WARHOL'S MUSES

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.