Andy Warhol was the centrifuge of an artistic and social set that remixed the cocktail of café society to include everything from porn stars and princes, pop music stars and international society figures, movie stars and drag queens, and the dynamic cast of dozens of the eras major figures (many now deceased) that attended the memorial service of April 1, 1987. In addition to speakers Yoko Ono and Picasso biographer John Richardson, attendants included such major artists as David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Francesco Clemente and Julian Schnabel. Other personalities included Debbie Harry, Diane von Furstenberg, Bianca Jagger, Halston, Liza Minnelli, Paloma Picasso, George Plimpton, Ahmet Ertegun, Dominick Dunne, Henry Geldzahler, Claus von Bulow, Leo Castelli, Holly Solomon, Steven Sprouse and many others. The book is a vibrant record of one of the most exciting eras in New York’s cultural life from the swinging sixties through the increasingly edgy 1970s and up to the heady 1980s that was started in the haze of Studio 54 and ended with the ravages of AIDS. Andy Warhol: The Day The Factory Died is a fitting tribute to the Pop master whose seemingly soulless art was frequently tinged with the pathos of death.
