Warhol's muses : the artists, misfits, and superstars destroyed by the Factory fame machine / Laurence Leamer.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

'Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil,' Andy Warhol confessed, 'of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them.' Obsessed with celebrity, the silver-wigged artistic icon Andy Warhol created an ever-evolving entourage of stunning women he dubbed his 'superstars' - Baby Jane Holzer, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Ultra Violet, Viva, Brigid Berlin, Ingrid Superstar, International Velvet, Mary Woronov, and Candy Darling. He gave several of them new names and manipulated their beauty and talent for his art and social status, with little concern for their safety or dignity. Then, one by one, they left in a state of debasement. In Warhol's Muses, New York Times bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer shines a spotlight on the complex women who inspired and starred in Warhol's legendary underground films - The Chelsea Girls, The Nude Restaurant and Blue Movie, among others. Drawn by the siren call of Manhattan life in the sixties, they each left their protected enclaves and ventured to a new world, Warhol's famed Factory, having no sense that they would never be able to return to their old homes and familiar ways again. Sex was casual, drugs were ubiquitous, parties were wild, and to Warhol, everyone was transient, temporary, and replaceable. It was a dangerous game he played with the women around him, and on a warm June day in 1968, someone entered the Factory and shot him, changing his life, forever. Warhol's Muses explores the lives of ten endlessly intriguing women, transports us to an era that changed America forever, and uncovers the life and work of one of the most legendary artists of all time.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Prologue: June 1968 (xiii)
• 1 Riding the Whirlwind (1)
• 2 Party of the Decade: April 1964 (7)
• 3 Strutting Her Stuff: June 1964 (23)
• 4 There Is Always a Price (45)
• 5 Truth, Naked and Otherwise (65)
• 6 "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (87)
• 7 The Youthquaker Loses Her Way (103)
• 8 Nights of Amphetamine Dreams (119)
• 9 The Long Goodbye: December 1965 (131)
• 10 The Bone Crusher (147)
• 11 A Fallen Debutante (161)
• 12 Band-Aids Are Not Just for Wounds (175)
• 13 Come On Light My Fire (187)
• 14 Up Your Ass and Other Niceties (195)
• 15 Lonesome Cowboys Riding High (205)
• 16 The Doors Are Locked: June 1968 (215)
• 17 The Last Superstar (225)
• 18 The Dying Swan (233)
• 19 The Eternal Mystery (245)
• 20 Just Another Party (253)
• Afterword: Lives (261)
• Acknowledgments (265)
• Notes (271)
• Bibliography (297)
• Photo Credits (301)
• Index (303)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In this captivating group portrait, biographer Leamer (Capote's Women) spotlights the "artistic muses who helped turn a Pittsburgh son of Eastern European immigrants into international artist Andy Warhol." The narrative reveals how Warhol cultivated a stable of attractive, socially prominent women who starred in his Factory films and provided him with emotional support and social access--until they were deemed old news and discarded. Leamer tracks the rise and fall of such "Superstars" as Edie Sedgwick, who emerged from her troubled youth in an old-money family to become an "exuberant queen of nightlife" in 1960s New York. After meeting Warhol in 1964, Sedgwick starred in such films as Poor Little Rich Girl, a 66-minute "exploitation of her troubled life" in which she smoked, took pills, and talked about squandering her inheritance. By her final Factory film, 1972's Ciao! Manhattan, she'd been institutionalized, gotten hooked on heroin, and come to believe that "those sons-of-bitches took advantage of me." Leamer paints a vivid portrait of a dark, drug-filled "bohemian New York," where Warhol's superstars rebelled against social norms while subordinating their own artistic ambitions to help him assemble his "most enduring creation: himself." Meticulous research, including interviews with Warhol's assistants and transcriptions of his tapes, adds fly-on-the-wall immediacy to Leamer's account. Readers will be riveted. (May)

Booklist Review

Hell-bent on becoming a celebrity like those he portrayed on his silk screens, Andy Warhol attentively studied socialites and commercials to learn how to sell an American image of himself. Almost always using a camera or recorder as mediator, Warhol acted as if everyone else was an image that could be manipulated or exploited. "He democratized the idea of celebrity while diminishing it," writes Leamer in this immersion into the history of Warhol's studio/club/shelter, the Factory, and all who were reflected in and distorted by its silver-foiled walls. Leamer reframes Warhol's biography to include the 10 women who, while refashioned and often renamed, helped craft the artist's image as they joined the Factory between 1965 and 1971. No prior knowledge is required to appreciate Leamer's tales of the unforgettable "Superstars"--Baby Jane Holzer, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Ultra Violet, Viva, Brigid Berlin, Ingrid Superstar, International Velvet, Mary Woronov, and Candy Darling. None entered without serious baggage, and few left unscathed. Warhol may have contributed to the democratization of art, but Leamer makes clear the consequences of treating people like art objects.

Kirkus Book Review

Acolytes of Warhol, and his often ruthless treatment of them. Warhol (1928-87) was a master of self-promotion, but he knew he needed to associate with "stunning women" who would help "bring him the publicity and public adulation he so desired." This enlightening yet sad book is the story of Warhol's Superstars, the term he used for the women who "played crucial roles in turning him into the most famous artist in the world." Yet, as Leamer writes, "many of them paid terrible prices." Most of the Superstars were white women who came from wealth and privilege. Warhol gave stage names to all except a handful, such as Mary Woronov, a Cornell student who "refused to let Warhol slap some new name on top of her." Famous figures from Warhol's Factory, the name for his grungy New York studio in the 1960s, appear here in tragic detail. Among them are Edie Sedgwick, who "exuded a sylphlike, androgynous image" and whose drug taking spiraled catastrophically out of control; Ultra Violet, who dyed her hair with cranberry juice and kept a beet in her purse to rub on her lips and cheeks for maximum effect; and the sexually uninhibited Viva, with "the mind of a PhD candidate and the mouth of a fishwife." Framing the book is the story of the feminist Valerie Solanas, who shot Warhol in the abdomen at the Factory because "he was famous and that was reason enough." Much of this information is well-traveled terrain, but the stories are riveting in their seediness, and Leamer does a nice job of capturing Warhol's ruthlessness, as when the young dancer Freddie Herko got so high that he danced naked out of a Factory window and fell to his death. As Leamer puts it, Warhol "wished he had been there as Herko soared out the window so he could have filmed the death. It would have been great footage." A fascinating if not entirely necessary portrait of the women who influenced Warhol's art. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.