging out would bother A scene on the beach, a scene in the bathroom Andy. Every now and then, there would be a —a reel. Then he did two screens at once, so By the time I was seventeen, I was making sign by the elevator, so when you entered there’d be more happening. 16mm films. In my senior year of high school— you would see it, “If you have no business to Columbia Grammar—I simply dropped out. conduct here, please don’t come.” Andy would I’d been doing photography for a long time by And I met Andy at Jonas Mekas’s Film-Makers’ never enforce it. that point, but I had always done it in an untu- Coop, where I showed a film called Elevator. tored way. For reasons of my youth, and reasons It pictures the inside of a cage elevator, so it’s Andy came across as very insecure and would of the lack of intensity of critical discourse actually more visually interesting than you might ask people what they thought of what he was around photography at that time, I think I was imagine an elevator in an office building to be. doing. Although one always had a sense he knew still very naive. I saw Andy making aesthetic just what he was doing. My guess is that if it decisions; it wasn’t anything he ever said to By 1965 Andy was well known in New York really bothered him that people were around, me. I saw these decisions happening over and cultural circles. I asked him if I could come he would stop them, just lock the door. My over again. It awakened my sense of aesthetic and photograph at the Factory. He said, “Well, guess is that it helped him in his work to have thought. It had to do more with the framework We were never nervous around we’re going to Paris tomorrow, but we’ll call people around, to have these other activities that the work was seen in. Like the nature of you when we get back.” He was perfectly around him. I think he kept people involved by serial imagery, which his work deals with, obvi- Stephen, nor were we bothered by friendly, but there was a dreamy vagueness asking, “What do you think of this? Oh, I don’t ously. I began to think about it and was involved, in his manner, and I didn’t know if I’d ever get know what color to use. What color should to some extent, in a little way. More in sequence his camera. we a call. Then, really a month later, I did. It was I use?” Just something to keep the swirl of than seriality. I think I learned by observing, not Andy saying, “We’re filming at a restaurant activity around him. observing him in order to learn, just by being One May afternoon when we were were completely unaware that he was called L’Avventura; do you want to come and exposed to the decisions and the actions he was take pictures?” I was the only person of the people who were making. More basic was simply a transition to filming a movie at L’Avventura, taking pictures, so casually did he hanging out with him, or one of the few, who thinking aesthetically. By the end of my stay I walked right into the filming. My memory lived uptown. Often we would wind up, say, in at the Factory, I found that just my contact with, a young kid named Stephen Shore go about his work. His photographs is based on the pictures I shot, but I wouldn’t Chinatown at 2 a.m. and share a cab home. We’d and observation of, Andy led me to think differ- be surprised if people like Donald Lyons and have conversations. He was very open and un- ently about my function as an artist. I became came by to take pictures of us. perfectly capture the galvanic life Ed Hennessy were there. Chuck Wein, who affected. He would say things he wouldn’t have more aware of what I was doing. was a moving force in Andy’s films then. Edie said in a more public situation. One time Andy He’d made a short film that was at the Factory; they are intensely Sedgwick. Ann Reynolds. Gordon Baldwin. asked me if I had seen some film on the Late, Gerard Malanga. The film wound up being Late Show the previous night. I forget the film, shown at the Film-Makers’ Coop the evocative. Looking at those images called Restaurant. but Priscilla Lane was in it. A 1930s tearjerker.

same night in February as my The now, I can hear Edie’s laughter, Andy would do films almost every week. They And, in fact, I had. Andy wanted to know what weren’t really scripted. Andy would be behind the ending was, because he said he started Life of Juanita Castro and afterward smell Andy’s paints, and reexperience the camera. Chuck would be saying to Edie, crying and fell asleep. Then he said, “And the “Why don’t you talk about . . . ” That was it. television was off in the morning, so I guess he’d come over to me and asked if he some of the emotions I felt then. my mother must have come in and turned it For a while, I went to the Factory every day. off.” He never talked about his mother. She could come by the Factory — he In one of the pictures I have a radiant I had a sheet of seamless paper, a fairly good was just mentioned as a part of his life, like, size. They let me keep it up. I’d photograph I woke up and the television was off, so I guess was taking still photographs and grin on my face. I look at it once in a different people as they came through. Then my mother turned it off. He never said anything I stopped going every day and returned only reflective about her. But I remember, at the had heard that there was a lot while and wonder if I will ever be that when something new was happening—when time, finding it stunning and poignant that he’s Paul Morrissey came, when some new person Andy Warhol, who’s just come from some all- going on there. happy again. arrived to be in the films, when the Velvets night party or several of them, and has turned came. I was going enough so that I would be on the television and cried himself to sleep to a aware when something new and interesting was Priscilla Lane film, and his mother had come in —Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, : The Warhol Sixties —Edmund Hennessy happening. I don’t recall feeling uncomfortable and turned it off.

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Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 12 14/06/2016 11:49 Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 13 14/06/2016 11:49 Warhol and mirrored disco ball (on left) from Vinyl (1965), which starred Gerard Malanga, with Sedgwick making her first appearance in a Warhol film

Stephen Shore and Warhol

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Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 14 14/06/2016 11:49 Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 15 14/06/2016 11:49 “I knew Edie in Cambridge, when she first got out of Silver Hill—Silver Hill was one of the bins they put her in. She had brothers and sisters in school in Cambridge and she started hanging around the Casablanca, the central bar in Cambridge, in the Brattle Theater, which is where the Humphrey Bogart craze started, this was 1963. Edie became friends with Ed Hood, Tommy Goodwin, From Shore’s first shoot at L’Avventura: Ann Reynolds, classics scholar; Edie Chuck Wein, Ed Hennessy. She seemed to blossom in this setting, seemed to be Sedgwick, superstar, Beauty #2, Lupe, Poor Little Rich Girl (all 1965); Alexandra happy for the first time. One got the impression of this wounded creature who (Sandy) Kirkland, appeared in Restaurant (1965) was just opening up to life.” —Donald Lyons

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Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior.indd 16 14/06/2016 11:49 Factory-Andy-Warhol-EN-7274-Interior_070116.indd 17 01/07/2016 22:00 Down the street from the Factory

Ronald Tavel and two unidentified men in the entrance to the Factory

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